Great, then do it with extensions. LibreOffice is not blocking anyone from using AI in the software. But it's not being included in the core download package.
That's not true at all. Donations are the biggest source of income for The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice, and have been used to pay developers who've joined the team in recent years:
* Michael Weghorn (accessibility)
* Jonathan Clark (language and scripting support)
* Neil Roberts (scripting improvements)
* Dan Williams (macOS support and general UI improvements)
Just to point out that that this article is a mixture of completely wrong, and misleading:
* There is no such thing as "LibreOffice 26.4 Beta". The next release of LibreOffice will be 26.8, and hasn't gone into beta yet. So the author is seemingly inventing this
* LibreOffice is not "introducing early AI-powered writing capabilities". There are no plans to put AI in LibreOffice. Some people are working on third-party extensions that add AI features, but those are separate. Very misleading.
Reading TDF's "side" of the story gives me firm confidence that Collabora was in fact in the right, here. Collabora seems to have the facts on their side, which is why TDF's account here is so vague and passive-aggressive and filled with FUD.
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.
Not just this, it the way the vote was announced seems very, very bad. Italo may have found legal issues, but one of the things he said was that legal action was being taken by Collabora. That… doesn’t seem to be the case.
Italo and co removed some very dedicated contributors from the TDF. What an absolute disaster.
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
Here's also the Apache Software Foundation's Security Team minutes with "openoffice (Health amber): Three issues in OpenOffice over 365 days old and a number of other open issues not fully triaged":
It's extremely risky to keep using OpenOffice. Apache has marked its security status as "Amber" with "three issues in OpenOffice over 365 days old and a number of other open issues not fully triaged."
It's also worrying that The Apache Foundation continues to promote and distribute OpenOffice despite unfixed security issues and zero updates to the software. So many people in the FOSS world have called on them to finally retire it, put it in the Attic and keep up a good reputation for FOSS - but they won't do it. It still gets hundreds of thousands of downloads despite being unfixed.
BTW, anyone concerned can email apache at apache dot org and ask why they're still distributing OpenOffice despite vulnerabilities. A few people on Mastodon have done that but gotten no answers yet. The more pressure there is to put it in the Attic, the sooner this awful situation will end...
Yes, and now there are unfixed security issues in OpenOffice over a year old, so the ASF really, really should put it in the Attic ASAP. If more people in the FOSS world raise awareness about this, perhaps it will finally happen, so users become aware of maintained, fixed successor projects:
