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LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

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Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, it would be seeing a surge because of AI. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback.

Yep. I use it locally for rendering PDFs via LLM tool use.

how does it compare to using pandoc, which is what I currently use for rendering PDFs via LLMs?

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In one week, the installer was downloaded more than 1 million times — not counting updates via Linux distribution repositories. Either there's 1m people downloading new software "because no ai", or there's another popular thing that installs this, and is not counted in the "updates via linux repos". One is much much more probable than the other.

You underestimate the public's hatred of AI-in-everything. HN is a bubble of AI.

Disliking clunky autocomplete is very different from going out of your way to replace Word with Libre Office. The average office worker will tolerate ten bad assistants before they voluntarily deal with ODF formatting quirks in a corporate environment

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#233
post #6

The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.

true, however this event seems like a significant daily spike: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#day,version

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment. You don't seem to be disagreeing with OP?

There is a specific record being claimed. They're not just saying the absolute downloads are going up, as the OP suggests.

But that is perfectly consistent with the downloads incrementally going up all the time. It doesn't say anything about whether the recent policy changes increased that rate.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#235
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still nice to hear. Really timely, too, since my 83-year-old mom called me the other day to help her E-mail a document she prepared in LibreOffice. I installed it on her (seldom-used) computer years ago. So I talked her through E-mailing it with Thunderbird. And I say "talked," because the jagoffs at Microsoft REMOVED Remote Assistance from every version of Windows used by people who are likely to need it. And MS…

What's the issue of getting her on Linux? I bet she wouldn't see a difference, especially if its GUI is similar to Windows, like Linux Mint.

If she's anything like my mom, i.e. someone who has been using computers for a while now but never had the confidence to experiment with it, any small change will freak her out and there really is a long tail of those. It's not a matter of Linux not being good enough, being different is already a real problem.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a specific record being claimed. They're not just saying the absolute downloads are going up, as the OP suggests.

But that is perfectly consistent with the downloads incrementally going up all the time. It doesn't say anything about whether the recent policy changes increased that rate.

I'm sure you've actually checked the download numbers and are not just going "well akshually", right?

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#237
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They shouldn't and they won't. That will introduce a new metric -- %user disabling AI, and it will definitely be non-zero, which threatens the "everyone loves AI" narrative, which is the only thing thats floating all the tech-related valuation right now.

How can you be so disconnected from reality? The valuations are based on the immense value of LLMs, which exists regardless of how consumers - who are very much not where the revenue is coming from - feel about it. I can see how much we are spending on Claude and codex at meta. Believe me, the AI company valuations are not coming from Microsoft word ai assistant.

What immense value? Has it solved world hunger? Has it provided abundant clean energy that no one needs to worry about it? Has it taken care of people's basic needs so that they can be free of work and focus on what's rewarding for them?

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although, some services have started labeling their old natural language processing functionality “AI,” and released additional “AI” features, so an off switch isn’t always possible. The options seem to be to lose previously existing functionality or gain current anti-features. In their defense “AI” is a pretty nebulous concept. Really what I want is a “give me 2020 software” toggle. But if we’re wishing, a 2010 togg…

> Really what I want is a “give me 2020 software” toggle. But if we’re wishing, a 2010 toggle would also probably be nice… No kidding. It feels like by some time around 2015 the majority of the commercial software development world gave up entirely on trying to improve value for users. Given the choice, there’s only a handful of software that I wouldn’t prefer the 2010-2015 version of.

That's why for productivity software I vastly prefer open source. Sure it can be janky sometimes but at least I don't feel like I'm being fleeced and sold to the highest bidder.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you recognize that your users will dislike these features. And your solution is to try to hide it, rather than removing the features you know your users won't like? You do you, but that doesn't seem like good product design to me.

im using it for mundane text processing. categorizing and merging recipe ingredients for shopping lists. the users like the feature, unless i tell them its AI. i dont feel any ethical need to disclose that. its just software

If you know someone would act different if something would be disclosed there is always and ethical need to disclose it.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#240
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is perfectly consistent with the downloads incrementally going up all the time. It doesn't say anything about whether the recent policy changes increased that rate.

I'm sure you've actually checked the download numbers and are not just going "well akshually", right?

Excuse you? What I originally said was "I don't understand your comment". They posted a clarification, and the clarification still doesn't make sense. No, I haven't read the download numbers. How is that going "well akshually"?
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