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LibreOffice slams Microsoft for locking in Office users w/ complex file formats
- kazinator 1y agoMicrosoft doesn't lock in people. People lock in people.
- majorchord 1y agoYou might not be wrong, but yelling at people for accepting conveniences that most don't even understand or care about, seems a bit pointless to me. Why even stop at document formats? Why not outrage over their choice of Windows itself? What good do you think this does? I'm genuinely curious.
- tracker1 1y agoWell, according to StatsCounter, Linux now accounts for 5% of desktop users. :-) ChromeOS another 2.7% and macOS around 24%. edit: If I were to guess, Valve/Steam is solely responsible for at least 1 of those 5%.
- kazinator 1y ago> Why not outrage over their choice of Windows itself? Because it doesn't necessarily affect anyone. Using Windows ipso facto doesn't mean you will send someone a file they can't read without a Microsoft program. I have two Windows machines in my home; they have LibreOffice on them, as well as Firefox.
- ranger_danger 1y agoNo, but I think the people most likely to be oblivious to all this, will be the ones using Microsoft programs that write in proprietary formats by default... and I would say they're not even wrong if that's what most other people use too. People send me Outlook messages all the time that I can't read at all, and many Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations with features that aren't supported in anything on Linux. I literally have to use a Windows VM with proper Office to read this stuff. And not only work documents, but documents from my children's school/teachers as well.
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- PaulKeeble 1y agoIts been Microsoft's strategy since its formation to make a lot of proprietary technology when it moves into any space and do so in a way that locks customers in such that if and when it is no longer the top product the customers can't easily leave. They do this in every single product and market they operate in. Where they can't ultimately win they buy their competitor and integrate the product then slowly kill it.
- BizarroLand 1y agoGates never even made DOS. He bought it from someone else and rebranded it. He's been a con man since day 1.
- edm0nd 1y agoStill the only big tech CEO who can jump over a chair tho
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoBut I bet he can’t throw them the way monkey boy Ballmer did.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoNew business idea: selling small luxury chairs to big tech CEOs. Subscription service, if they don't pay a million per month, they lose their license to jump over their chair.
- psunavy03 1y ago. . . being a savvy businessman is a con man? There's loads to criticize about MS in the 80s and 90s, but buying DOS fair and square and then building an ecosystem around it was just a good business move. The stuff they got sued and almost broken up over is the sketchy part.
- coliveira 1y ago
- zerr 1y agoIsn't it the same for PDF format spec?
- atakan_gurkan 1y agoNo. There are hundreds of programs that easily read and create PDFs. OTOH, reading .docx is a pain. Far be it from me to defend Adobe, but PDF is nothing like MS Office formats.
- jahewson 1y agoOoh that’s not fair. Many PDFs don’t conform to the spec and how Acrobat processes them is completely undocumented.
- troupo 1y agoIt was funny for a few years when Apple just released Preview, and it rendered many PDFs better than Adobe's own Acrobat
- Synaesthesia 1y agoYeah it's a great app, one of the big reasons I still use MacOS - but there's certain features which you still need Adobe Acrobat for, I know to fill in the tax forms for my country you do.
- zerr 1y agoI mean the rendering part. AFAIK there are no that many renderers.
- cogman10 1y agoThe PDF spec is well designed to be both very expandable and easily readable. It's absolutely horrible to try and edit. That's because the structure of a PDF is essentially a bunch of media "streams". It's very easy to say "render a jpeg at this location on the page" but that's about it. It doesn't store, for example, the fact that you might need to wrap words around a page. Instead, it's "Here's a box with text in it". The only thing that really could make PDF rendering hard is adobe put a whole bunch of garbage into the spec. For example, the full spec had the ability to run javascript and flash at one point (not sure if it does anymore).
- gigel82 1y agoI doubt this one is explicit "locking in", as much as it's reflecting the increasing internal complexity and lack of focus on product quality. I'd be willing to bet the internal teams dread working with the overly complex structures too.
- delusional 1y agoAt this point I doubt Microsoft could even execute on a "lock in" strategy anymore.
- vanderZwan 1y agoHasn't this always been an argument against it? I remember hearing the same arguments when we tried to get the EU to ditch OpenXML over a decade ago al least. [0] https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/ec-recommends-supporting-open https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...
- rtollert 1y agoOriginal blog post by LibreOffice is here: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/07/18/artificially-complex-xml-schema-as-lock-in-tool/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/07/18/artifici... I mean… sure? When I saw this headline I was imagining that Microsoft added a brand-new ultracomplicated format. But no, the article is solely about OOXML. Why is the blog post re-litigating a fight that LibreOffice already fought almost 20 years ago?
- like_any_other 1y agoThose who forget the past..?
- fsflover 1y agoBecause it still matterts today?
- OnionBlender 1y agoWhy does the title say "slams" but neither the headline or URL contain "slams"? I think anything that says slams is not worth reading.
- extrememacaroni 1y agoI don't think microsoft could feel a slam from anyone tbh, much less libreoffice.
- Ukv 1y agoSaving 4 characters (over "calls out") to fit within the HN submission title length limit, I'd assume.
- jollyllama 1y agoHeadlinese
- betterhealth12 1y agoit's ridiculous, clearly to get eyeballs. there should be a clickbait label on such titles
- WillAdams 1y agoI'd really like to see an office suite which uses .md and .csv where possible. Mostly I use LyX and pyspread which are close/open enough.
- eviks 1y agoThese are too primitive for an office suite
- prmoustache 1y ago> I'd really like to see an office suite which uses .md It is called pandoc and a text editor.
- JonChesterfield 1y agoCsv is a portal to hell. Markdown is great.
- jahewson 1y agoI didn’t realise we’d entered a time machine to 2007. I’ve worked extensively with OOXML and yes, the documentation is cryptic and often absent, but Microsoft will help you out if you contact them on their forums. I see Libre Office devs there all the time! But the complexity is not some kind of conspiracy - it’s inherent - it comes from the fact that Office is ancient and very, very complex with a huge number of features. Many features are implemented in backwards compatible way on top of the old version of similar features and then the whole thing has been back ported from a bunch of C structure to XML which has the most woeful and underpowered schema language imaginable.
- troupo 1y ago> it comes from the fact that Office is ancient and very, very complex with a huge number of features. IIRC one of the many unfortunate decisions made by MS with OOXML (whether intentionally, or not, or both) is to codify a lot of display and formatting quirks directly in the schema with very little explanation or docs. Instead of making it s different namespace or layer. So, to implement OOXML, you also needed to reverse engineer, say, behavior of Word97 etc.
- firesteelrain 1y agoIt’s not just the complex XML based format. Word has collaboration tie-in’s with Skype, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive etc It’s an entire ecosystem Also, I have tried to use LibreOffice and you have to learn an entirely new tool. The user interfaces are different. Word has its own issues of course but LibreOffice does not feel as polished There are things in Word that are legacy and carry overs from another time that carry various nuance. It’s not all documented set of features either Trying to replicate the entire look and feel is incredibly difficult Most people are going to encounter Word in a corporate setting and to have them switch to another tool is going to a big hill to climb
- trelane 1y agoIf LibreOffice were smart, they'd introduce free licensing for schools and universities, so the students could learn it and then ask for it when they get to jobs later on. Maybe they could even release the source under a copyleft license, so the students can learn from it and maybe contribute.
- jasonjayr 1y agoAt one point LibreOffice + MS Office were pretty much on par with each other. But MS has built this giant moat of integrated proprietary services around these systems that make it difficult to switch away once you are sucked into the environment. It takes a pretty sizable expense to switch to anything else, while satisfying all of a companies different workflows for various roles and levels of experience. If not MS Office + it's M365 Eco system, what then? Google Workspace? That's kinda the same problem in a different color?
- Pooge 1y agoI know about the lack of tech-savvyness of most humans, but isn't Markdown and Pandoc—if you slam a GUI in front of it—covering the needs of 99% of users? Granted, when you need formatting, like for a formal letter, you use a template someone made but this is not what most people use Word for. And don't get me started on "people wouldn't understand how to put things in bold or italics"; they can barely use Word anyway. Might as well use something much simpler. Office "productivity" suites are over to me.
- n8cpdx 1y agoIf you have such little regard for formatting that markdown suffices, you also don’t care about the difficult edge cases of docx.
- carlosjobim 1y agoWordPad, Notepad, or TextEdit is already included on the computer and perfectly fine for most writing and printed communication.
- thangalin 1y ago* https://keenwrite.com/screenshots.html https://keenwrite.com/screenshots.html * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9KWzPIoWZMKu_ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9... Here are some of my Markdown documents: * https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf (99% pure) * https://pdfhost.io/v/4FeAGGasj_SepiSolar_Highlevel_Software_Design https://pdfhost.io/v/4FeAGGasj_SepiSolar_Highlevel_Software_... * https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdown-part-8/jekyll-hyde.pdf https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdow... A lot is possible with Markdown, especially with pandoc extensions.
- dv35z 1y ago(1) These look great - I saved the Impacts so I can keep reading it later. Can you share what the background/reason is for this document? (2) Hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction. I often take notes with clients in Markdown, and then after the call, do some cleanup. At that point, I would love to export it as a slick-looking PDF, and also HTML which I could paste into Apple Mail. I've done a few experiments with Markdown --> Pandoc --> HTML, but I started to realize I would need to dig deeper into Pandoc, figure out its HTML templates, create CSS. And wasn't sure if I ought to be doing Markdown-->HTML-->PDF. My ideal "flow" would be something like... pandoc 2025-07-18_Client1_Topic.md --style "Client1.css" ---output 2025-07-18_Client1_topic.pdf --output 2025-08.18_Client1_Topic.html When digging around in Pandoc, I also got the impression I would need to learn Tex formatting. I haven't figured out a "stack" on this topic, so thought you might have ideas. Currently, I am using Obsidian for taking notes. Then I use the "Copy as HTML" 3rd party plugin to copy my Markdown notes as basically themed HTML. I then open up MacOS TextEdit, on Rich Text mode, and paste that in. I might do a bit of text formatting here, clean out [ ] markdown links, etc. Next, I copy & paste from TextEdit to Apple Mail. I sometimes color the headings manually, and other basic formatting. Here I'll add the "Hello, " and "Sincerely" wrap around the notes, and send. I'll then check my iPhone Mail to make sure the mail looks OK on Dark Mode. Seems like a huge gap in the "note taking" tooling, but I'm hoping that I'm just ignorant of a few solid tools that can handle this workflow: "Take notes on a call, send them nicely formatted to client in email / PDF" Thanks for any ideas / suggestions you can share! // JRO
- cahaya 1y agoI can confirm. When trying convert simple Word sentences and tables to e.g. Markdown/HTML from a Word XML you need a PhD in XML edge cases and nested garbage.
- paulbjensen 1y agoI wonder if this tool by MSFT is able to handle that: https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown I was amazed when I realised that Word docs were just zip files and you could poke around in the xml files embedded inside of them. I almost implemented a working React -> Word document renderer back in 2017, but it didn't have support for creating the xml tags with : inside of them (which OOXML documents use).
- strongpigeon 1y agoTechnically, they're a bit more than just zip files (they're OPC containers [0]), but if you're hand editing the file content it doesn't really matter. [0] Open Package Convention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Packaging_Conventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Packaging_Conventions
- favorited 1y agoEven though markitdown is a Microsoft project, it's just a thin wrapper around a bunch of 3rd party Python packages. For example, to go from docx to Markdown, it uses mammoth to convert docx to HTML[0], then uses markdownify to convert the HTML into Markdown[1]. [0]https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown/blob/da7bcea527ed04cf6027cc8ece1e1aad9e08a9a1/packages/markitdown/src/markitdown/converters/_docx_converter.py#L78 https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown/blob/da7bcea527ed04c... [1]https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown/blob/da7bcea527ed04cf6027cc8ece1e1aad9e08a9a1/packages/markitdown/src/markitdown/converters/_markdownify.py#L8 https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown/blob/da7bcea527ed04c...
- superjan 1y agoWell, it is not pretty to see how the sausage gets made, but extracting formatted text from docx is absolutely doable, no PhD involved. Source: I have done it as a little sidequest because it was useful to audit a set of word documents.
- AtNightWeCode 1y agoIt is a plague across the whole industry. The format in this case is highly influenced by how one corp designed their own products. Multiple document formats have this problem. But you can also find the exact same thing in PCI DSS and other standards. Like, one corp designed a tool to scan for a certain flaw and suddenly it is mandatory. Just ridiculous.
- eviks 1y agoMeanwhile, has a better modern featureful extensible rich text format been invented?
- prmoustache 1y agoasciidoc and html?
- pseudosavant 1y agoHow did this make the HN homepage? There isn't even any news here. It is an argument about ~20-year-old XML file formats, at a time when file formats couldn't matter less? On top of that, Office supports OpenDocument formats, just like LibreOffice supports Office formats. Also, IME the Office XML file format is far better supported by third parties - countless apps read/write them. I have multiple apps installed that can read/write an Office file, but MS Office is the only app on my machine that opens OpenDocument.
- jajuuka 1y agoYeah this is basically just an ad for LibreOffice. To be complaining about XML in Office in 2025 is wild.
- magicalhippo 1y agoMicrosoft Office isn't even compatible with itself, deapite its bespoke file format. For example formulas in Excel not being portable between different languages.
- fsflover 1y agoThis is an old problem that is still harming the user freedom and hinders the adoption of LibreOffice today, due to Microsoft's anti-competitive practices. Are you saying it's not worth discussing?
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- kldg 1y agoAs a user, I'd make that argument for sure. The casual user simply wants the least friction, Microsoft doesn't care, and the FOSS developer space just has to live in this environment. As part of a broader argument to develop for and use FOSS, there's maybe something worth thinking about here, but Microsoft's not going to change its ways on this even if a dozen of us complain. I was annoyed about the Chrome/FF thing recently (well, annoyed by Chrome, and annoyed as a casual user by Firefox's relative inabilities), so thought about what it'd take to make a new web browser. It's FAR too complicated; there is way too much to implement. HTML/JS/CSS are excessively complex, made for use cases ~nobody will run into, and you pretty much are required to implement everything Chrome does for compatibility. It's crazy Firefox even exists. I decided instead, as an exercise, to implement an entirely new Internet built on CrypticWeb running the Mystic Beaver Protocol (MBP); surely you've heard of these, they are very big in my household. It's very simple; instead of forking the Internet to add even more garbage, we start from scratch. Instead of JS, we use waterwheel (.ww) files which patch the python script running on the stateful lodge server. I even ported the server to Micropython and can run it on a tiny ESP32C6 that fits on my pinky. The client's written in Python and interprets the simple JSON payloads the server sends over, to render it and interact with the server as needed. It all works fine, but people are locked into this overcomplicated Bad/Legacy/Corporate/Devil Internet. big smh; wake up, sheeple!
- piker 1y agoI feel qualified to opine on this as both a former power user of Word and someone building a word processor for lawyers from scratch[1]. I've spent hours pouring over both the .doc and OOXML specs and implementing them. There's a pretty obvious journey visible in those specs from 1984 when computers were under powered with RAM rounding to zero through the 00's when XML was the hot idea to today when MSFT wants everyone on the cloud for life. Unlike say an IDE or generic text editor where developers are excited to work on and dogfood the product via self-hosting, word processors are kind of boring and require separate testing/QA. MSFT has the deep pockets to fund that development and testing/QA. LibreOffice doesn't. The business model is just screaming that GPL'd LibreOffice is toast. [1] Plug: https://tritium.legal https://tritium.legal
- fractallyte 1y ago*poring over Lawyers also tend to pore a lot, so it's worth getting the word right! ;-)
- piker 1y agoTIL
- gchamonlive 1y agoThere are non-native English speaking lawyers in the world afaik
- gus_massa 1y agoThere is an old post by Joel Spolsky that worked as PM in Excel a looong time ago, and he agree with you: "Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds)" https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-the-microsoft-office-file-formats-so-complicated-and-some-workarounds/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-the-micros... (HN discussions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12471604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12471604 (393 points | Sept 2016 | 229 comments) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=118909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=118909 (60 points | Feb 2008 | 20 comments))
- TheMagicHorsey 1y agoNever attribute malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation. Microsoft isn't intentionally obfuscating the docx. Docx is a shit-show because hundreds upon hundreds of Microsoft business initiatives, executive pet projects, and ancient compatibility rules have all collided to make a giant pile of dung. If LibreOffice is worried about what docx does to their productivity ... you should see the fucking engineers lamenting INSIDE Microsoft about what it does to their friggin productivity. This horseshit isn't anyone's plan. This horseshit is an emergent phenomenon like a fucking termite hill in your back yard ... where no single termite is responsible or knoweldgeable, but all of them together made a pile that breaks your lawnmower.
- curiousgal 1y agoTangent: Is there a Firefox extension that blocks articles with slams, claps back, rips ?
- Lammy 1y ago> The two office suites take very different paths here. LibreOffice uses the OpenDocument Format (ODF), an open standard meant to be controlled by no single company. Microsoft, on the other hand, created its own Office Open XML (OOXML) to support every feature in its own software, giving us the familiar .docx and .xlsx It's so impressively underhandedly sneaky that Microsoft named their ODF-competitor format “Office Open” just as OpenOffice.org's (LibreOffice's direct ancestor) hype peaked with OO.o 2.0 having ODF as its native format, when MS Office finally had a viable and popular competitor for like the first time ever. https://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/press_release.html https://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/press_release.html (2005-10-20) https://news.microsoft.com/2005/11/21/qa-microsoft-co-sponsors-submission-of-office-open-xml-document-formats-to-ecma-international-for-standardization/ https://news.microsoft.com/2005/11/21/qa-microsoft-co-sponso... (2005-11-21)
- redeeman 1y agoand ooxml is basically just a serialization of microsoft office internals, with attributes such as "likeword95" on certain elements.. microsoft made a total piece of steaming turd, and its users dont care.
- RachelF 1y agoYes, it's bad, but the users _do_ care. Most don't have a choice, business machines have MS Office/Outlook/Teams as default and they can't change.
- redeeman 1y agothey dont care enough. I have said no to work that would require me to work with loads of MS shit, I have said no to open photoshop files, various other proprietary crap files. They might care, but they just only care a tiny tiny tiny tiny bit, and certainly not enough to inconvenience themselves in any way for it.
- tzs 1y agoI think you are mixing up some things. There are no "likeword95" attributes. At one point during standardization there was a proposal to add several attributes with names like that although most of them referred to non-Microsoft products like WordPerfect, but it didn't make it into the final standard. That's what you are probably thinking of. Their purpose was to allow someone writing say a WordPerfect to OOXML converter to mark in the OOXML places that were using some specific WordPerfect formatting that couldn't be replicated in OOXML. OOXML word processors were supposed to preserve those markings if they encountered them but never add them.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- TriangleEdge 1y agoAfter having worked for many companies, I think the complex file formats is likely due to employee turnover, pressure from management to just get shit done, and careless coding. Not ill intended anti-competitive practices. The locking in is likely an unintended bonus for Microsoft.
- dismalaf 1y agoEveryone needs to stop competing with Office and just build a better office. The truth is, no one needs to be compatible these days. Everyone is either: - using the same software company-wide, whether it's LO, Google Docs or MS Office - exporting to PDF when sharing docs with someone outside the organization The real thing that LO is missing is server side hosting and easy syncing... Until they get that, it's just going to be something used by individuals and small orgs. I still remember, at my university we had LO installed on lab computers, MS Office was a "requirement" for students to purchase, but most profs simply insisted we simply hand in assignments as Google Docs links because there was incompatibilities between .doc, .docx, the formats made by LO, etc... Google Docs were the only ones that could be shared and be 100% identical on every computer with the link. If LO had a web hosted solution and provided easy to install server code for organizations, they'd dominate. But they don't...
- wizzwizz4 1y agoLibreOffice has both of those, provided by Collabora (the main corporate developer of LibreOffice).
- Andrew_nenakhov 1y agoI tried really hard to use Collabora 'web' solution. It is unusable. For those who don't know: it renders the whole LibreOffice interface on server and passes it to you. Lots of issues with hotkeys on non-standard layouts (I use Dvorak), with language switching, with mouse behavior, with clipboard, ugh. Of course it is hungry for resources. No. This isn't the way.
- wizzwizz4 1y agoAre you sure that's not just a VNC-based demo of the desktop version of Collabora Office? I wouldn't be too surprised if their web version was like that (given how long ago the first version came out), except Nextcloud uses a Collabora-based system for its online editing, and I doubt they'd go with something like that. There are online ODT editors (e.g. https://webodf.org/demo/ci/wodotexteditor-0.5.9/localeditor.html https://webodf.org/demo/ci/wodotexteditor-0.5.9/localeditor....), so even if Collabora's is bad, it wouldn't be too hard to make a better one.
- Andrew_nenakhov 1y agoI loved OpenOffice.org back in the day, but in today's world with no modern web collaboration option it is dead. I'm aware of the attempts to make it run via browser, and no, they aren't really there, not even close. What we need today is a web-first suite of apps that does everything Google Docs/Spreadsheets/Slides do, but uses OpenDocument family of standards as their native file format.
- john01dav 1y agoIt isn't dead because it can still be used for many use cases. I write many documents in LibreOffice Writer and I regularly use LibreoOffice Calc for financial calculations. Also, LibreOffice Calc is a stupid name because it conflicts with the calculator in application launchers that search for substrings.
- eviks 1y agoThe last issue is trivially solved with a differently named alias?
- uzuituo 1y agoI use Libreoffice at work to open and edit MS Office files and it works mostly fine, except for PowerPoint (missing fonts but also general madness). In general, I think the LibreOffice folks did a great job, esp. when it comes to MS file format support. And of course they need to, because I (and I guess most people) actually open more Ms files with LibreOffice than files in LOs native formats.
- pieter_mj 1y agogroklaw.net dived deep into this. AFAICR, MS never achieved round tripping between their own formats, let alone ODF. It was a lock in scheme where MS would delegate people to the ODF committees (don't remember the official name) to sabotage them from the inside.
- upofadown 1y agoWhat is important here is that when confronted with customer interest in the open ODF standard, Microsoft created an entirely different "open" standard and then used their influence to push it. This is a routine technique used by dominant players in many technical industries. The trick is to not push your standard too hard, then you risk that it becomes an actual industry standard. You need to maintain a balance to maintain both standards, thus significantly reducing the power of both. Perhaps Microsoft is at the point where it doesn't feel all that threatened by ODF and is reducing the value of their standard with complexity. Does Microsoft even bother to produce documents that conform to either standard any more?