(sorry I had just sent this reply to Michael instead of responding to
Michael + LO dev list, so here's the copypaste)
On 08/05/2026 10:17, Michael Meeks wrote:
Hi Julien,
Thanks for your mail.
On 5/7/26 23:08, Julien Nabet wrote:
If, again "IF", I don't misunderstand
https://forum.collaboraonline.com/
t/tdf-ejects-its-core-developers/4552, specifically:
I believe that's talking about transitioning away from collabora
specific branches in TDF gerrit, I've asked Darshan to clarify that.
Ok
+ taking a look at git history on https://gerrit.libreoffice.org
Collabora stopped to contribute to LO some weeks ago.
Going forward you can expect us to contribute at a lower level
where it makes sense; there are a number of areas of shared interest.
In recent weeks we've had our big annual conference which may have
slowed things down.
"lower level" is quite an euphemism, there's been no contribution at all
since about 1 month, idem for ESC.
It was indicated in
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2026-April/094428.html:
"we expect Collaborans to have less time to spend in the ESC call,
probably there will be someone here."
but after this ESC, except I missed something, there were no more
Collabora people on following ESC.
I may be wrong but I expect they'll change their license soon so it
won't be possible to retrieve some interesting patches like leak fixes.
To re-iterate that is not our plan; details here:
https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/what-are-the-consequences-of-the-separation-from-tdf-libreoffice-for-users/4555/5
Let me re-quote that here:
Collabora is an Open Source company and all of our code is 100%
open-source.
Also - we have no plans to change the license. While today TDF is
behaving aggressively, it may be more reasonable in the future - there
is always hope of future collaboration.
So Collabora decided to release a desktop version in 2025, it's ok but
when TDF decides to re start LOOL in 2026, it's "aggressive"?
It seems there is benefit in keeping the door open for future
reconciliation by continuing to use an compatible license. For now we
will be doing our work, with our own focus in our own gerrit but also
contributing to LibreOffice where it makes sense; it is easy to
over-think the change here.
Yes for the moment but Collabora's top managers can decide otherwise
later (nothing to tell against it, it would be their right)
I also suppose the page people from Collabora on https://
wiki.documentfoundation.org/FindTheExpert can be removed since I
expect (I may be wrong again) there'll be no more response from them.
That may make sense.
I know I don't know all the legal stuff about the conflict but when I
saw year after years that people who worked on Gnome, Red Hat, Suse,
Novell, etc were going to Allotropia and above all Collabora then
Collabora who buys Allotropia, I expected some problem.
Of course, everyone must pay one's bills at the end of the month but we
know that conflict of interest exist and even if all of you guys did a
great job and am sure you still do it for Collabora, it would be naive
to think that people hired by a company may take some decisions which
would be good for TDF but not so good for their company.
When there are several companies, we may consider this influence as
diluted but when one company has hired almost all historical devs, I can
understand it can be considered as a danger.
Another thing I'd like to point out is this sentence from
"https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/tdf-ejects-its-core-developers/";
"Then today we have another blog, _The Foundation is Strong_
<https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/04/17/the-foundation-is-strong/>,
which seems to claim that LibreOffice is /“not a product”/, although TDF
does sell it in App stores"
Of course it's a sell but you know better than me that putting a soft on
a store isn't free, you must pay for the store and also take some time
to package it. Since LO is always freely available on their website for
the different OS, it's more a service for those who want to use stores only.
Sadly,
Same for me, after all those years, it's quite sad to see this
situation, moreover I don't know if LO will survive, I'm quite
pessimistic about it
