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 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