Hacker News

The Document Foundation ejects its core developers

82 points by hackernewsblues 10 hours ago | 44 comments

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.

eisa01 4 hours ago

Interestingly, the latest board minutes has a redacted section about a legal situation?

> [REDACTED: 43 lines of discussion about the current legal situation]

https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/board-of-director...

edit: And lots of back and forth regarding reviving LibreOffice Online here: https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/vote-revoke-votes...

Seems messy

grandinj 2 hours ago

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)

chris_wot 2 hours ago

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

wmf 5 hours ago

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.

jancsika 4 hours ago

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.

layer8 3 hours ago

ALSA?

bhj 55 minutes ago

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

(presumably)

layer8 51 minutes ago

Thanks. I thought this was superseded a long time ago, but apparently the newer sound architectures build on top of it.

karel-3d 2 hours ago

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.

MarkusQ 5 hours ago

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.

mejmeeks 3 hours ago

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.

Imustaskforhelp 3 hours ago

Hey Michael, that's alright but can you perhaps edit the article to have all the facts clear out there in the manner that Markus has said.

There are times to be satirical, don't get me wrong, but those are usually when the dust is settled and maybe a reminiscence on the past.

Have a nice day and I hope that something positive comes out of all of it. I always believe that there are only few projects which get to the eyes of the general public enough to get funded, LibreOffice is one of the very few. People trust Libreoffice with donations and money to fight against Microsoft and show a path of freedom.

For the document foundation to betray the people who programmed the code in the first place, is also, a betrayal of the people who have funded libreoffice for years, who would love to demand more answers and I hope that in the article, that you can talk _effectively_ to them. It's really sad to see all of this happen and I wish if something happens as I don't wish for people to lose hope in open source foundations with cases like these.

mijoharas 2 hours ago

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.

jollymonATX 4 hours ago

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.

fenykep 2 hours ago

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...

jonas21 4 hours ago

> people may feel sorry for you but they won't know why.

Or worse, they'll just think you're a jerk and not feel sorry for you.

Seattle3503 2 hours ago

Agreed, I found this article hard to follow and emotive in a way that made it feel extremely biased.

commandlinefan 5 hours ago

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.

ranger_danger 5 hours ago

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.

chuckadams 4 hours ago

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.

ranger_danger 4 hours ago

I don't think so, I think it's more about TDF considering their involvement at that point a conflict of interest.

anigbrowl 3 hours ago

I was interested in this but the sarcastic and advertorial tone stopped me from getting to the end. It sounds like it describes a real problem but as someone who has not been following the issue it's impossible to separate the facts from the fulmination. I can't tell if something has gone badly wrong with the LibreOffice project or the writer is insinuating as such to promote their own.

Bratmon 15 minutes ago

Huh, I didn't realize it was time for Open Office's descendants to collapse and divide again.

Open-office mitosis is one of the most beautiful and natural parts of the Open Source ecosystem.

siruwastaken 5 hours ago

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

amaccuish 4 hours ago

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

solarkraft 3 hours ago

Microsoft really has nothing to fear ...

not_your_vase 10 hours ago

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.

flyinghamster 2 hours ago

It seems that way, but it's been flooded with politics for all my adult life. Steve Jackson Games, the Clipper Chip, software patent shenanigans, the public domain stolen from 1976 to 2019, endless thinly-disguised censorship and control efforts - in meatspace, nothing is new.

zokier 3 hours ago

> 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?

chuckadams 57 minutes ago

I mean, there was that whole drama between Edison and Tesla...

trelane 2 hours ago

The Open Road to Freedom comic at Collabora is making more and more sense.

https://www.collaboraonline.com/torf-index/

everybodyknows 3 hours ago

The (top-level only) adversaries in this unfortunate drama:

https://www.documentfoundation.org/board/

https://www.collaboraonline.com/about-us/

hackernewsblues 10 hours ago

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

Looks like there is rebellion in the forums...

mejmeeks 3 hours ago

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.

chris_wot 2 hours ago

This is so sad Michael. You gave me an opportunity at Collabora many years ago (I was definitely too inexperienced!) and I’ll never forget this. Collabora is a force for good, and it is sad things have cone to this.

jamesbelchamber 4 hours ago

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.

oasisaimlessly 3 hours ago

On the contrary, I would take this as evidence that these projects are alive and well - they have people who care enough to try to affect their future trajectory.

fred_is_fred 3 hours ago

I don't have enough background to know if this is an April Fool's joke or not?

yuumei 3 hours ago

Euro office looking very suspicious here

karel-3d 2 hours ago

Euro Office and OnlyOffice drama is not directly related to this office drama.

A different drama

halJordan 9 hours ago

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.

klooney 4 hours ago

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

trelane 60 minutes ago

More than that. He was one of the primary external developers back when OpenOffce was at Sun. He was responsible for the go-oo fork due to Sun restrictions and slowness, and was one of (if not the) main reason LibreOffice became its own thing after Sun started sinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Meeks_(software_develo...