Discussion

UPDATED Request to the European Commission to adhere to its own guidances

_fat_santa: > This is not a minor procedural oversight. It is a structural bias built into the process which sends out a clear message: full participation in EU policymaking requires a Microsoft licence.Im gonna be honest it sounds more like a procedural oversight.

Spivak: I mean it's a small thing but this seems like the bureaucracy equivalent of seeing your friend get up for a smoke break out of habit and reminding them that they're trying to quit.

wiz21c: they are activists, everything make them nervous. however I'm sure there are tons of past reasons to make them nervous...

jfengel: Cool, but why does feedback come in the form of a spreadsheet at all?

einpoklum: > it sounds more like a procedural oversight.But the "oversight" is likely due to the fact that those policy-makers only see MS Excel used around them, and only expect people to use MS-Excel - which is why they did not think there might be any problem with requiring its use in a procedure. So, the people doing policymaking, and other related technical work, at the EU do actually need their MS license to work.

braiamp: When the policy is that X happens, procedural oversight can't be claimed when X doesn't happen. If X doesn't happen, then the policy is being rejected or ignored. No matter which, it allows the executing agent bias to be on full display and set the tone. There's a reason why a compliance office becomes the norm.

AuthorizedCust: That text reads like AI output, where I commonly see two short sentences that describe a dichotomy in the “This is not… This is…” pattern.Therefore, that these sentences don’t describe the situation great could be due to poorly vetted copy-paste of AI text.

KronisLV: This might seem quite pedantic but I like the fact that they’re calling stuff like that out - over here office documents are more or less synonymous with MS Office, despite me having used LibreOffice for years with no significant issues (aside from their bibliography being broken while writing my thesis, super annoying but I found a workaround).I’ve never actually had anyone complain about me sending them ODT or ODS files since even the said MS Office doesn’t have a big issue with those.Oddly enough, if you ever also see a CSV, LibreOffice Calc will give you a nice import dialog whereas by default MS Excel will happily open it wrong and fuck everything up for you.Edit: oh wait there was a case in university where I did a presentation in front of like 60 people and it referenced fonts that weren’t on the other machine and they didn’t get embedded in the presentation file. It fucked up all of the font layouts. Since, I do presentations in PDFs (the archival kind). Except recently I also wrote my own presentation tool that outputs HTML pages and can also serve everything from a folder, or I might just put them on my server. I think I reinvented worse Google Docs.

whirlwin: This is likely a matter of poor competence by the author of the spreadsheet, and an oversight after all.From my experience, unfortunately, people who manage policies are much less competent that those who implement them.

cyanydeez: Most of governance is a fight between policy and implementation. Even the best science based policy decisions fail when faced with the real world.And its not just competency, its also consumption based or its the highway road inducement problem.The reality is if we want science back policy decisions, you need to involve stakeholders through every step.

Pxtl: It's frustrating how we're still fighting over this stuff when 99% of documents and spreadsheets (the data, not the formulas) could be zipped html except if not that spreadsheet editors and document editors don't have a standardized subset of html to support.

Imustaskforhelp: LibreOffice using AI against Microslop/anything related to it doesn't feel very Libreoffice of it to me.I know that this pattern is used by AI but it only said this is, one time not two times and then continued with It is rather than the pattern that you mention. An AI would've probably used "This" second time instead of "It" most likely given that its probably really trained on it.I mean, we do use "this is" in a sentence atleast once like they did.How else do you want them to write this point :/I don't think that Libreoffice team is using AI to write their messages.

pluc: Why do you have to allow cookies to see this website?

Ekaros: That sounds rather bad idea. HTML is really not designed for proper data storage. It can display something, but I don't think it is right tool for the job. Just because html can present something like tables doesn't mean it is right tool for tabular data.

EGreg: Im also gonna be honestEver since LLM generated content proliferated we now have “This isn’t X. It’s Y” shibboleths EVRYWHERE!A person doesn’t normally start a sentence with “This isn’t a silly minor thing that you wouldn’t think it was but I had to say it out of the blue as a set up for the next sentence.” only to be followed by “This is a major deal worthy of you resharing and liking!”They might do the clauses in the other order, though. “This is a huge deal! Not just business as usual.”

danmaz74: The current article says that the Commission already accepted the request.

dchest: I just downloaded the ODS version and it comes with .pdf extension, had to rename it. It also uses Aptos Narrow font (from MS Office), which gets substituted.

chrismorgan: Combined with their rapid acquiescence to the request, it sounds to me like a procedural oversight due to a structural bias.

ocdtrekkie: 100%, the file format compatibility drama is long over. I have no issues at home using Excel files with LibreOffice. Microsoft has not meaningfully changed any Office file format in fifteen years, you can go all the way back to Office 2007 (with the compatibility pack) and open modern documents.Office has no issues with ODS formats either. This is a purely performative exercise.

s_dev: Compatibility isn't the problem it's requiring proprietary tech when you've specified requiring open tech.

st_goliath: > Ever since LLM generated content proliferated we now have...Or maybe, ever since you became aware of it, you started increasingly becoming aware of it?See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

ocdtrekkie: Office formats have also, as mentioned in the source link, been an open standard for fifteen years. It may not be the better open standard, but it is an open standard, and it works fine, including with LibreOffice's software, for many years.This is like if Google was whining someone sent them a JPG instead of a WebP. Not invented here syndrome more than an actual openness complaint.It's also stupid and self-defeating: The top reason people disregard LibreOffice as an option at work is because people believe it's incompatible with the Office everyone else uses. And it's NOT! But if LibreOffice itself keeps promoting misinformation about its own software, it's going to continue to be obscure in business.LibreOffice is better software and deserves better marketing than this incredibly dumb claim made above.

dtj1123: It sounds like a procedural oversight which demonstrates the structural bias built into the process.

EGreg: Nope. It is generated by LLMs, and a few people got influenced by it now.It isn’t like em-dashes

analog31: I see this frequently. People want data that are organized in some fashion, so they start with a spreadsheet.The drawback is that spreadsheet cells are a terrible way to convey narrative information. I’ve seen detailed product requirements in spreadsheets with thousands of cells, that failed to capture what the team actually wanted to build, and were never read.

skrebbel: That was impressively fast! Over the weekend, no less.

moffkalast: Finally, our tax euros at work.

Doctor_Fegg: > I’ve never actually had anyone complain about me sending them ODT or ODS files since even the said MS Office doesn’t have a big issue with those.On a Mac, I can read .doc(x), .xls(x) and .rtf without installing any additional software. I can’t do that with ODT/S.90% of open data spreadsheet downloads could just as easily be provided in CSV format (looking at you, gov.uk).

einpoklum: > Office formats have also, as mentioned in the source link, been an open standard for fifteen years.No, they haven't. See:https://fossforce.com/2026/02/why-ooxml-is-not-a-standard-fo...I mean, ODF has been a standard; what Microsoft uses isn't.

einpoklum: Does Apple's productivity app really not support ODFs? Ouch.

ocdtrekkie: Well, first of all, your source is the same author as the blog post. Second, a messy standard is still a standard.And the biggest problem is by claiming it doesn't handle OOXML well, LibreOffice sabotages its own marketability. This blog is exactly what you write if you want to torpedo LibreOffice's success in the business environment.You can not like Office or Office's file formats, but it's important to understand that it is table stakes for LibreOffice to promote how well it handles those formats and how safely it can be used as a replacement for Microsoft Office in an environment dominated by it.

Aerroon: I've definitely been writing like that for a long time.