The Document Foundation Blog

> When I open my Word docs in LibreOffice, they still look significantly different than in Word after all these years. Huh, I've not had that issue with the documents I've worked with in the best part of a decade. What is it that's different for you? Page layout, text wrapping/length, image support, table formatting? Something else? What platform are you using, and if you're not on Windows do you have the equivalent-metric Liberation font families installed so that docs which rely on non-redistributable proprietary Microsoft fonts can be rendered properly? https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/09/08/libreoffice-tt-rep…

> But I need to use Windows for work because of multiple programs that do not run on any other target. > At home I still have to dual boot Windows to play games with my friends. In most cases you may execute such programs & games under Linux via WINE (+ Mono, PlayOnLinux, Winetricks; if needed).[0] > In school (this has changed a bit) I need to use Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, and Word. Use LibreOffice Impress, Calc, and Writer instead.[1] > There really isn't an alternative, even if you wanted to pay money for it. Scroll up and read again. [0] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/wiki/Wine [1] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/03/24/libreoffice-a-grea…

This is not flat out wrong, it's just the officially given reason. Not the entire story. The source is in German, but EN Wikipedia sums it up nicely: "In 2018, journalistic group Investigate Europe released a video documentary via German public television network ARD, wherein it is claimed that the majority of city workers were satisfied with the operating system, with council members insinuating that the reversal was a personally motivated decision by lord mayor Dieter Reiter. Reiter denied that he had initiated the reversal in gratitude for Microsoft moving its German headquarters from Unterschleißheim back to Munich." This is also worth a read: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/02/14/statement-by-the-d… In short, it _was_ MSFT lobby grease.

If MS built their HQ in Munich because of that then it's an absolutely amazing deal for Munich. Just the tax on salaries from those 1900 people working there will pay off the costs of switching to Windows in a very short time. And as a nice bonus I'm sure that 28% of users that "have severe issues related to software, which could be solved by migrating these users to Windows and MS Office."[0] will also be happy. [0]: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/02/14/statement-by-the-d…

The Document Foundation | Development Mentor | Anywhere | REMOTE | http://www.documentfoundation.org The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks an individual – or individuals part (or full) time – to be a Development Mentor to start work as soon as possible. The role requires the following: * Self-starting, remote working experience * Experience contributing to FLOSS communities * C++ or LibreOffice coding experience * Excellent communication skills The role is a for a minimum of 10 hours per week, and work time during the day is flexible, apart from some fixed times when availability is required (e.g. during meetings, which usually take place at 14:00 or 15:00 UTC once per week). For more information and to apply: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/03/14/development-mentor…

REMOTE | The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks a Development Mentoring Lead to start work as soon as possible. The role requires the following: - C++ coding experience - basic LibreOffice development know-how - excellent communication skills The role is scheduled for 20 hours a week. Full job post here with lots more dets: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/09/01/extension-of-tdf-freela… I am a volunteer in the LibreOffice QA team myself and I would be overjoyed to see this role filled!

I've been using LibreOffice, a fork which is maintained by The Document Foundation, for months. I took a look at their blog and there's been plenty of activity recently, including getting accepted to Google Summer of Code. http://blog.documentfoundation.org/ We already have a community-based project to lead the effort.

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.

LibreOffice developer | Preferably full-time | Remote Love LibreOffice development? Want to turn your passion into a paid job? We are The Document Foundation (TDF), the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice. We’re passionate about free software, the open source culture and about bringing new companies and people with fresh ideas into our community. To improve the user interface of LibreOffice, the office productivity suite for over 200 million users around the globe, we’re searching for a developer (m/f/d) to start work (from home) as soon as possible. This is what you’ll do: * Work on the LibreOffice codebase (mostly C++) * Focus on LibreOffice’s user interface, in the way it is rendered and laid out * Fix bugs, implement new features, and improve the quality of the UI code in LibreOffice while working together with the design team and other contributors * Document what you do, actively share knowledge in public with volunteers and contributors via blog posts, workshops and conference talks, so other developers and users have an easier time learning about your work Full listing: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/08/07/join-the-libreoffi…

I appreciate your thoughtful reply! One (of the many i'm sure) problems here you defined are: "...who would love to have a way to embed interactive graphs and tables into your papers to make them more understandable for the reader..." The solution however may not necessarily be a private 'reader', 'player', or 'binary'. Though the 'format' may be 'open' this single implementation isn't. You bring up Adobe which isn't a very good business case to follow as the very reasons I brought up are pressing the industry to move toward open implementations[1][2], away from 'free' binary distributions and plugins (for a various list of reasons from security[2], to access on other systems/apps). This really isn't 1999, and CDF isn't yet a popular nor a de-facto standard[1] much like PDF was. Besides you and I are much more capable these days with newer and _open_ technologies are we not (browser, linux, open documents, etc...)? Speaking of documents, other examples of 'perceived' open standard files are Microsoft's ill faded OSP[3] promise which spawned traction for OD/F[4] and other. These reasons are why HTML5/CSS3/JS as a basis to create an open two way street for 'documents' and/or formats are so powerful. It is not enough to only provide an 'open' format, but also an open implementation. This way both use of and implementation of such product be beneficial toward academic progress. Why wouldn't that alone be worth it? Thus a likely more popular solution I am proposing to your…

Related from the Document Foundation: An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/06/08/an-open-letter/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48451427)

TDF reacted with 'Let’s put an end to the speculation' blog post at https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/05/lets-put-an-end-to… discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652324 More on the funds issue in German article https://forum.linuxguides.de/core/index.php?article/54-libreoffice-am-… entered at https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=47718765

From their blog: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/01/comment-about-coll… > The Community Bylaws require that employees of companies involved in legal disputes with The Document Foundation be removed from TDF membership because, in the past, people made decisions in the interest of their employers rather than in the interest of The Document Foundation. and > The Document Foundation could have lost its charitable status, which would have had unforeseen consequences. I'm not sure why they would have lost charitable status, but that seems like a legitimate concern.

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-about-coll… 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.

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-about-coll…

> Just because some people misuse it as database or it doesn't scale well beyond a couple of 10k rows does not make it a bad product. It's not just that making it a bad product. Those are minor annoyances when compared with it trying to keep your data hostage in opaque formats[1] and exfiltrating your data to the cloud[2]. [1] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/07/18/artificially-compl… [2] https://superuser.com/questions/1903431/how-to-stop-excel-365-always-o…

In April the German state wanted 30,000 technocrats to use Libre Writer. [1]:https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/04/04/german-state-movin…

Original blog post by LibreOffice is here: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/07/18/artificially-compl… I mean… sure? When I saw this headline I was imagining that Microsoft added a brand-new ultracomplicated format. But no, the article is solely about OOXML. Why is the blog post re-litigating a fight that LibreOffice already fought almost 20 years ago?

OpenOffice is effectively abandonware at this point. LibreOffice would be what you'd want to use if you wanted to go that route. https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/10/12/open-letter-to-apa…

There is also a lot of indirect funding in the form of the governments purchasing habits: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/04/04/german-state-movin… In the EU the size of the state is often bigger than 50% of GDP. What the government buys is very important and means a lot of $$ for projects, consultants and the rest of the open source ecosystem.

The problem is that Apache Foundation is being stubborn[1] to admit the OpenOffice death, which distracts and prevents users from using so much better software (LibreOffice) that harms an open source image and ecosystem in general. [1] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/10/12/open-letter-to-apa…

FYI, The Document Foundation has [a recent blog post](https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/01/16/localwriter-a-libr… highlighting a generative AI extension intended for LibreOffice.

My 2¢: I agree formats (in)compatibility is by far the major showstopper in adopting LO. MS Office formats indeed rule, like it or not • Starting with v7.4, back in August 2022, LO is giving formats compatibility the attention they deserve (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2022/08/18/libreoffice-7-4-co… Maybe it's too little, too late, and it doesn't look aligned with the state of 'Microsoft Office compatibility' wiki page (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/General/012#Microsoft_Office_c… • I am no expert, but how formats with ISO are so hard to implement is beyond me I consider OO and its other remaining forks a waste of effort. Aligning their combined forces with LO, however, could make a huge difference in the formats compatibility effort. Then again, this is the plague (and beauty) of open source projects…

> The issue is how impossible it is to exit Microsoft, https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/04/04/german-state-movin…

Previous reporting (from over two years ago): https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/11/18/german-state-plann…

Are there so few bugs and issues in OpenOffice that, for months, the most pressing matter is to fix the incorrect use of "its" in comments? I mean this person is German (their Github bio). Even if they're not a programmer, why don't they instead take the time to translate some of the many german source files to english, like Libreoffice did back in 2013[1]? [1]: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2013/02/07/the-document-found…

See also the open letter from libre office to open office in 2020: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/10/12/open-letter-to-apa… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24760117 The libre office proponents have made numerous appeal to the Apache foundation but I don't think I've seen any statement or response? Basically they pretend it does not exist. Apache should recognize its project is inactive and archive it, for the benefit of its users.

Also in the news: (2021) German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice. Ref: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/11/18/german-state-plann…

Have a look at the plans of Schleswig-Holstein, a federal state of Germany. The want to switch 25.000 PCs to LibreOffice and Linux from Windows/MS Office. Details here: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/11/18/german-state-plann…

I wonder if they are using the "community" edition or the "enterprise" version that LibreOffice wants organizations to use https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/02/03/libreoffice-7-1-co…