[garciansmith]

I wish this was more clearly written. Maybe I missed something, and I guess this is supposing the reader already has a lot of background, but there are several points that confused me.

"At the time, nobody could imagine that the companies that had supported OpenOffice.org until then would create a project to kill LibreOffice."

Did they mean... to kill OpenOffice? Or had supported LibreOffice would want to create a project to kill it later? Because that fact that companies who had previously supported OpenOffice then switched to LibreOffice doesn't strike me as odd, given the situation with Oracle back then. Also, what is the "project" that is trying to kill LibreOffice?

I am not clear on how the Board of Directors differs from The Document Foundation (are they just the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation then?).

What is "TDC"? It is not even clear what that stands for, nor what this "parallel organization" was supposed to do and how it differed from The Document Foundation. And if "the plan to transfer many of TDF’s tasks and assets" to "TDC" didn't happen back in 2020, why is it being brought up here? But then the next paragraph talks about the transfer so it did happen the year before? But then was terminated? Again though, I don't get why it matters now except maybe that some people were upset by that move over five years ago.

"This attempt resulted in permanent damage to relations between the project’s components, and especially between certain BoD members and the team."

Who is "the team"? The Document Foundation?

"After years of discussions marked by accusations and finger-pointing, during which no real progress was made in resolving the legal issues, the authorities requested an audit..."

Who are "the authorities" requesting the audit?

A "third audit" was mentioned, but it is unclear if the one audit mentioned above in the post was that third one or one of the previous ones (describing these and when they happened would have helped).

I still have no clue as to what Collabora's relationship was and is to The Document Foundation.

They apologize for the need for this post, but I don't really understand why. I get the idea that, given their non-profit nature, there were issues, but making those more clear seems laudable (even if I don't think the post especially helped in doing so).

[nosioptar]

Agreed that this was written for an audience who already knows WTF is going on.

TDC is The Document Collective:

https://lwn.net/Articles/801016/

[golfer]

Agree wholeheartedly. Very confusing. If they want people to care, they need to explain the situation in a way to make people care.

[italovignoli]

IBM has created Apache OpenOffice to kill LibreOffice. The Document Foundation has a Board of Directors. The TDC project damaged the relations between companies and community. The Document Foundation has a team. The authorities are the German authorities overseeing not for profit foundations. The third audit in 2025 was after the first audit in 2023 and the second audit in 2024. Collabora is a LibreOffice ecosystem company. All of the above has been explained at lengths in the project's blog, chats and mailing lists.

[garciansmith]

Thank for the clarification, but it all should really be in that post if your goal is to try to persuade people of your argument (and "put an end to the speculation" about what happened), since people who don't know the background will have no clue where to find that info. At the very least links to those earlier posts are needed. And I say this as someone who uses LibreOffice daily both for work and my personal uses, someone who really hopes LibreOffice will succeed. Hopefully all this works out.

[AugSun]

"explained at lengths" ... do we need to care to read all of that when someone "summarised" it for us in poorely written post? Also - correct me pls if I'm wrong – but I recall it was Oracle that gave OpenOffice to Apache foundation after its acquisition of Sun. If these people kill LibreOffice, someone at MS Office365 will cork a champagne ... What a cluster!

[italovignoli]

At the time, Oracle wanted to completely drop OpenOffice.org, but there was a contract with IBM which could use the source code to produce their proprietary Symphony office suite. Because of this contact, Oracle was not able to drop OOo and had to follow IBM's request to give the source code to ASF to create Apache OpenOffice. IBM openly declared the intention to kill LibreOffice during a call with The Document Foundation Steering Committee on April 30, 2011. I was in the call, and I regret I did not record the call.

[ksec]

Yes. I am bookmarking it for future reference. The post shows a perfect example why you need marketing and PR agency.

[italovignoli]

The situation is incredibly complex, and explaining it in full would need a book. The blog post is clear enough for the prople who have followed LibreOffice as a project, while other people have to do some research to understand all the details.

[ksec]

>and explaining it in full would need a book.

That is exactly why you need a PR agency.

[diogenes_atx]

Just a copy editor would suffice.