alt.hn

3/8/2026 at 2:09:09 PM

LibreOffice: Request to the European Commission to adhere to its own guidances

 https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/03/05/cra-guidances/

by maxloh

3/8/2026 at 3:00:17 PM

> 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.

by _fat_santa

3/8/2026 at 3:42:54 PM

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.

by braiamp

3/8/2026 at 5:20:24 PM

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

by chrismorgan

3/8/2026 at 6:43:03 PM

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

by dtj1123

3/8/2026 at 6:55:07 PM

Nope: they have signed a contract with Microsoft, it is not oversight, there was a clear decission by the specific committee to buy Microsoft Products and Support, and it is costing us (EU taxpayers) lots of money just to interact with the EU.

by pfortuny

3/8/2026 at 3:21:33 PM

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

by wiz21c

3/9/2026 at 1:35:00 AM

I would argue they are the same thing. What is a procedural oversight if not bias in the system? The existing process missed an obvious issue because of bias.

by solid_fuel

3/8/2026 at 3:43:43 PM

> 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.

by einpoklum

3/8/2026 at 5:00:24 PM

Also sounds like an LLM wrote it (the original message)

by raverbashing

3/8/2026 at 4:39:02 PM

Im also gonna be honest

Ever 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.”

by EGreg

3/8/2026 at 6:07:49 PM

> 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

by st_goliath

3/8/2026 at 7:33:53 PM

Nope. It is generated by LLMs, and a few people got influenced by it now.

It isn’t like em-dashes

by EGreg

3/9/2026 at 2:20:40 AM

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

by Aerroon

3/9/2026 at 11:49:52 AM

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

Your comment can be rearranged in that it's not X it's Y format too.

by johanyc

3/9/2026 at 4:44:43 PM

Yes, but it's not natural to say "It's not <non sequitur thing no one was talking about>. It's <amazing globally impactful thing that should make you pay attention>." That's how LLMs write though.

by EGreg

3/8/2026 at 3:42:29 PM

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.

by AuthorizedCust

3/8/2026 at 4:09:56 PM

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.

by Imustaskforhelp

3/8/2026 at 4:51:49 PM

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

by danmaz74

3/8/2026 at 8:16:39 PM

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

by skrebbel

3/8/2026 at 8:50:09 PM

Finally, our tax euros at work.

by moffkalast

3/8/2026 at 3:24:44 PM

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.

by whirlwin

3/8/2026 at 3:56:31 PM

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.

by cyanydeez

3/8/2026 at 3:45:48 PM

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.

by KronisLV

3/8/2026 at 6:47:12 PM

I get why libreoffice has the file open dialog, but it irritates me. 99% of the time I just want the file open to see the shape of the data, not make a bunch of parsing decisions for a file I've never seen before with unknown idiosyncrasies.

by AlotOfReading

3/9/2026 at 9:28:47 PM

The dialog has a checkbox to always use previously saved settings. "Always show on import", screenshot: https://files.catbox.moe/r79y0i.png

by grgergo

3/8/2026 at 10:19:48 PM

> 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).

by Doctor_Fegg

3/9/2026 at 7:44:55 PM

that's apple being hostile to standards

by vrighter

3/8/2026 at 11:16:50 PM

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

by einpoklum

3/8/2026 at 5:24:53 PM

The only time compatibility falls apart is spreadsheets with macros don't work in libre office

by RobotToaster

3/8/2026 at 3:54:13 PM

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.

by ocdtrekkie

3/8/2026 at 6:12:21 PM

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

by s_dev

3/8/2026 at 6:16:55 PM

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.

by ocdtrekkie

3/8/2026 at 11:21:46 PM

> 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.

by einpoklum

3/8/2026 at 11:28:24 PM

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.

by ocdtrekkie

3/8/2026 at 5:03:53 PM

> you can go all the way back to Office 2007 (with the compatibility pack) and open modern documents

Great, I can open proprietary document formats with proprietary software. I think you are missing the point of this "performative exercise".

by hobofan

3/8/2026 at 5:06:01 PM

You can also open all of those documents with LibreOffice. My point is the support LibreOffice has for Office documents is fine and not at all a problem, because Office formats have not meaningfully changed over time and they have been supported in LibreOffice for all of that time.

by ocdtrekkie

3/8/2026 at 7:25:54 PM

The comission has themselves made the commitment to reduce the reliance on exactly such standards. You are arguing for a position that they themselves aren't even arguing for as they recognize the importance of the problem.

By your logic, it would have been fine for Apple to stick with the Lightning port for charging because USB->Lightning charging ports are widely available so "it's not a problem at all".

by hobofan

3/8/2026 at 7:38:16 PM

No, because Lightning is not an open standard. OOXML has been an open standard for nearly two decades.

And a big issue for me is this blog post hurts LibreOffice because the largest reason enterprises won't touch it is that it is perceived as incompatible even when that compatibility works just fine.

If success and good marketing was the focus, LibreOffice would happily promote that it will take any file format they get because they have robust interoperable software that doesn't actually mind handling XLSX!

by ocdtrekkie

3/9/2026 at 1:25:12 AM

In another way, LibreCalc is a better old Excel file reader than Office 365...

by melagonster

3/8/2026 at 3:18:18 PM

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

by jfengel

3/8/2026 at 8:43:56 PM

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.

by analog31

3/8/2026 at 5:46:54 PM

If i have one regret over the OOXML corruption scandal was to not bring the whole thing to court. We had some many evidences of Microsoft captureing the whole process.

by zoobab

3/8/2026 at 5:22:40 PM

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.

by dchest

3/8/2026 at 4:20:18 PM

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

by pluc

3/8/2026 at 11:25:26 PM

oh, is that why it's stuck on spinner? switch to no style, the data's all there

by steanne

3/8/2026 at 3:11:40 PM

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.

by Spivak

3/8/2026 at 4:41:35 PM

[dead]

by aaron695

3/8/2026 at 4:11:12 PM

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.

by Pxtl

3/8/2026 at 4:16:01 PM

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.

by Ekaros

3/8/2026 at 5:27:02 PM

ODF is just XML.

by RobotToaster

3/9/2026 at 5:55:56 AM

This is like saying that HTML is "just" ASCII/UTF-8 text. Lots of formats are based on XML, but they're not compatible with each other and their schema require complicated parsers.

by shiroiuma

3/9/2026 at 8:59:52 AM

HTML sucks for proper formatting. CSS it's a clusterfuck and it can't be any rigorous standard for anything.

by anthk

3/9/2026 at 4:05:24 PM

I don't mean HTML+CSS, I mean just HTML, as a middle-step between CSV and full spreadsheet file.

HTML with only the table tags allowed get you a document that you can 1) View in a browser, 2) Has table headers and the ability to define column widths and combine cells

But you can leave presentation up to the viewer.

Same principle as Markdown, but markdown tables are bad.

by Pxtl