https://community.documentfoundation.org/c/board-discuss/26

Looks like there is rebellion in the forums...

Ah - well, with many staff having been kicked out without a word of thanks or apology after, in some cases, decades of work, tens of thousands of commits, and huge amounts of love and effort poured into the project - it is perhaps fitting that a colleague from the Collabora team publicly thanks them for, and acknowledges at least a little of their contribution to LibreOffice. Do have a read.

Haha, imagine it Apache would merge LibreOffice back to OpenOffice, and developers also switched. Would be the circle of the decade.

On a different note, this industry used to have so much more fun - just solving puzzles to herd bits - before it was flooded by politics.

On a different note, this industry used to have so much more fun - just solving puzzles to herd bits - before it was flooded by politics.

when was that, in the 80s?

I'm sure there's a reason for the blog post, and the dude name checks himself so I'm sure he's important. But i have no idea what he's on about other than he's mad.

He's a longtime OpenOffice/LibreOffice and now, I guess, CollabraOffice contributor.

Is there any other article that actually details what is going on? I feel whiplash from reading this right after the Ruby Central fiasco.

You can read TDF's position: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/01/comment-...

As somebody else pointed out, I read the entire article and still can't figure out what the author is actually talking about. That said, this sounds an awful lot like the reddit moderator problem: when you rely on unpaid volunteers, they become activist crusaders.

I'm assuming this is related to the previous drama back in 2020:

https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/

Apparently TDF wanted to host LibreOffice Online for free, when it had previously been a source-only project. Collabora didn't like that as they did 95% of the development and wanted to be able to sell support for their own version, but they didn't want to be competing against TDF's version at the same time.

I can understand Collabora not being jazzed about it, but is there anything in the license that would prevent a third party who is neither Collabora nor TDF from doing the same? I mean, it's one Dockerfile away from anyone doing it, right? May as well be TDF who distributes an official binary.

OK here's my understanding:

- LibreOfficeOnLine (LOOL) was created within The Document Foundation (TDF) but largely developed by Collabora. It was source only and suggested users pay a company to host for them.

- Some within TDF wanted to offer LOOL as a binary offering.

- Collabora moved their contributions to Collabora Online, which they controlled.

- LOOL was archived.

- More recently, LOOL was revived

- Collabora is pissed

- Collabora gets booted from TDF

I suppose this is a fundamental issue with the model of a foundation "owning" a product but a separate for profit company doing all the work. There's always going to be some issue that the two sides disagree on (in this case, how the free version is distributed). The foundation then either has to give in*, and become irrelevant or stand up for their own position, in which case the company is basically forced to pull out their co-operation. It seems unlikely that TDF will be able to make any product progress, and I bet in a few years collabora gets what they want and returns to the fold. TDF will either be cowed forever or this situation will just repeat on the next conflict.

* Like with OpenAI, where the for-benefit part eventually capitulated and became an vestigial organ of a for-profit business.

I wish we would admit that you can't have it all. You can't have a product that is open source with neutral foundation governance and also have that same product be de facto proprietary. People have been pushing this bait-and-switch business model for too long.

Conversely, I feel like a company with a cracker jack support team to match their sales team could profitably sell support for ALSA if they wanted to.

ALSA?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architect...

(presumably)

It was not really proprietary though? I don't like Collabora Office at all as a product (sorry, and I have tried) and the branding situation is super messy (sorry but it's true) but all the code is online.

Which free software license was it under?

Collabora was unhappy about the LOOL revival, but not enough to leave.

It was only when TDF contrived reasons to expel Collabora people that Collabora decided to leave.

(Full Disclosure: I am one of the Collabora people expelled)

Oh shit, I’m so sorry Noel. That’s awful!

Please do read TDF's side of the story as well: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/01/comment-...

I read it, and was hoping I would be more sympathetic to their side, but it was essentially 'they violated the rules our newly added non-contributor board members set, and by those rules, we kicked them out'.

Essentially this 100% confirms the Collabora story, just elaborates a bit on how the administrative takeover was done.

So what were the contrived reasons? I navigated getting coolwsd built before, but never quite got my user management layer for Nextcloud perfected to the point of going live... I thought it was a good piece of kit, but was a little bit skeptical of the branding divergence at the time. Something about it kinda just felt like drama waiting to happen. Was that it do you think? Or something else. Will keep an eye on the project regardless.

TDF cites a lawsuit between TDF and Collabora, causing all Collabora employees being removed from the TDF board (not community). Which makes sense.

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/01/comment-...

Pro tip: If you're trying to raise awareness of an issue that's important to you, don't lard up your exposition with sarcasm, insider references and incomprehensible innuendo. If all you manage to communicate is that you're unhappy, people may feel sorry for you but they won't know why.

Say what you mean in plain language; explain the issues and why they matter, and let your readers come to their own conclusions.

This exactly sums up my read of this. I have no idea what is going on but it appears to impact a thing I use in my nextcloud so I should possibly care, but damned if I have any idea what is going on here.

I think you meant OnlyOffice(?) it seems like there is also some turbulence and you will soon be migrated to a fork(?)

https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/4/onlyoffice-ends-its-pa...

I'm sorry it's confusing, perhaps an attempt to add humor to a bleak and dramatic change in the LibreOffice project has made it less than clear. The bald facts are fairly simple: The Document Foundation, now ~controlled by its non-programmer staff just ejected its main core code contributors based on complicated and apparently contrived reasons. Lots of non-profits get bogged down in pointless in-fighting that eats away at their purpose sadly.

What are the complicated apparently contrived reasons?

It's not at all clear from the article.

All I really got from the article is "collabora are banned from contributing to open office, and aren't happy about it". What reason did they give? What's the actual reason you think it is (you mention things are contrived, so I assume there's another reason you think)? What's the libre office online stuff got to do with it?

All of this is unclear from the article.

This is yet another negative article with LiberOffice/TDF at the centre of it (this time with Collabora freely dragging themselves into the muck). This after attacks on OnlyOffice and OpenOffice for, from a relatively external perspective, "existing as competition".

I appreciate that for those "in the trenches" this may be a rallying cry or a shot across the bow, but for the rest of us it is indicating that we keep the whole thing - LibreOffice and Collabora - at arms length. Which is a shame because I've recommended both to people in the past, as well as happily using both at various points myself.

This is ironic timing given the OnlyOffice/Euro-Office drama https://www.heise.de/en/news/Euro-Office-OnlyOffice-accuses-...

Microsoft really has nothing to fear ...

Euro office looking very suspicious here

Everyone, please also read TDF's side of the story, before speculating: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/01/comment-...

TDF is https://www.documentfoundation.org

Fix the title. No one seems to recognize "TDF" (The Document Foundation) despite their daily dramatics, myself included.

Clearly it stands for the Tiscrete Dourier Fransform

Transform Daddy Fourier

"The Document Foundation" for anyone too lazy to look it up.

It has been a while since I've noticed a high-profile OSS schism; for anyone who isn't used to them, this is how communities behave. They're generally healthy as long as the stakes aren't too high. In a lighter moment, I might also call on TDF to expel any vim users too in the hope that they'll take the hint and switch to a more C-x aligned editor.

I tried changing it, but I guess when a post hits the fp this is not possible anymore (only by mods).

In France, TDF is a company that operates big TV and FM radio antennas, including on the Eiffel Tower and on many mountain-top.

The project welcomes contributions from true believers in open source. As the majority of people at Collabora are such believers, we expect them to continue contributing when the time comes.

Kids, that's a perfect example of institutionalized passive-aggressive behavior.

So essentially 'we f**ked you over but we still expect you to do the work'?

It's strange. I started reading about this expecting that I'd support TDF's position against a company with a somewhat dubious open-non-open split, with a reasonable claim about conflict of interest, but the behavior of the TDF side seems sufficiently toxic that it's difficult to support them.

In similar behavior, one of the votes against the community bylaws that seem to have resulted resulted in the expulsions was "If the Board majority group insists on proceeding with this misguided and premature motion, I vote NO". Those in favor decided that the vote was conditional and not valid, because "this motion is neither misguided nor premature". They then proceeded to tell others complaining about the decision that they were violating community standards in doing so.

As far as I can tell, the invalidated vote made no difference to the outcome; it is difficult for me see a legitimate motivation for the interpretation of the vote.

It's the "tyranny of structure"

So, basically, TDF doesn’t want Collabora (a company) people on their board. The technical vs non-technical framing seems contrived at best. The excuse by TDF seems… suspicious.

Classic pattern. The board gets populated by people whose main skill is board politics, and they use governance tools to push out the people who actually build the thing. Seen this happen in multiple open source foundations.

This is anecdotal at best, but it does play into the tired old technical vs non-technical simplification. The fact that the two entities have now become direct competitors is a better explanation grounded in facts

Your explanation is also an oversimplification that leaves out a lot of key details.

TDF is ran by a board. The board is supposed to contain 10 people, it currently has 7. This board is expected to be elected by members on a regular schedule. The elections are late, because the rump board has twice delayed the elections. Instead of holding elections to fill out the board, the rump board chose to change the bylaws, through a legally questionable process (properly, they would have to hold a vote of trustees, but chose not to), to allow them to exclude people from voting in the elections. Then they use the new bylaws to exclude many of their political opponents, on very flimsy grounds⁰.

You don't need to even consider which side of this conflict is technical or non-technical to see that there is something rotten here.

0: And yes, the grounds are very flimsy indeed. Excluding people in case of active litigation sounds sensible, until you consider that the litigation was started by the TDF board, and is frivolous. Collabra is using the trademarks under valid license.

Wow that list of commits is brutal. Libre Office is dead. Just another corporate take over of an open source project.

Can you really take over a project anybody can fork? Freedom is just a name change away.

I'm pretty sure most "normies" who are at all aware of what MS Office is, and what, if any, of its alternatives are, still use OpenOffice and think that it is the no-cost office suite. LibreOffice already has problems with brand recognition, last thing we need is another fork.

That will just create another dead fork that no one works on.

Based on that table it looks like “LibreOffice the name” ejected “LibreOffice the software development project” basically. Although, it isn’t really a corporate takeover, right? There was one company that was doing most of the work, now they’ve been ejected.

So why not just fork it under a new name.

So why not just fork it under a new name.

Again? Sigh. Isn't that how we got LibreOffice in the first place? (From OpenOffice.)

Freeoffice as the next name? Seems like they are exhausting them quickly.

I don’t think LibreOffice ever really took over the mindspace of OpenOffice anyway. Maybe they can a more distinct split will give it a more independent identity.

Since Collabora already has an online version, maybe they should fork completely and call this offline version something that implies independence. So, I suggest: SolOffice. Haha.

I checked the numbers. OpenOffice reports about 230,000 downloads a week. LibreOffice, in contrast, reports about 1,000,000 downloads a week. Those are both direct downloads from their respective websites, thus not counting Linux distributions, in which the default office suite is LibreOffice. AFAIK, no distribution comes with OpenOffice as its default; it's always LibreOffice.

I also checked Google Trends for the last 3 months, comparing LibreOffice vs OpenOffice. The first is searched on average 4.7 times more than the latter, which tracks with weekly download numbers.

From those numbers, I'd say it's pretty clear the name "LibreOffice" won quite decisively over "OpenOffice". OpenOffice is still used a lot, but nowhere close to LibreOffice, especially when we add Linux distributions counts.

Why does an open source project, apparently developed by a handful of core developers, have a "board", a "membership committee", "elections" etc? And why do these include people who do not contribute directly to development at all?

Let me guess, these same people also pushed to introduce a "code of conduct" to the project?

Because to accomplish anything at scale you need organization. And organizing humans in anything other than forced labor involves respecting them, thus things like codes of conduct. These stories could be about anything and you gamergate veterans will show up grinding one of those axes. Care to throw in wild speculation about whether they use “master” as their main branch name, “slave” as backup database terminology or “allowlist”. You know, any of those things that are keeping America from being great and winning the war.

OpenBSD, a rather more complex project, seems to be doing fine without a code of conduct — in the sense bakugo employed "code of conduct," not in the generalized sensed you conflated it with in your non sequitur.

I mean, I like openbsd the product, but the community culture is notoriously terrible and unwelcoming to newbies.

I find it just the opposite. I can think of few communities nearly as patient or welcoming to anyone who's earnest and willing to put in the work to learn; true, there's no coddling or hand-holding, and, indeed, it tends to be very direct in calling out foolishness or laziness, and can reach epic proportions when it comes to dishonesty or entitlement, but nothing which can't be processed by emotional maturity, nor the gratuitous pedanticism-fueled browbeating often seen in some I-use-foo-btw open-source communities despite their shiny CoCs.

I find it just the opposite. I can think of few communities nearly as patient or welcoming to anyone who's earnest and willing to put in the work to learn; true, there's no coddling or hand-holding, and, indeed, it tends to be very direct in calling out foolishness or laziness,

That’s nearly the exact opposite of welcoming newbies.

To be perfectly honest, that’s fine: OpenBSD demands a steep learning curve and that you know what you’re doing.

What is? No coddling? Little tolerance toward laziness? Zero toward entitlement? That's closer to the opposite of being patronizing, I would say.

They point to documentation in response to the kind of request I've seen closed with RTFMs elsewhere. They'll expect one to read it, and try one's hand at whatever one is trying to accomplish — and they'll feel slighted by a refusal, given how much work they put into it.

And yet, they go to great, unexpected (given the fame) lengths to help someone actually making the effort; they don't try to put anyone down in order to feel bigger than they are, but they don't sugar coat things to appear more likable either.

In short, no, knowing what one is doing isn't a prerequisite; it's more about not foisting onto others the responsibility for the effort required to move from where one is to where one wants to be — whether in knowledge, maturity or tools.

What do you consider laziness?

Why do you believe pointing to the manual is newbie friendly?

In the Linux world, it took ages before it was newbie friendly (thinking Ubuntu and Mint).

OpenBSD serves an important niche, but to brand it as newbie-friendly does OpenBSD a disservice.

Or perhaps you mean newbie tolerant?

OpenBSD has a "netiquette" doc for its mailing lists: https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html

Not sure if you want to count it as a "code of conduct", but it certainly defines rules on how to communicate and contribute to the project.

From the article: "These days some at TDF seem to emphasize equality instead."

I'm not sure exactly what is meant by that. My guess, having some experience with board-sitter parasites, is they're just appealing to empty principles to create the illusion of being important to the organization, because they're unable or unwilling to make more tangible and substantial contributions.

When somebody can't justify their role with the quality of their work, they look for other justifications instead. Ideological justifications work best because they aren't provable and anybody who questions the value of the supposed ideological contributions can simply be dismissed as being ideologically opposed (see: the sibling comment accusing you of ideological alignment with gamergate, even though libreoffice has nothing to do with gaming.)

For instance, suppose I am a useless parasite who decides to embed myself into the local school board; I have nothing of real value to contribute to such an organization, but maybe I want the role for the clout. Instead of doing something real, I could instead say that my role on the board is to advance the cause of equality. Anybody who says I'm useless can be construed as opposing equality. Anybody who tried to measure the actual equality in the org before and after my arrival can be dismissed because measuring equality is hard to do objectively.

(I learned most of this from a few relatives of mine, who are such board-seeking parasites. By the way, parasite board sitters can use opposition to "woke" in the way they use championing the cause of equality; both cynical empty words used to distract people from the lack of real, substantial and demonstrable contributions. Anybody who complains can be accused of being woke. It works exactly the same regardless of what flavor of disguise the parasite chooses.)

These parasitic patterns are also visible in lower management levels, not only boards (not disputing your point, just adding to it).

What are the plausible motivations for the TDF board members here? Do they pay themselves with org funds, or is it just a fight for turf and clout? I think identifying factors like this might be helpful, because if these factors could be eliminated or reduced it might save future orgs from infestations of the sort of people who seek out boards to sit on, as they'd find a better opportunity for parasitism in some other org.

They’re relaunching Libre Office online apparently, they don’t want competitors on their board I’m guessing

Possibly they don't want corporations on the board that are actively sandbagging an initiative that competes with that corporation's products. But much like the RubyGems fiasco, all the decisions seem very opaque, so I can't say whether that's actually the case.

seems like a lot of drama in the open source document space, this seems unrelated to the OnlyOffice fork [1]. Interesting future ahead!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601168

Please help me understand where the missing comma is supposed to be in:

their Membership Committee has decided to eject from membership all Collabora staff and partners over thirty people who ...

Is it:

1) "eject from membership all Collabora staff and partners, over thirty people ..."

2) "eject from membership all Collabora staff and partners over thirty, people who ..."

:-?

Edit: that's from the article this post leads to: <https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/tdf-ejects-its-core-dev...>

(Downvoted for asking for legitimate clarification? Seriously? Age discrimination _is_ a real thing, so there's no way of knowing, for lack of a comma, which interpretation was intended.)

I read that as they’re ejecting all but 30 people.

I read that as they’re ejecting all but 30 people.

i had to re-read the original sentence several times to figure out how you came to that conclusion but can see it now: "all people over/above/beyond [a limit of] 30..."

How about a different take: This isn't really about two open source organizations fighting. It's a psyop from the powers that want to stop the digital sovereignty initiatives going on around the world by amplifying some friction that already existed. People won't want to use products with so much drama and uncertainty.

TDF needs to eject the members who pulled the strings hardest on this - they are plants.

Damn I didn't know I had that much of a tinfoil hat.

People won't want to use products with so much drama and uncertainty.

Really? You think the average user cares about this drama?

I'm confident the person who most wants to sabotage LibreOffice's success is Italo Vignoli. He's involved in this issue as well, but the other core problem is his marketing strategy: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/author/italovignoli...

Most of his blogs are about how awful OOXML (Microsoft Office's open standard) formats are, and that everyone needs to switch to ODF (his preferred open standard).

What people don't want to use is products which don't work with everyone else's. LibreOffice works with Microsoft Office files really well, but for some reason Italo doesn't want you to know that. He wants the entire world to switch formats to LibreOffice's formats, but really that's just telling potential business users LibreOffice can't meet their needs... interacting with the existing monopoly of Microsoft Office users.

This is a self-sabotaging marketing approach. LibreOffice needs to be promoting itself as an excellent drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office which will easily interoperate with every other organization's office applications, regardless of format.

He's using this approach because the EU requires documents to be in an open format, and by him advocating that OOXML is only open by name, he can advance a legal argument that OpenDocument is the only acceptable format.

Office supports OpenDocument.l, it just doesn't use it by default.

I understand his approach but it's a dumb approach. OOXML is plenty open, proven by the fact LibreOffice works with it fine. The push to force Europe switch to ODF only serves to suggest LibreOffice isn't capable of replacing Microsoft Office (in a world where most other organizations use Office). This is a conversation I have at work, where people laugh when LibreOffice is mentioned and suggest it's incompatible and we can't consider it.

A far better marketing strategy would be to loudly announce, continually, that LibreOffice is the best software for handling Office files and ODF alike! And as people switch to LibreOffice and it defaults to ODF, that naturally grows.

Meanwhile, LibreOffice's current marketing strategy may succeed in getting governments to offer ODF files and simultaneously sabotage anyone from ever switching to LibreOffice because LibreOffice's own marketing claims it won't work well with Word and Excel files.

OOXML is a terrible format, significantly overcomplicated and implemented by MS Office in such a way as to make alternative implementations fully compatible with it impossible. It's "open" in the name only, burying it would be the only logical step if wide interoperability and using truly open formats is your real goal.

I do not know enough about this particular drama to have any opinion on the merits of the sides involved. However, I cannot help but notice the parallels with the infancy of TDF and the separation of LibreOffice from OpenOffice.org. In 2010, Oracle demanded the resignation of every TDF member from the OOo Community Council that was nominally its governance board; this constituted the removal of every community member (ie, non Oracle employee) from the council [1]; I don't know the full details of what happened after the meeting [2], but it seems like the TDF members refused to resign and that they were removed. The justification was quite similar to the justification here [3]: that the TDF members had a conflict of interest by virtue of being TDF members, and that they could continue to be involved if they left TDF.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/10/oracle-want... [2]: https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council_Log_20101... [3]: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/01/comment-...

There's more context in another HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47602859

As an outsider it's pretty opaque to me. I think the Document Foundation (handling LibreOffice) wanted to (re)release an online office suite that seems to compete with Collabora, which sells one. But the biggest contributors to LibreOffice are Collabora employees. I thought maybe they feared Collabora taking over the org, but it looks like there are formal legal disputes between the two, I think (see the post from the LibreOffice side https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/01/comment-...).

And of course when legal issues are involved everyone is being very vague. I just hope it doesn't hurt LibreOffice's development too badly.

I have a feeling that the Open Document Foundation is going to end up being the loser here. Collabora is the entity that can fund development with a commercial offering. It sounds like they employ the core contributors to the project as well.

Regardless of who "wins," I'm just here to say that I like OnlyOffice a lot better and switched away from LibreOffice. I like that it just looks more like a modern program and overall feels less clunky.

OnlyOffice is not really open source. They say they are but they also add impossible conditions to their license. (you are forced to use their logo, but you are also not allowed to use their logo.)

Make sure to backup regularly. I don't know how good OnlyOffice is these days, but it definitely has (had?) a terrible history of quality control. We migrated off it a couple of years ago after losing several days of work due to severe (and, as it turned out, widely known) bugs in how it handled changes/document version tracking.