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.

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/05/lets-put-an-end-to-the-speculation/

@libreoffice

Let's put an end to the speculation - TDF Community Blog

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 would create a project 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

TDF Community Blog
@libreoffice "nobody could imagine that the companies that had supported OpenOffice.org until then would create a project to kill LibreOffice". What project is this reference to? Is this referring to the TDC? It's not clear in the article

@retrolasered @libreoffice

What it’s trying to say is:

“We at TDF think some old arrangements with companies around LibreOffice were legally improper for a nonprofit. We think Collabora benefited from that setup and resisted changing it. So we tightened governance and pushed them out. Now Collabora is angry and telling its side.”

That’s basically it.

Why it feels incoherent:

It never clearly separates commercial use of open source from nonprofit conflict-of-interest rules.
It keeps hinting at old internal grudges like TDC without stopping to explain them.
It is written like a legal-political rebuttal, not an explanation.

So your confusion is not a reading failure. The article is doing politics, not communication.

@Netraven
the weird thing is that your reading of it, which I think is right, if perfectly fine: there's nothing wrong with pushing out collabora under the circumstances.

@retrolasered @libreoffice

@iinavpov @retrolasered @libreoffice
supposedly, yes, however bare in mind that I performed an analytical interpretation of the text as given.

I didn't attempt to import anything more that was left unsaid in this message. So there could be more to the story than just what the dominant side is saying. I don't endorse any views the author stated, merely attempted to make sense of them as I was having a difficult time of the legal diction.

@Netraven
it's very poorly written.
@retrolasered @libreoffice
@iinavpov @retrolasered @libreoffice It is optimized for liability avoidance.
@Netraven
I don't think so. Ambiguity doesn't help for that, it makes it worse.
@retrolasered @libreoffice
@iinavpov @retrolasered @libreoffice ah well, I won't disagree with that. I'm not a lawyer, but I can't fathom why someone would write so abstrusely if not for legal purposes.
@retrolasered @libreoffice I think they are talking about Oracle, which bought Sun Microsystems in 2010. Sun was the main company maintaining OpenOffice. When Oracle bought Sun, the developers left and founded TDF, with the hope of getting an arrangement with Oracle to get the OpenOffice brand (that Oracle did not want to invest in), LibreOffice was to be a temporary name. But Oracle wanted more to kill LibreOffice and maintained a confusion by giving/selling (I don't know the details) of OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation and not to TDF. So even today there is still OpenOffice, which is more or less abandoned, and LibreOffice that continues to be developed.

@catnux I don't think so. This is an accusation against Collabora which has had to move its development outside TDF because of all the hostility, phrased to avoid a libel lawsuit.

@retrolasered @libreoffice

@contrarian @retrolasered @libreoffice Do you think so ? It apppeared to me that they were talking about the beginning of the LO journée, not specifically about the current situation ?
Did Collabora exist before TDF ? Since they are talking about the forks of OpenOffice ?
Indeed the article on TDF's blog is not very clear about that 😊

@catnux
Whoever wrote it is skilled at lawsuit-avoiding innuendo for sure!

@retrolasered @libreoffice