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LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

#11

Post by opan »

psim1 wrote: post #6

LibreOffice almost seemed irrelevant; with cheap to free (*included) tools in abundance, such as MS Office, Google Workspace, Apple Pages/Numbers/Keynote, the need for LibreOffice is not what it once was, back when StarOffice and OpenOffice were liberating people from the tyranny of Microsoft. Now it's worse than irrelevant, it's a liability.

It's still the only free as in freedom office suite option I'm aware of. I do try my best to avoid needing such software at all (I prefer to stay inside vim), but it has its uses when dealing with files from other people, or niche stuff like importing XML and saving as a CSV.

Re: LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

#13

Post by godot »

allenrb wrote: post #8

As a person who refuses to use “free” cloud products, and won’t even consider Office on Windows, I’m a big fan of LibreOffice. I’ve donated a few times over the years but probably not enough. I’ll be sad if there’s not a free & local “office” solution available. That said, my eyes crossed trying to read this. Do I need to ask an LLM to read the various messages and tell me what’s going on? ;-)

I don't know about any of the drama happening, but if LibreOffice ceases to exist, there's still Softmaker FreeOffice as a free & local option. It's nothing fancy, but works for the times when I have to use one. I'm not against cloud products as you are, but it's nice being able to do stuff locally sometimes, it's just more convenient.

Re: LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

#14

Post by WhyNotHugo »

chadash wrote: post #3

For those of us with zero context, what's the story here?

Based on the article:

Some founders/directors kept using money from the foundation to pay their own private companies to get work done.

This is highly irregular: you can’t manage funds that aren’t yours and use those funds to buy from a company which gives you profit.

Legal council warned the of this irregularity, and nothing was made to change the status quo during years.

Re: LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

#15

Post by jhoechtl »

SilverElfin wrote: post #9

I have no idea what this drama is about, but it feels a lot like the kind of thing no one has time to even be interested in. OpenOffice and LibreOffice already feel irrelevant and dated to begin with. What’s the point of people paying attention to this battle if they’re not insiders? There are so many other options, although none truly open source I guess.

> OpenOffice and LibreOffice already feel irrelevant and dated to begin with.

It is the only non cloud free office solution which is truely free. How can this be irrelevant?

Re: LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

#16

Post by contingencies »

I use and promote Libreoffice instead of cloud SaaS and M$ religiously and have been doing so for decades. While it does feel that 'peak office suite' is solidly in the rear-view mirror and the majority of tools are becoming ~irrelevant (nobody does physical meetings anymore, writer Writer to deal with lawyers and their 'change tracking' and 'comments', and Calc for presenting 'give me money' financials to investors. Is there now a preferred fork we should follow?

Re: LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

#17

Post by mananaysiempre »

opan wrote: post #11
psim1 wrote: post #6

LibreOffice almost seemed irrelevant; with cheap to free (*included) tools in abundance, such as MS Office, Google Workspace, Apple Pages/Numbers/Keynote, the need for LibreOffice is not what it once was, back when StarOffice and OpenOffice were liberating people from the tyranny of Microsoft. Now it's worse than irrelevant, it's a liability.

It's still the only free as in freedom office suite option I'm aware of. I do try my best to avoid needing such software at all (I prefer to stay inside vim), but it has its uses when dealing with files from other people, or niche stuff like importing XML and saving as a CSV.

For what it’s worth, AbiWord and Gnumeric are still around (but are of course much less capable).

Re: LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

#19

Post by gentleman11 »

I feel like this was written by somebody who thinks we've been in the room the whole time while things happened. It's so dense with allusions that nobody is going to be able to understand.

What is this even about?

- A licensing controversy with some cloud companies who used libre office's software?

- Some new tos thing?

- something else?

Re: LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation

#20

Post by downrightmike »

queenkjuul wrote: post #10
psim1 wrote: post #6

LibreOffice almost seemed irrelevant; with cheap to free (*included) tools in abundance, such as MS Office, Google Workspace, Apple Pages/Numbers/Keynote, the need for LibreOffice is not what it once was, back when StarOffice and OpenOffice were liberating people from the tyranny of Microsoft. Now it's worse than irrelevant, it's a liability.

MS office has never been cheap or included

Forced +$30 per seat per month to get people loaded into their proprietary AI
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