654
LibreOffice blasts 'fake open source' OnlyOffice for working with Microsoft to lock users in
(blog.documentfoundation.org)
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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I've had a relatively good experience with OnlyOffice, although it has some issues.
Personally I don't see interoperability as an anti-open issue, but I can appreciate the stance. I think I have to investigate to understand how the Microsoft format diverges from the open standard for office XML files, or in what way the format remains proprietary. I had been under the impression that OnlyOffice follows the open standard.
OnlyOffice does ape Microsoft Office in a lot of ways but I see that as a positive. Users are far more likely in my opinion to switch to something that looks and feels familiar.
LibreOffice is hard to use. The menus and shortcuts are not well organized and the entire suite feels like a relic from the early 2000s. If they invested in a modern UI with less friction for users who are looking for MS alternatives, they wouldn't be facing competition from projects like OnlyOffice. If they invested in feature parity for mobile users, they wouldn't be losing potential users to those who offer it.
They have an incredibly powerful backend with far more capability than the more junior OnlyOffice. Yet they fail to recognize why that just doesn't matter to the majority of users. Most users just want to quickly author and edit files, share them with other users, and get on with the next task. LibreOffice has become overly fixated on niche features and optimizations that are very cool from a technical standpoint but are totally out of touch.
By the way, LibreOffice also supports OOXML, so... do with that what you want.
Agreed that there interface looks like the late late 90’s.
I’d recommend Libre more often but it’s a step backwards for most average users in UI. Microsoft has had the ribbon since, what, Office 2007?
LO also has the ribbon interface. But not by default.
Good. Those that want it can enable it. I don't. Takes up too much screen space showing a lot of unnecessary icons