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Q&A about Media Articles and Forum Comments

Over the past week, a number of articles have appeared in the media and comments have been posted on forums containing questions – some explicitly stated and others implied – directed at The Document Foundation.

We have done our best to gather all these questions and provide a response that clarifies The Document Foundation’s position regarding the claims made in a couple of online posts and the resulting inferences drawn by readers who are only partially informed of the facts.

With this Q&A document, we aim to provide clarity, although much of this information has already been provided in the past on this very blog, and all the data cited is available on The Document Foundation’s website (specifically, organisation, governance, ledger and annual report), on TDF dashboard (data relating to development and related activities) and on TDF Matomo site (data relating to downloads).

Q. What has happened to employees of ecosystem companies?

The Membership Committee at The Document Foundation has temporarily suspended the status of TDF member of employees of ecosystem companies, based on the rule set by the new Community Bylaws as a consequence of the two failed financial audits due to ecosystem-related conflict of interest issues around tenders and trademarks and other issues. The Community Bylaws now foresee that TDF membership is not possible during the period of time during which legal disputes of certain scope last between their employer and The Document Foundation.

The scope is defined by the Community Bylaws as “Members involved in legal claims for endangering the Foundation, e.g. by means of putting the charitable status at risk, or misusing TDF’s funds, or by damaging any of TDF’s assets, or by attempting to do any of these”. In other words, they do not cover any potential legal dispute, but only the most severe cases that endanger the core of the foundation, which have been identified and documented by several independent external financial auditors and lawyers.

Although TDF membership of the group of developers has been suspended, they are still members of the Engineering Steering Committee, are part of other groups in the community, participate in mailing lists and forums, are welcomed at TDF events, and if not covered by the company would receive the same travel refunding as every other member of the community.

Q. Why such a strong rule such as the suspension of TDF membership?

The rule has been introduced to prevent the reproduction of the problem related to the wrong behaviour of board members, including affiliates of ecosystem companies, while sitting on the foundation’s BoD, which has been acknowledged and confirmed in writing by independent auditors both in 2023 and 2024. This wrong behaviour dates back to 2020, although the authorities have requested the first audit only in 2023.

In fact, ecosystem companies representatives have repeatedly attempted to postpone or avoid the solution (in the way recommended by legal counsels) of the two legal issues related to the free use of the trademark to sell on online stores and the conflict of interest in the tendering process where company affiliates were at the same time ranking tenders, a point of technical contact, and overseeing TDF staff in charge of executing these tenders (regulated in the board’s rules of procedure), while the companies were potential winners of tenders, thus creating the problem that can lead to the complete loss of non profit status.

All attempts to introduce rules to prevent the recurrence of the problematic conducts were unsuccessful in the past, including milder remedies such as those in the Conflict of Interest Policy in 2021, suggested by TDF lawyers and required to handle conflicts properly, e.g. by enforcing abstention from discussion of own matters, which were not approved by past boards which included also representatives of the commercial ecosystem.

On the contrary, the past boards even attempted to introduce a policy to restrict the freedom of expression of the members of staff (TDF’s paid team), as this team proactively pointed out the issues with trademarks and tenders.

So, after every possible adjustment to the governance structure was attempted, and every alternative solution to the strong rule of the suspension of TDF membership was explored, the only option left was the suspension of TDF membership.

Q. Why a legal proceeding against Collabora?

The Document Foundation has not sued any company, and it neither sued board members personally.

There are legal consultations between TDF lawyers and Collabora lawyers about situations in the past where Collabora representatives elected to the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation and with a clear Conflict of Interest have taken decision in the interest of the company and not in the interest of the non profit foundation, creating the risk of loss of non profit status to the foundation itself.

Q. What will happen to LibreOffice now that all developers have left the project?

Based on Git data from the last 12 months, the 8 developers employed by The Document Foundation have contributed 4077 patches (37%), while the 47 employed by Collabora have contributed 4763 patches (43%), and the 221 volunteer developers (75%) have contributed 1871 patches (17%). So, it does not look that only Collabora employees write LibreOffice code, although they are indeed significant contributors.

According to the same Git data, in the top 20 Git contributors there are 8 TDF developers and 11 Collabora developers, with a rather balanced situation. Also, data are not considering the two new developers just hired by TDF, who have just started contributing and therefore have contributed just a few patches.

All the numbers can be checked by everyone by accessing the public TDF dashboard about development and all related activities and the public Matomo analytics. Based on numbers, the claim that all development work is done by Collabora is not confirmed.

TDF is also looking into hiring further developers currently to work on more areas of the code, and most importantly, share their knowledge with the community and the general public via blog posts, documentation, video recordings, hackfests, conference workshops and more.

Q. What about the principle of meritocracy that should inspire FLOSS projects?

We have published a blog post about our sense of meritocracy. If Collabora’s sense of meritocracy is counting patches instead of looking at the big picture and contributing to the future development of the project, then we are in completely different leagues. This could be accepted in the last century, not today, in front of the challenges we face (competition from Microsoft) and the opportunities we have (move to digital sovereignty).

Developers are instrumental for FLOSS, as much as they are instrumental for proprietary software, but this does not automatically mean that they have the right to rule FLOSS projects despite the provisions of the law. Of course, this applies to all FLOSS contributors. If the F in FLOSS refers to freedom, in a community where one group of contributors has an edge it would be difficult to talk about freedom.

Q. What about the re-opening of the LibreOffice Online repository at TDF?

The decision to move the LibreOffice Online repository to the “attic” was taken by a Board of Directors where representatives of developers had the majority of votes. It was not a decision suggested by community members, and it was not a decision representing the will of the majority of the community.
The act of taking LOOL source code from the attic was requested by members of the community, and the BoD acted accordingly. There was even an open letter to revive the repository: https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/open-letter-for-revive-lool-add-your-1-if-you-agree/9142

Of course, we can understand that the decision is not in line with every stakeholder’s point of view, but when you are in a community you have to respect what the members want and also work with them at the best possible outcome. In addition, the simple re-opening of an online repository cannot be a threat to Collabora, as both LibreOffice Online and Collabora Online and any other cloud office suite need other software and infrastructure to become a viable solution.

In fact, the discussion about the development of LibreOffice Online and a strategy for the future has yet to start at The Document Foundation, and everyone is invited to contribute.

Q. Why TDF is not supporting ecosystem companies selling enterprise optimized versions of LibreOffice?

TDF has always mentioned the enterprise optimized version of LibreOffice provided by ecosystem companies, especially when announcing new versions as all press release were featuring a paragraph about enterprise deployments with a link to the webpage where there was a direct mention of ecosystem companies. With reference to this specific topic, TDF is limited in advertising commercial products by the strict non-profit regulations.

Additionally, TDF had a prominent “Business user?” button on the download page (see e.g. the web archive links for https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/), which was pointing directly to the ecosystem, from a website that was used tens of thousand times per day.

On the other hand, The Document Foundation had to stick to the promised made to all contributors at the time of the incorporation, and summarized by the Next Decade Manifesto (https://www.documentfoundation.org/media/tdf-manifesto.pdf), which was approved by all project founders before creating TDF as a legal entity. One of its principles is “To eliminate the digital divide in society by giving everyone access to office productivity tools free of charge to enable them to participate as full citizens in the 21st century”.

Q. Why the Community Edition tagline has disappeared?

The Document Foundation has decided to try to help ecosystem companies by implementing a marketing plan with actions targeted to the support of enterprise optimized versions of the software, always keeping in mind that the non profit law provides for certain restrictions.

During the discussion phase, there were different options for a tagline to be added to the software name, to make the distinction between the community and the enterprise versions easier to spot, and “personal” was one of them as much as “community”. There were some mock ups of the different taglines, but none of them was implemented in the product.

The tagline Community Edition was voted by the majority of BoD members, who had a choice between Advance, Community and Rolling (and this confirms that Personal was not even one of the final choices). The votes can be checked here: https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/vote-libreoffice-7-1-tag-label/8898.

After a few years, it was entirely clear to everyone that the tagline Community Edition was not effective, because to educate enterprises you need a lot more than a tagline: first, you need a packaged product which looks like competitor’s products to the eyes of potential customers; second, you need sales people knocking regularly at their doors; third, you need a sound and aggressive marketing strategy.

Even FLOSS software who have added proprietary clauses to their OSI compliant licenses in order to have enterprises pay for their products have failed. The task is difficult to impossible, and even one of the most brilliant (and focused on this issue) FLOSS managers – Drupal’s and Acquia’s Dries Buytaert – has been trying for years to connect the dots in order to get results and has not been entirely successful (according to his blog posts).

Q. What about sales for profit on online store by a not for profit? Why this does not represent a risk for non profit status?

The Document Foundation is a charitable organization, but has an associated business unity (with specific accounting rules) to manage those activities which cannot be managed by the charitable organizations such as sales in stores, sales of merchandise, and the likes. TDF pays both VAT and corporate taxes on these sales, and this can be checked by accessing the ledgers which are published on a monthly basis. The authorities have scrutinized TDF ledgers for years and have not found issues which could represent a risk for the non profit status with regards to app store sales.

Q. What about Collabora Office for the Desktop? Is this fork a threat to LibreOffice?

There are internal documents dating back to 2022 about the risks of Collabora forking LibreOffice, because the threat was clear for everyone since that time. The decision to hire developers at The Document Foundation is a direct consequence of the plans to reduce the impact of that potential fork.

In any case, though, the new Collabora Office for the Desktop is supposed to go against OnlyOffice on the desktop, because this is a direct Collabora competitor both on the desktop and on the cloud (it is also a LibreOffice competitor, but while Collabora competes for market share – which is entirely appropriate for a business – TDF is not involved in that race).

In fact, the new Collabora Office for the Desktop is a different product and has the same limited number of functionalities of OnlyOffice, and as such is in a rather different category than LibreOffice, which is a full feature office suite with six instead of just three modules. The product, in addition, is based on the LibreOffice Technology platform, and as such is based on the same engine as LibreOffice.

So, the new Collabora Office for the Desktop, rather than being a competitor, is a testament of the flexibility and resiliency of the LibreOffice Technology platform, which can be used to develop different kinds of office suites for digital sovereignty, natively supporting the ODF document format to give back content ownership to end users and get rid of lock-in.

Of course, the community is perfectly aware of some LibreOffice issues, inherited from StarOffice through OpenOffice.org. Some portions of LibreOffice source code may date back to StarOffice, whose first application was released in the eighties.

TDF developers are working at solving these issues, and there will be announcements in the future about these source code refactorings. If you want to preserve all the characteristics of a full feature office suite, though, the time needed is significant, while if you give up many features the task is indeed easier.

LibreOffice State of the Project (April 2025 – March 2026)

As promised, we are releasing the updated State of the Project Slide Deck, based on data extracted from the LibreOffice dashboard and the Matomo repository.

During the 12 months 295 developers worked on the source code, adding 11.098 new commits (Git): 221 volunteer developers (75%) provided 1.871 commits (17%); 8 developers from The Document Foundation (3%) provided 4.077 commits (37%), and 66 developers from 7 ecosystem companies (22%) provided 5.150 commits (47%).

The slide deck is also a tribute to the 20 top Git committers, the 20 top Gerrit committers, the top 20 Bugzilla issue submitters, the top 20 people answering on Discourse, and the top 20 translator on Weblate. To all of them and to all the other contributors, thank you.

Looking at donations and downloads, the trend during the first three months of 2026 confirms the positive trend started in early 2025. Donation figures refer to the number of transactions and not to their amount, which is available via the ledgers published on The Document Foundation website.

You are invited to look at the slides, and download the file to compare it with the previous slide deck published in January and the next slide deck which will be released in early July and will cover the 12 months between July 1st, 2025, and June 30, 2026.

We have started to publish these slide decks in January 2026, to provide a transparent overview about the progress of the project through some of the most significant measures of development, downloads and donations data collected by the marketing team at TDF.

202603-stateoftheproject

 

Download the Slide Deck in English / Download the Slide Deck in German

Our sense of meritocracy

Meritocracy is one of the founding principles of the free and open-source software movement. It is also one of the most controversial terms, and the gap between the different meanings people attribute to it is, in some projects, a source of real and damaging conflict.

Let us analyse the meaning of the word, because its potential ambiguity can significantly influence the debate and the various viewpoints.

The theory of legitimacy based on the commit graph

One version of meritocracy argues that governance authority should follow contribution, and that contribution is best measured through code. According to this view, the people who have contributed most to the code have the right to decide the project’s future, because they know the source code and have a personal stake in the most literal sense of the term.

This is not an unreasonable position for a project in its early stages. Although it is also necessary to consider infrastructure, raise funds, and manage relations with the media and institutions, when the main challenge is technical in nature, when the community is small, and when the stakes are low, it makes sense that those doing most of the work should also make most of the decisions.

The problem arises when the principle is carried forward unchanged into a very different context. A FOSS project that has been running for fifteen or twenty years, is used by millions of people, operates in a complex regulatory and legal environment, has enterprise users and political implications, is no longer the same thing. Applying the same governance from the early days to the reality of a large project does not produce good results, but rather a technically sophisticated and strategically blind organisation.

What the commit chart does not measure

The theory of meritocracy based on the number of commits has a blind spot: it measures only one type of contribution and renders others almost invisible.

Let’s consider what is not in the chart:

  • The authors of the documentation who made the software accessible to users who would otherwise have given up on using it.
  • The localisation team that involved entire linguistic communities in the project.
  • The reviewers who transformed rough bug reports into reports ready for resolution.The community moderators who kept the project welcoming to newcomers at the cost of considerable personal effort.
  • The people who spent years building relationships with media, institutions and the political sphere, creating the conditions for the software’s widespread adoption.

These contributions do not produce commits, but they do produce users, adoption, sustainability and relevance. In a mature project, they often make the difference between software that exists and software that matters.

A governance model that excludes these contributors from the decision-making process, or seeks to marginalise them, is a partial meritocracy in that it recognises only one type of excellence whilst ignoring all others.

The problem of conflicts of interest

There is a second dimension to this argument that merits analysis.

When a project’s governance also includes people employed by companies with direct commercial interests in the project’s direction, the issue of meritocracy becomes more complex. The question is not whether those contributors are capable—for they certainly are—but whether the governance structures built around their contributions can reliably produce decisions that serve the project’s mission rather than the interests of their employers.

This is not an accusation, but a simple observation. Conflicts of interest are not linked to bad faith, but are inherent in the situation. A governance model that fails to take this into account is no longer meritocratic, and is also less aware of its own limitations.

Healthy governance in a mature FOSS project requires a diversity of perspectives: people who contribute code, but also people who represent the user community, the institutional mission, and the long-term sustainability of the project as a public good rather than a commercial asset. It is not a question of excluding developers, but of ensuring that no single interest – however legitimate – is the sole factor determining decisions.

Building for those who come after us

All major FOSS projects are intergenerational, because the people who created them are not the ones who will sustain them in ten or twenty years’ time; therefore, the decisions made today regarding architecture, governance, and which contributions are valued and which are not will shape what the next generation inherits. And it must be something upon which to build, not something to be circumvented.

This completely redefines the issue of meritocracy. From this perspective, in fact, the measure of a contribution is not determined solely by its current value, but also by its value for the future of the project.

Meritocracy in a large open-source project does not lay in the accumulation of commits as a claim to authority, but in creating the best conditions for the project to continue growing in the future. The question is not who has done the most, but who is building something that the next generation can actually use and develop further.

Our sense of meritocracy

The original principle underpinning FOSS meritocracy remains valid: decisions must be made by those who do the work, who understand the consequences, and who have earned their place through genuine contribution rather than organisational politics. This principle must be preserved.

Contributions, however, can take many forms, and merit has a temporal dimension that the commit graph fails to capture. The merit of building the source code is real and deserves recognition, but this also applies to the merit of building a community, maintaining documentation, ensuring accessibility, navigating legal complexities, and securing the institutional relationships that keep the project alive for the people who will inherit it.

A true meritocracy finds a way to recognise and value all of this. A project that confuses meritocracy with the dominance of a single type of contributor, however expert, fails to live up to its own values. And a project that bends to the interests of a subset of contributors, at the expense of future generations, is not a meritocracy but a form of appropriation masked by the language of fairness.

Meritocracy is a complex, multifaceted concept that is worth grappling with in order to build something that future generations will be happy to inherit.

Let’s put an end to the speculation

Ideally, we would have preferred to avoid this post. However, the articles and comments published in response to Collabora’s and Michael Meeks’ biased posts compel us to provide this background information on the events that led to the current situation.

Unfortunately, we have to start from the very beginning, but we’ll try to keep it brief. The launch of the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation was handled with great enthusiasm by the founding group. They were driven by a noble goal, but also by a bit of healthy recklessness. After all, it was impossible to imagine what would happen after September 28, 2010, the date of the announcement.

At the time, nobody could imagine that the companies that had supported OpenOffice.org until then like IBM would create Apache OpenOffice to kill LibreOffice. Also, if the project were to be successful, it would require resources greater than those available, and above all, a deep management experience.

Fortunately, the project grew quite rapidly. However, the founders’ different backgrounds and opinions were at the same time the reason for some bold decisions – many of which right – as well as a few mistakes, which are the root cause of some of the current problems:

  • granting free use of the LibreOffice brand only to companies in the ecosystem, to allow them to sell the software in Microsoft and Apple’s online stores;
  • awarding contracts for the development of LibreOffice – new features, fixing “legacy” bugs, etc. – to companies whose representatives were on The Document Foundation’s Board of Directors, and who were active throughout the procurement process.

Both of these decisions were found to be incorrect for reasons relating to the non-profit law, to which The Document Foundation must adhere. They violated the law itself. When this fact was brought to the attention of the Board of Directors by the foundation’s legal counsels, the companies that had benefited from these errors sought to maintain the status quo rather than finding a solution. At the time – from the end of 2021 to the middle of 2022 – this could have been achieved swiftly and with minimal difficulty.

This attitude increased tensions within the BoD, adding to pre-existing frictions that began in 2020 when the majority of the new board decided to terminate the plan to transfer many of TDF’s tasks and assets to a parallel organisation called The Document Collective (TDC). Several issues that the current board had to solve stemmed from elements of that project that had been partially executed.

The origins of TDC are controversial. One reason given for setting up the parallel organisation was the “alleged inefficiency” of the TDF team [1], which was expressed by some of the directors. Unfortunately, instead of addressing the supposed problem with a reorganization or some training, the BoD decided to react by creating a new problem: a parallel structure with a supposedly “highly efficient” team that would highlight the alleged inefficiency of the TDF team.

TDC was presented at the LibreOffice Conference in Almería in 2019 without prior notice, raising concerns within the team and the community. This was partly because the parallel organisation’s project envisaged leveraging TDF’s financial resources as startup funds. This attempt resulted in permanent damage to relations between the project’s components, and especially between certain BoD members and the team.

After years of discussions marked by accusations and finger-pointing, during which no real progress was made in resolving the legal issues, the German authorities overlooking non profit foundations requested an audit whose results confirmed that resolving the issues was absolutely necessary to avoid losing non-profit status, with unforeseen consequences.

Unfortunately, the presence of company representatives on the Board of Directors (BoD), who were elected by employees of those same companies that are also TDF members, caused further delays to finding a solution, which has not yet been reached.

Fortunately, the introduction of restrictive measures – such as the decision to forfeit TDF membership status of Collabora employees – and the freezing of tenders, alongside the introduction of a robust procurement policy for development, has resulted in a positive outcome for the third audit [2]. At least, the BoD has demonstrated a willingness to break the deadlock that has persisted since 2022.

The board also reviewed governance issues from the past and set clear rules to minimise the risk of them recurring in future. These rules are set out in the Code of Ethics and Fiduciary Duties, the updated Conflict of Interest Policy and the Community Bylaws.

Of course, if we could rewind the course of history, some of the choices made since 2010 would hopefully be different and no one would repeat the mistakes or the wrong behaviours of the past.

As we said at the beginning, we would gladly have done without this post, but it was necessary to set the record straight and avoid speculation.

TDF has been preparing for some time for Collabora’s announcement, by hiring developers and exploring new partnership opportunities to support a growing interest in LibreOffice on the desktop, still a viable option for many deployments, the cloud and mobile, and in ODF as the preferred document format for governments worldwide.

Thanks to the growing importance of free and open source software, as well as open standards for document formats, the concepts that we have been advocating for over twenty years and have finally reached political institutions and users, The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project are well positioned for the future.

[1] The Document Foundation’s daily activities are managed by a team of employees and contractors who handle administrative tasks, infrastructure, release management and developer’s mentoring, and coordinate community, quality assurance, UX, documentation, localization and marketing.

[2] The first audit in 2023 raised concerns about the mentioned issues. The second audit in 2024 confirmed the concerns. The third audit in 2025 did not raise concerns.

Document formats: a mystery to many

Euro-Office’s announcement – which sees IONOS, Nextcloud and other companies coming together to create a European alternative to office productivity software – has predictably sparked a wave of comments. Most of these focus on the issue of licensing: is the code open source? Who controls the repository? What are the conditions for forking, modifying or implementing it?

While these are all valid questions, they fail to address the most important issue. The fact that almost no one is asking the question that matters tells us something significant about how the debate on digital sovereignty has been framed and who benefits from that framing.

A licence tells you who owns the software, while the format tells you who owns the data

A licence can be renegotiated, modified or updated. The history of FLOSS is full of projects that have changed governance models, divided communities, or changed course under new management. Licence terms are important, but they operate at the level of the software artefact.

The native document format operates at a completely different level. It is the encoding level of every document produced, archived, and exchanged by institutions that adopt the software. It is the invisible structure of administrative memory within which public documents exist for years, or even generations. It is the infrastructure.

If Euro-Office is supplied with OOXML as the default native format – even if it is wrapped in an open licence, hosted on European servers or governed by a European legal entity – every document drafted by public administrations, schools and institutions will be written in a format designed around the behaviour of a single vendor’s application.

OOXML is governed by a specification that is so complex and internally inconsistent that it compromises interoperability. As if that were not enough, it is optimised for backward compatibility with Microsoft Office rather than for seamless exchange between systems.

The licensing issue asks: who controls the code? The format issue asks: who controls the data? These are not equivalent situations. The latter has long-term implications for public archives, administrative continuity, and the practical significance of vendor independence.

For thirty years, the FLOSS and digital rights communities have been working on licences based on the fundamental principle that a licence equals freedom. This work has produced enormous value, but it has also created an unintentional blind spot.

Microsoft has spent decades conducting one of the most effective user education campaigns in the history of the software industry. However, what it has taught is dependency. Consequently, a generation of users, administrators, developers and even FLOSS advocates has grown up treating OOXML documents as the natural unit of document exchange — just like water flowing from a tap. OOXML files are not perceived as a lock-in mechanism, but as normal documents.

This is an incredible strategic achievement. Microsoft has managed to transform a proprietary file format, which was designed to replicate the behaviour of its own applications rather than enable transparent content exchange, into an interoperability standard.

Compatibility with the OOXML format is not viewed as a courtesy to the monopoly holder; rather, it has become a feature that alternative software must provide to prove its legitimacy. Lock-in has been transformed into an advantage: users are not trapped in Microsoft’s format; they are simply using the format that everyone else uses.

The FOSS community, which should be particularly vigilant about such dynamics, has often uncritically accepted Microsoft’s approach. Indeed, when evaluating an alternative productivity suite, the first question is often about the ability to open OOXML files rather than about the native format and whether it enables interoperability. Unfortunately, the alternative is judged according to criteria subtly dictated by Microsoft.

Consequently, format policy is treated as a secondary technical issue rather than the major political issue it really is. Meanwhile, Microsoft has pursued a precise and successful strategy of securing OOXML certification as an ISO standard to define it as ‘open’, while ensuring that licensing issues take precedence over format issues.

The result is that “supporting ODF” has become a box to tick rather than a specific commitment. This explains why all office suites today claim to support ODF. The practical implications of this support – such as whether ODF is the native or default format, or the format in which documents are created and stored without user intervention – are rarely considered, let alone addressed.

The test that matters

Euro-Office presents itself as a genuine European alternative: an infrastructure project for digital sovereignty. This claim deserves to be put to the test in terms of whether institutions will manage to free themselves from Microsoft lock-in, or if they will simply reproduce it under a different banner.

The test is simple and admits only one answer: ODF will be the native format of Euro-Office; the format in which documents are created, stored, and exchanged by default without user configuration or technical intervention.

Not: Euro-Office supports ODF because, in a nominal sense, everything supports ODF. Users can save in ODF format because this is a compatibility feature, not a commitment to true digital sovereignty.

If the answer is yes, then Euro-Office represents a significant structural break with the dominant proprietary format. However, if the answer implies “compatibility”, “user choice”, “transition paths” or “broad format support”, then Euro-Office is, regardless of the licence, a server migration that leaves Microsoft’s lock-in on data unchanged.

Digital sovereignty is not achieved by changing who hosts the software, but by changing the format in which data is encoded. European institutions, public administrations, and civil society organisations considering Euro-Office deserve a direct and immediate answer to this question before making any further commitments.

ODF has to be native, default, and by design.

Since its foundation, the Document Foundation has supported ODF as an open standard for document exchange. ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) is the only document format standard designed from the outset to ensure interoperability, long-term preservation, and total vendor independence.

Euro-Office: sovereign in name only, or in reality too?

The announcement of the Euro-Office is welcome news. The coalition is credible, the governance is sound and the timing is perfect. Europe needs office software, and The Document Foundation is delighted to see such significant players allocating resources to make it happen.

However, we have a question. It is not meant to be hostile, but it is the only question that matters.

What is the native document format of Euro-Office?

The press release promises full compatibility with Microsoft formats. We are well aware of the logic behind migration: organisations moving away from Microsoft need to be certain that their documents will survive the transition. But “full compatibility with Microsoft formats” is certainly not a definition of sovereignty, but rather the definition of a different kind of dependency.

OOXML is a format designed, controlled and managed solely by Microsoft. Building a European office suite prioritising compatibility with OOXML means ensuring that the European document infrastructure remains subordinate to architectural decisions made in Redmond. The hosting moves to Europe, but the lock-in remains in Redmond.

The alternative exists, is mature and is a law in several European jurisdictions. ODF, the Open Document Format, is an ISO standard developed through an open and transparent process, which is not controlled or managed by a company. The German Deutschland-Stack has made it mandatory, and the EU Commission has approved it. It is not the LibreOffice format, but a European public good.

The Euro-Office press release does not mention ODF even once.

We are not asking Euro-Office to abandon support for Microsoft’s proprietary format. LibreOffice itself reads and writes OOXML: compatibility is a necessity for users, not an ideological concession. We are asking whether ODF will be the native format, the one in which documents are created, archived and exchanged between European public administrations.

This distinction is fundamental, and the time to define the native document format is now, before the architecture is finalised and the implementations take place. If necessary, we are here to help with the deployment of the ODF standard as native document format.

The coalition has the credibility and resources to build something truly innovative. We hope it will use them to build a project of sovereignty and not merely a tool for server migration, flying a European flag but with a lock-in firmly rooted in Redmond.

The Document Foundation is a non-profit foundation and the home of LibreOffice, the world’s leading open-source office suite. LibreOffice implements ODF as its native format and supports a wide range of document formats, including the import and export of OOXML.

Press Releases

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Open Document Format

Let’s put an end to the speculation

Ideally, we would have preferred to avoid this post. However, the articles and comments published in response to Collabora's and…