An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement
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@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice
OOXML specifications include things as "spaceline as in Word 97". Since spaceline in Word 97 is closed, OOXML is closed.
Microsoft can spend millions paying lot of people to convince someone that OOXML is open, but, precisely, specifications are there to anyone who want to check.
@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice It doesn't have to be a good open standard to be an open standard. But that isn't really the point: Most organizations today use Microsoft Office. We can all agree that's bad, right?
The only office software that isn't *dead on arrival* is software with great compatibility with Microsoft Office. So why is LibreOffice advertising incompatibility when it works great?
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@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice The funny thing is LibreOffice has great Microsoft Office support, there's no reason today a business can't drop in LibreOffice. The marketing at LibreOffice however has simply chosen a completely losing strategy, to ignore their own strengths and simultaneously advertise themselves as incapable of replacing Microsoft Office in organizational use.
@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice
You mention LibreOffice's marketing, but you're referring to an understandable decision: sticking with their own format. Are you confusing proper support for a format with "saving by default"?None of this explains why OnlyOffice doesn't have better usage figures. You're making assumptions without any basis.
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@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice It doesn't have to be a good open standard to be an open standard. But that isn't really the point: Most organizations today use Microsoft Office. We can all agree that's bad, right?
The only office software that isn't *dead on arrival* is software with great compatibility with Microsoft Office. So why is LibreOffice advertising incompatibility when it works great?
@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice
No, it is true. ODF is not a good standard anyway.
But include things you can't replicate. Then it is closed. Paying people can't change the nature of the code.
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An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/06/08/an-open-letter/
@libreoffice Hear Hear!!
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An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/06/08/an-open-letter/
@libreoffice You should check on the contrast again.
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An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/06/08/an-open-letter/
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@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice
You mention LibreOffice's marketing, but you're referring to an understandable decision: sticking with their own format. Are you confusing proper support for a format with "saving by default"?None of this explains why OnlyOffice doesn't have better usage figures. You're making assumptions without any basis.
@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice I think LibreOffice defaulting to saving in ODF is not only fine, but a good thing. It means if we can transition organizations to LibreOffice, they will likely start transiting organically to ODF (which Microsoft Office also supports quite well!).
The problem is the author of this blog who constantly acts like OOXML is incompatible and bad and that the only way to get freedom is to switch to ODF. And that is a dumb and backwards marketing approach.
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@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice I think LibreOffice defaulting to saving in ODF is not only fine, but a good thing. It means if we can transition organizations to LibreOffice, they will likely start transiting organically to ODF (which Microsoft Office also supports quite well!).
The problem is the author of this blog who constantly acts like OOXML is incompatible and bad and that the only way to get freedom is to switch to ODF. And that is a dumb and backwards marketing approach.
@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice We should not be trying to tell people they need to switch to open things for open things' sake. That has never worked, it hasn't worked for the past thirty years, and it won't start working in the next thirty.
If you want to switch organizations over to LibreOffice, it needs to do what they need it to do: work with Microsoft Office, which is what everyone else they talk to uses (which it does!) and be cheaper (which it is!)
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@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice We should not be trying to tell people they need to switch to open things for open things' sake. That has never worked, it hasn't worked for the past thirty years, and it won't start working in the next thirty.
If you want to switch organizations over to LibreOffice, it needs to do what they need it to do: work with Microsoft Office, which is what everyone else they talk to uses (which it does!) and be cheaper (which it is!)
@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice And in this case, he has spun so far off the rails, he's now trashing a different open source project for being better at marketing to Office customers and meeting their needs than he is. Rather than just... fixing his marketing strategy.
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@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice
OOXML specifications include things as "spaceline as in Word 97". Since spaceline in Word 97 is closed, OOXML is closed.
Microsoft can spend millions paying lot of people to convince someone that OOXML is open, but, precisely, specifications are there to anyone who want to check.
@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice As long as what you need to include in the file to match that behavior is in the standard and it's permissible to use that in your files, there's nothing that prevents OOXML from being a standard if it says "match this behavior".
If I said every file had to start with WJGKWJF@ for no apparent reason, it'd be no different than some unchangeable string of binary. And it could still be part of a standard that you need to include it even if you can't change it.
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@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice I think LibreOffice defaulting to saving in ODF is not only fine, but a good thing. It means if we can transition organizations to LibreOffice, they will likely start transiting organically to ODF (which Microsoft Office also supports quite well!).
The problem is the author of this blog who constantly acts like OOXML is incompatible and bad and that the only way to get freedom is to switch to ODF. And that is a dumb and backwards marketing approach.
@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice but in fact OXML is bad and incompatible and a lot of things.
Marketing from LibreOffice is bad, and some policies or decisions are bad too. I'm agreed in this.
But OOXML is only a standard because Microsoft paid people time ago to approve the ISO standard. Nothing more.
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@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice And in this case, he has spun so far off the rails, he's now trashing a different open source project for being better at marketing to Office customers and meeting their needs than he is. Rather than just... fixing his marketing strategy.
@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice
What LibreOffice should be doing is subtly different. Instead of using "save as OOXML by default," it should ensure that the "Open" dialog box displays any ODF or OOXML document for selection without any hassle. THAT would be a real improvement. And apparently, it's doing that now.
And perhaps offering to save the native format just once, instead of every time
And more importantly: manage them as best as possible. And improve PDF support. -
@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice As long as what you need to include in the file to match that behavior is in the standard and it's permissible to use that in your files, there's nothing that prevents OOXML from being a standard if it says "match this behavior".
If I said every file had to start with WJGKWJF@ for no apparent reason, it'd be no different than some unchangeable string of binary. And it could still be part of a standard that you need to include it even if you can't change it.
@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice But it is no there.
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@ocdtrekkie @zandbelt @libreoffice
What LibreOffice should be doing is subtly different. Instead of using "save as OOXML by default," it should ensure that the "Open" dialog box displays any ODF or OOXML document for selection without any hassle. THAT would be a real improvement. And apparently, it's doing that now.
And perhaps offering to save the native format just once, instead of every time
And more importantly: manage them as best as possible. And improve PDF support.@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice Yes. IMHO the best direction for LibreOffice is to make the formats *not matter* such that nobody cares that they stopped saving docx and started saving odt at some point. The less it matters the more people can comfortably switch to open software.
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@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice Yes. IMHO the best direction for LibreOffice is to make the formats *not matter* such that nobody cares that they stopped saving docx and started saving odt at some point. The less it matters the more people can comfortably switch to open software.
@ocdtrekkie
The best aprox is "create new as ODF, save in the last time saved". -
An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/06/08/an-open-letter/
Is that a picture attached to your post?
Is that picture a PNG with transparent background?Well, whatever it is, it's unreadable/ unrecognisable what's supposed to be showing.
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@karlggestd @zandbelt @libreoffice Yes. IMHO the best direction for LibreOffice is to make the formats *not matter* such that nobody cares that they stopped saving docx and started saving odt at some point. The less it matters the more people can comfortably switch to open software.
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@hobart
I normally like xkcd but knocking neurodivergency for shits and giggles seems a bit weird.
@libreoffice -
@libreoffice Thanks for the extra info about Euro Office. Is it known why they have chosen to default to OOXML, is there a limitation in ODF that they don't put the work in to implement? I understand that might be something only they can answer, but you seem to have done research on it.
@jmbmkn @libreoffice Euro Office is a fork of OnlyOffice which uses OOXML internally.
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An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/06/08/an-open-letter/
@libreoffice I thank you for your open letter, and I'm going to take advantage of it to ask you: are you going to abandon Github in the foreseeable future? If I'm not mistaken your official repositories are here: https://github.com/LibreOffice
I'm wrong, they're at https://git.libreoffice.org/
