Tensions between Collabora and the Document Foundation have escalated to a new level.
Since early April, the two organizations have been trading open niceties in blog posts.
Collabora kicked off the hostilities with a post titled “Let’s Kick Out the Developers!” The British company lamented that its teams had been removed from the Document Foundation’s member list. More so because, in its view, this exclusion resulted from “unfounded legal concerns.” It did not dwell on that topic further, choosing instead to condemn the direction the foundation has taken in recent years. Among other points:
- Appointing non-technical staff to its board and “accusing others of conflicts of interest” (that’s the heart of the matter; we’ll come back to it)
- Revisiting past decisions of the board and steering committee, for example resurrecting LibreOffice Online from the closet “to compete [with Collabora]”
- Threatening contributors over their use of the LibreOffice brand under license, while ignoring widespread abuse by third parties who are neither contributors nor license-holders
- Delaying an election and then invalidating its results
“When it makes sense, we will continue to contribute to LibreOffice,” explained Collabora’s CEO. He clearly excluded continuing to invest heavily in the project while being excluded from governance. In these circumstances, he continued, work would focus on Collabora Online’s desktop version, launched a few months ago. The first major signal: the opening of a dedicated Gerrit repository.
A dismissal following alleged conflicts of interest
That same day, the Document Foundation acknowledged the move, though it did not swallow the accusations wholesale. It recalled that the situation results from an update to the community rules. These now bar membership for staff at companies in dispute with the foundation. Behind this, there are “people who in the past made decisions in the interest of their employer rather than in the foundation’s interest,” which could have endangered the nonprofit status.
A few days later, the Document Foundation provided more context. It highlighted two problematic decisions: first, allowing ecosystem companies to use the LibreOffice brand freely to sell the suite in Apple and Microsoft app stores; second, awarding development/maintenance contracts to companies that had representatives on the foundation’s board.
Collabora accused of pursuing the status quo
Once the foundation’s legal teams raised concerns that these practices could threaten the nonprofit status, the “companies that benefited from these missteps” (understood to be Collabora) sought to sustain the status quo. That was in late 2021.
The foundation maintains that this episode increased tensions on the board, following the abandonment of the Document Collective. This separate organization, desired by some directors, was meant to compensate for the foundation’s inefficiency. Presented without warning at LibreOffice Conference 2019, it provoked even more concern in the community as it would draw on the foundation’s financial resources to fund startup funds.
In 2023, an audit by German authorities eventually confirmed the need to change processes to avoid losing nonprofit status. A second audit the following year reached the same conclusion. With Collabora blocking the board, the only viable solution was to strip its employees of membership status and freeze the aforementioned development/maintenance contracts. It would apparently have paid off, according to the Document Foundation: a third audit, conducted at the end of 2025, yielded a positive result.
Has the Document Foundation polarized the LibreOffice community?
Collabora reacted by denouncing statements as misleading, defamatory, and factually inaccurate. The people accused acted in good faith, in the best interests of the Document Foundation, with the information they had, the British company argues. Attacking them is thus “totally unreasonable.” As for the withdrawal of membership status, it is the choice of a “subset” of the board that created retroactive rules for political advantage.
Unreasonable is also the claim that encouraging companies to sign brand-licensing agreements they do not need, and then suing them for delivering code that could have fallen under branding terms, is warranted.
The board, more broadly, is said to have benefited from a perpetual sense of crisis within the LibreOffice community to polarize it and bypass its rights, ultimately invalidating an election.
Not judging merit solely by the commit graph
On the same day, the Document Foundation revisited its stance on “meritocracy.” Their premise: merit should extend beyond a graph of commits. In other words, authority should not be given only to those who produce code. The foundation explains that this becomes reasonable at the outset of a project when the primary challenge is technical. But for a project that has been around for 15 years, serves millions of users, and operates within a complex legal and regulatory environment, the approach no longer suffices. A model that excludes contributions to documentation, localization, bug fixes, or media/institutional relations amounts to a “partial meritocracy.” It does not mean excluding developers, but ensuring diverse perspectives are represented…
The Document Foundation also weighs in on conflicts of interest. The presence of directors whose employer has a direct commercial stake in the project makes the notion of meritocracy more complex. Even if these individuals act in good faith, can governance truly be built around their contributions? Conflicts of interest are “inherent” in such a setup, according to the foundation.
The foundation calls for considering another aspect: the long term. In this light, merit should also be measured by the ability to create future growth conditions for the project, especially if its founders may eventually step down.
The Document Foundation had prepared for a secession
On April 10, the Document Foundation offered additional clarifications. Among other things, the so-called community rules blocking membership access apply only to disputes arising from a “threat to the foundation.” They provide three examples: risk to its nonprofit status, improper use of its funds, and damage to its assets.
Regarding development/maintenance contracts, the targeted directors assessed bids and supervised the teams within the Document Foundation responsible for executing the contracts.
To illustrate Collabora’s intent to maintain the status quo, the foundation cites a policy rejected by the board in 2021. It would have required directors to recuse themselves from votes on matters that posed conflicts of interest with their employing companies.
On reopening the LibreOffice Online repository, the decision to shelve it had been made by a board in which developers held the majority of votes. It did not mirror the wider will, which the foundation eventually followed.
As for seeing Collabora fly on its own, the Document Foundation says it has been preparing for this since at least 2022. The British publisher is indeed a major contributor (43% of patches over the last 12 months), but it is not alone: among the 20 top contributors on Git, eight work for the foundation.
As for Collabora Office for Desktop, the foundation envisions it as more of a competitor to OnlyOffice. It will indeed start with only three modules. In short, it should be seen as “a testament to the flexibility of the LibreOffice engine,” on which Collabora relies…
From community brainstorms to small-group meetings
The following day, Collabora reiterated the good faith of its employees. Not without lamenting that despite clarifications, some statements from the Document Foundation remained misleading, defamatory, and inaccurate.
The publisher insists: it was not necessary for it to sign a brand license to distribute LibreOffice in app stores. It did so because the foundation asked it to, and the foundation now wants it to compensate within that framework. All while it has already voluntarily remitted “more than 15%” of its app-store revenue.
Collabora also disputes the Document Foundation’s assertions about development/maintenance contracts. Broadly speaking, the involved individuals had no visibility into those contracts, the bids, or the decisions taken.
“We exclude people because their colleagues sat on boards that made decisions that the current board does not like!” exclaims the CEO. He also denounces a closing-off of the Document Foundation to its own teams: in recent years, part of the communication has become entirely private, with small-group meetings replacing community brainstorms.
A half-apology for Collabora’s developers
The Document Foundation ultimately issued an open letter to Collabora’s developers. It underscores the danger that threatened its nonprofit status and admits it could not “resolve the problem case by case.” “The structure was biased and the damage was real,” it states firmly.
