Turbulence at The Document Foundation [LWN.net]

Michael Meeks has posted an angry missive about changes at The Document Foundation. What has really happened is not entirely clear, but it seems to involve, at a minimum, the forced removal of all Collabora staff from the foundation. There has been a set of "thank you" notes to the people involved posted in the foundation's forums. The Document Foundation's decision to restart LibreOffice Online almost certainly plays into this as well.

Details are fuzzy at best; we will be working at providing a clearer picture, but that will take some time.

to post comments

I… is this a joke?

Posted Apr 1, 2026 20:37 UTC (Wed) by chexo4 (guest, #169500) [Link] (2 responses)

The date is… unfortunate. But also this doesn’t seem like something you’d joke about

I… is this a joke?

Posted Apr 2, 2026 22:10 UTC (Thu) by docontra (guest, #153758) [Link] (1 responses)

In a "history never repeats, but it often rhymes" tangent, this is the anniversary of OOXML becoming an ISO standard :(

I… is this a joke?

Posted Apr 2, 2026 22:32 UTC (Thu) by italovignoli (subscriber, #75849) [Link]

No, 2026 is the 20th anniversary of ODF becoming an ISO standard. OOXML was approved in 2008, after the Ballot Resolution Meeting, after a ridiculous process.

typo

Posted Apr 1, 2026 20:38 UTC (Wed) by calvin (subscriber, #168398) [Link] (2 responses)

Should be The Document Foundation in the title.

typo

Posted Apr 1, 2026 21:03 UTC (Wed) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

> Should be The Document Foundation in the title.

indeed, and in the text ... now it is, but a gentle reminder that we prefer typos in email to lwn@lwn.net (as noted just above the comment form).

thanks,

jake

typo

Posted Apr 1, 2026 21:58 UTC (Wed) by tschoerbi (subscriber, #88015) [Link]

For a moment I was worried there was trouble at The Document Foundation, then I was relieved when I realized it said The Documentation Foundation, whatever that is. I should not have opened the article after that ...

72 hours for votes, lots of reversals and internal turmoil

Posted Apr 1, 2026 23:34 UTC (Wed) by hailfinger (subscriber, #76962) [Link]

I am not involved with the TDF at all and this is just from reading their forum, so take this with a grain of salt...

72 hours seem like an awfully short time, especially when announcements read "The vote runs 72h from now" (quoting from https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/vote-revoke-vo... ). That said, apparently TDF had the 72-hour vote period for quite some time.
I couldn't find any document on why 72 hours were chosen and whether those 72 hours apply to all decisions.
In general, many decisions in the Document Foundation context have text stating that the decision is urgent or needs to be made immediately. It is unclear whether that is due to a lack of foresight/planning or due to a series of external events.

As urgent as those votes seem to be, it feels weird that some of those decisions are published more than a year after having been made "in private" (yes, an actual quote). A list of unpublished decisions does not seem to exist.

Quite a few votes over the last few years have a text similar to "revert earlier decision", often combined with phrases like "mistrust" and "in bad faith".

https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/decision-code-... is relevant if you want to see how people treat each other in the discussion.

The journey continues?

Posted Apr 2, 2026 0:35 UTC (Thu) by aryonoco (guest, #55563) [Link] (1 responses)

From StarOffice to OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice to... ? What's next?

I can legitimately empathise with both sides, which makes me just, sad. Microsoft really has nothing to fear.

The journey continues?

Posted Apr 2, 2026 13:41 UTC (Thu) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link]

> From StarOffice to OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice to... ? What's next?

Microsoft Multi-Tool Word to Microsoft Write to Microsoft Word to... ?

The (different) code bases changed, but AFAIR the basic document formats still load.

-----

When I first tried/tested StarOffice in 1997, the thought finally hit me:

We have reasonable, usable choices.

It was true in 1997, although BillG was fighting tooth-and-nail, with his lieutenants, to make Microsoft the "default" (and make MSFT owners rich).

Today, there is no lock-in with Microsoft or Apple. Or Intel/AMD. Or ARM.(*) Or even IBM. Options and choices are normal.

-----

(*) I own, and use exclusively, a Raspberry Pi 400: partly for the RISC practice, mostly for the small form factor. I can't afford a medium-weight desktop, and even if I did, I literally can't lift it. I had a stroke 5 years ago.

TDF has posted a response to Meeks

Posted Apr 2, 2026 5:27 UTC (Thu) by lordsutch (guest, #53) [Link] (6 responses)

For what it's worth, the official TDF community blog has posted a response to the Meeks missive.

My only observation is that on both sides it seems like the sort of hyperbolic and militant language that they typically deploy against a certain Redmond-based software company, and at times the nation-state it is headquartered in, seems to have spilled over into this dispute as well. That does not seem to bode well for an amicable resolution and it feels like we're headed for yet another momentum-sapping fork in the StarOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice/WhateverOffice ecosystem.

TDF has posted a response to Meeks

Posted Apr 2, 2026 13:37 UTC (Thu) by grandinj (guest, #5057) [Link] (5 responses)

(Collabora associated person here)

Yup, sadly fork has happened.

Summary (from my POV of course):

TDF Board is unhappy with some stuff some Collabora people did.

Declares dispute with said Collobora people.

Says that because of dispute with some Collobora people, no-one associated with Collobora can be a TDF member (i.e. no voting rights, no say in the community).

..... Inevitable result...... :-( :-( :-(

TDF has posted a response to Meeks

Posted Apr 2, 2026 18:36 UTC (Thu) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] (1 responses)

"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.

"Also, removal from membership does not mean removal from community. Anyone is welcome to contribute and participate."

This feels pretty distasteful. I haven't even formed an opinion on who's right here (and I'm open to the possibility that they're both wrong) but "we expect them" is a very presumptuous way to phrase this, and there's a big difference between being welcome and the door being technically unlocked.

"Expect" doesn't necessarily imply obligation

Posted Apr 3, 2026 2:33 UTC (Fri) by gingercreek (subscriber, #155755) [Link]

"we expect them" is a very presumptuous way to phrase this

I have no specific insight into the author's intent or language background, but I've noticed that some speakers say "we expect they will ..." to mean "we imagine they will ... of their own accord," rather than "we expect they will ... as is their obligation." I agree that the latter would be terribly presumptuous, so I choose to hope that's not what was meant!

TDF has posted a response to Meeks

Posted Apr 2, 2026 19:57 UTC (Thu) by zorro (subscriber, #45643) [Link]

Do you mean a fork of Libre Office, the desktop application? Can anyone contribute to the fork? Any contributor agreements to be signed?

TDF has posted a response to Meeks

Posted Apr 6, 2026 8:08 UTC (Mon) by algesten (subscriber, #153363) [Link] (1 responses)

> Says that because of dispute with some Collobora people, no-one associated with Collobora can be a TDF member (i.e. no voting rights, no say in the community).

They say this is due to German law requiring them to not have commercial members on a non-profit organization board. Are you saying that is not true?

TDF has posted a response to Meeks

Posted Apr 6, 2026 8:32 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

A quick Google led me to this advice (American advice on German law...)

https://cof.org/content/nonprofit-law-germany

> (2) The rule that a tax-exempt organization must not “in the first line promote its interests or the economic interests of its members”: The meaning of this rule is still not entirely clear. For example, an association with the purpose of promoting regional tourism may generally be accepted as a tax-exempt organization because its purpose may be regarded as a public benefit (according to Fiscal Code §52(22) – local history and geography). However, if the members of such an association are the owners of the hotels and tourist attractions, the organization promotes the economic interests of its members and may violate the provisions of Fiscal Code §55.

I guess that's the problem - the law is vague, but it's basically saying TDF can't promote Collabora's interests, and the TDF board is interpreting that very strictly. They've taken the easy way out and booted Collabora members off the board.

Did somebody not get legal advice, or even better formally ask the regulator? If TDF had got legal advice, and said to Collabora "hey we have a legal problem", surely some sort of solution would have been found. At worst, they'd have had to change domicile, but it comes over as a unilateral decision by TDF to fix a problem that may not even exist.

Cheers,
Wol

TDF ejects its core developers

Posted Apr 2, 2026 18:23 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

Michael Meeks also posted a more personal take:
https://meeksfamily.uk/~michael/blog/2026-04-02-tdf-eject...

Really sad

Posted Apr 2, 2026 20:12 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (4 responses)

This is a really sad state of affairs. We still have people telling newbies to use OpenOffice despite lots of work to convince them that LibreOffice is the better brand, and now LibreOffice goes and blows up its brand.

I hope that either TDF gets its act together or someone forks LibreOffice and runs it in a professional non-drama way.

Really sad

Posted Apr 4, 2026 20:39 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

It reminds me of XFree86 - where the people running the show disagreed with the person doing the work, and basically blew their own feet off ...

Unfortunately, it seems to be symptomatic of modern business - management by bean-counters, for bean-counters. It's the job of engineers to play and create great products, and it's the job of accountants to prevent them going wild - "if you want to do that, where are you going to find the money?". All too often now, though, the bean counters just say "there's no money", without asking where the money they've got actually came from ...

We had that at work recently - "you need to ask for extra money to do X" when firstly X should have been budgeted from the start as part of the job, and secondly we calculated the payback time to be measured in weeks, not years ... it just gets exhausting when you have to keep justifying your attempts to save money - "penny wise and pound foolish".

Unfortunately, like a LOT of software, LibreOffice and the like falls firmly into a category where Free/Open Source economics doesn't work well - there is a big disconnect between the developer and user communities, and here TDF seems to have ended up in the manager community ...

Cheers,
Wol

Really sad

Posted Apr 5, 2026 14:43 UTC (Sun) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link] (2 responses)

There is little hope for reconciliation: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/05/lets-...
According to TDF, former board members allegedly threatened the not-for profit status by building a business model around it. In their view, the only way to address that threat was ousting every member working for Collabora (no matter what that individual actually did or not). As long as they stick to that view, there seems to be little room to rebuild broken relations.

Very sad, and if you look at the Onlyoffice - Euro Office split/feud happening at the same time (https://www.heise.de/en/news/Euro-Office-OnlyOffice-accus...), the Cloud Office landscape seems to further fragment.

So instead of looking on how to break from Rome, it boils down to a renewal of The People's Front of Judea vs. The People's Front of Judea

Really sad

Posted Apr 8, 2026 13:14 UTC (Wed) by zhalas (subscriber, #114013) [Link]

The Collabora response has now been updated with a reply to the TDF post: https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/tdf-ejects-its-core-...

Really sad

Posted Apr 8, 2026 14:06 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Very sad, and if you look at the Onlyoffice - Euro Office split/feud happening at the same time (https://www.heise.de/en/news/Euro-Office-OnlyOffice-accus...), the Cloud Office landscape seems to further fragment.

Reading the article, I'm confused ...

Apparently the extra conditions are (a) a requirement to keep the original logo - surely this is a registered trademark??? If it isn't then that's well weird, and (b) a refusal of any and all permission to use any trademarks !?!?!?

Quite apart from the enforceability of such claims, the end result is a licence with which compliance is apparently impossible, hence it's clearly not a Free Software licence.

Cheers,
Wol