LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by dangus » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #80

dangus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OnlyOffice and its upcoming Euro Office derivative, which I already like better than LibreOffice.

Apparently Euro-Office has some drama around it too: https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/onlyoffice-flags-lic... OnlyOffice also seems to have a lack of clarity in regards to the ownership of the org ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47100599 ) but in general I think they're in the right here - you can't just ignore parts of a software license selectively because you feel like it. Oh and I liked their softwa…

I should also disclaim that I only need these office suites for occasional home use. If one of them disappears tomorrow it’s no big loss to me personally, not that I wouldn’t be sad about a loss of consumer choice.

If I need something for a business that I’m going to depend on I’m just gonna give Microsoft ten bucks a month, hate to say it. Office is really better than any of these options by a long shot. I also find the Google suite to be really good and free as in beer.

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

#122

Post by Moomoomoo309 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

codethief wrote: post #74

Can someone enlighten me what's been going on in the open-source office application space lately? Here we have LibreOffice and Collabora parting ways; meanwhile NextCloud used to integrate OnlyOffice until v18, then started integrating Collabora in v19 (and also in the recently announced stack for openDesk and "Office EU") but then the other day NextCloud announced they'd fork OnlyOffice to create EuroOffice, … which…

Collabora is the blessed one currently, but you can use either, it supports either one, and you can easily swap them. The EuroOffice image will likely default to OnlyOffice, but NC has not announced any plans of switching that to the default. It could change in the future, but I don't foresee them discontinuing support for either if they have any say in it.

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

#123

Post by delfinom » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

codethief wrote: post #74

Can someone enlighten me what's been going on in the open-source office application space lately? Here we have LibreOffice and Collabora parting ways; meanwhile NextCloud used to integrate OnlyOffice until v18, then started integrating Collabora in v19 (and also in the recently announced stack for openDesk and "Office EU") but then the other day NextCloud announced they'd fork OnlyOffice to create EuroOffice, … which…

The EU is unleashing billions of euros to drop US controlled software this year and beyond. This means TDF, Collabora and NextCloud are tripping over themselves to scoop up the funds as non-American Office Software alternatives to Microsoft.

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

#124

Post by mghackerlady » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #101

charcircuit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of open source software has drama so it isn't surprising to me.

To be fair, closed source office suites also have drama. Did you know the VP who was responsible for the Office ribbon is in the Epstein files?

Damn, who would've thought the inventor of an interface so braindead only a child could like it was a predator

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

#125

Post by asveikau » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

mghackerlady wrote: post #124

asveikau wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, closed source office suites also have drama. Did you know the VP who was responsible for the Office ribbon is in the Epstein files?

Damn, who would've thought the inventor of an interface so braindead only a child could like it was a predator

I didn't see direct evidence that he was a predator, but he and Epstein appear chummy and he sought career and legal advice from him. His girlfriend goes way back with him.

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

#126

Post by rurban » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

I have no idea what they are talking about. But is now clear that the TDF filed the lawsuit against Collabora, and then based on changed bylaws expelled the Collabora members. Suicidal tendencies.

Also, the future of LibreOffice is extremely bleak now. No further development, no maintainance, and losing the biggest contracts to a strong competitor, OnlyOffice.

Which is kinda unfortunate for us now. The TDF keeps the name, just as Sun did with OpenOffice. And Collabora has to find a new name. Which was already done 11 days ago: https://gerrit.collaboraoffice.com/plugins/gitiles/core/

But can they win back the EU contract for OnlyOffice?

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

#127

Post by rurban » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

fhdkweig wrote: post #33

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? ;-)

If LibreOffice ceases to exist, won't the old installers still work? Is it forkable to a new project? I seem to remember that it was Star Office then Open Office then LibreOffice.

They will keep it for a while, but it is now named Collabora Office. That's where the development is happening.

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

#128

Post by KronisLV » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #121

KronisLV wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently Euro-Office has some drama around it too: https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/onlyoffice-flags-lic... OnlyOffice also seems to have a lack of clarity in regards to the ownership of the org ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47100599 ) but in general I think they're in the right here - you can't just ignore parts of a software license selectively because you feel like it. Oh and I liked their softwa…

I should also disclaim that I only need these office suites for occasional home use. If one of them disappears tomorrow it’s no big loss to me personally, not that I wouldn’t be sad about a loss of consumer choice. If I need something for a business that I’m going to depend on I’m just gonna give Microsoft ten bucks a month, hate to say it. Office is really better than any of these options by a long shot. I also find…

> I’m just gonna give Microsoft ten bucks a month, hate to say it.

After having used MS Office for a while, I have to admit that LibreOffice just feels more pleasant to me, when I don't need exact MS compatibility - the UI is customizable, Calc doesn't mess up CSV files when I open them, Writer also has most of the features you need and exporting PDF files is nice and has none of that OneDrive bullshit with them almost trying to hide your local file system as some secondary target.

That said, in some hardware configurations LibreOffice has slow and laggy rendering (you have to mess around with rendering settings, hardware acceleration and Skia and so on), some features like bibliography have broken on me in odd ways, and Impress can be a bit slow for larger presentations. OnlyOffice feels like it has more polish in regards to how approachable the UI/UX might be to a MS user, but feature wise isn't that far off.

I personally wouldn't reach for MS Office unless I wanted it as a part of their overall groupware - mail, Teams, AD and a bunch of other integrated stuff (though aside from AD, most other things feel a bit jank, like the new Outlook or Teams in general when compared to Slack).

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

#129

Post by dangus » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

hackze wrote: post #79

dangus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they’re considering it a commercial endeavor, they’re just acknowledging that complex open source projects often require paid work to effectively maintain and develop them. The GNU project works because it’s a bunch of small packages that are each maintained by approximately one person each for free on their spare time. LibreOffice is a complex office suite that essentially competes with a multi-billion…

Do you consider GNU Emacs a small package?

If a text editor is not smaller than an office suite that handles Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, and Access databases, I made the right choice never using it.

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

#130

Post by italovignoli » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 10:42 PM UTC

garciansmith wrote: post #66

I wish this was more clearly written. Maybe I missed something, and I guess this is supposing the reader already has a lot of background, but there are several points that confused me. "At the time, nobody could imagine that the companies that had supported OpenOffice.org until then would create a project to kill LibreOffice." Did they mean... to kill OpenOffice? Or had supported LibreOffice would want to create a pr…

IBM has created Apache OpenOffice to kill LibreOffice. The Document Foundation has a Board of Directors. The TDC project damaged the relations between companies and community. The Document Foundation has a team. The authorities are the German authorities overseeing not for profit foundations. The third audit in 2025 was after the first audit in 2023 and the second audit in 2024. Collabora is a LibreOffice ecosystem company. All of the above has been explained at lengths in the project's blog, chats and mailing lists.