Discussion

TDF ejects its core developers

commandlinefan: As somebody else pointed out, I read the entire article and still can't figure out what the author is actually talking about. That said, this sounds an awful lot like the reddit moderator problem: when you rely on unpaid volunteers, they become activist crusaders.

ranger_danger: I'm assuming this is related to the previous drama back in 2020:https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/Apparently TDF wanted to host LibreOffice Online for free, when it had previously been a source-only project. Collabora didn't like that as they did 95% of the development and wanted to be able to sell support for their own version, but they didn't want to be competing against TDF's version at the same time.

chuckadams: I can understand Collabora not being jazzed about it, but is there anything in the license that would prevent a third party who is neither Collabora nor TDF from doing the same? I mean, it's one Dockerfile away from anyone doing it, right? May as well be the TDF who distributes an official binary.

advisedwang: OK here's my understanding:- LibreOfficeOnLine (LOOL) was created within The Document Foundation (TDF) but largely developed by Collabora. It was source only and suggested users pay a company to host for them.- Some within TDF wanted to offer LOOL as a binary offering.- Collabora moved their contributions to Collabora Online, which they controlled.- LOOL was archived.- More recently, LOOL was revived- Collabora is pissed- Collabora gets booted from TDFI suppose this is a fundamental issue with the model of a foundation "owning" a product but a separate for profit company doing all the work. There's always going to be some issue that the two sides disagree on (in this case, how the free version is distributed). The foundation then either has to give in, and become irrelevant or stand up for their own position, in which case the company is basically forced to pull out their co-operation. It seems unlikely that TDF will be able to make any product progress, and I bet in a few years collabora gets what they want and returns to the fold. TDF will either be cowed forever or this situation will just repeat on the next conflict. Like with OpenAI, where the for-benefit part eventually capitulated and became an vestigial organ of a for-profit business.

wmf: I wish we would admit that you can't have it all. You can't have a product that is open source with neutral foundation governance and also have that same product be de facto proprietary. People have been pushing this bait-and-switch business model for too long.

halJordan: I'm sure there's a reason for the blog post, and the dude name checks himself so I'm sure he's important. But i have no idea what he's on about other than he's mad.

klooney: He's a longtime OpenOffice/LibreOffice and now, I guess, CollabraOffice contributor.

ranger_danger: I don't think so, I think it's more about TDF considering their involvement at that point a conflict of interest.