I was asked to help someone out a while ago, and he'd bought the S version of Windows where everything has to be installed via the store, until you pay like £50 to remove the restrictions. Libre Office was in there at something like, £8. No clue where the cash went, ie. Microsoft or what, but it's not news to me.

Is switching from S-mode no longer free? According to

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/switching-out-of-s-mode-in-windows-4f56d9be-99ec-6983-119f-031bfb28a307

'There's no charge to switch out of S mode.' It does specifically say that:

'If you also see an "Upgrade your edition of Windows" section, be careful not to click the "Go to the Store" link that appears there.' So even their own help page notes that there is a trap there to snare the unwary. Thanks Microsoft.

I'd like to know if this is out-of-date and you really do need to pay to get out of S-mode, so please correct me if this page is stale.

I like LO precisely BECAUSE it's LOCAL Office, and would happily pay to support it. I'd rather pay them €10 p.a. if it helped development (especially of the moribund Base) than pay MS for the privilege of having them keep all my stuff

But you'd have to buy it from your local shop - you know, the one for local people.

You do realise that Office has never lost the ability to keep your stuff local?

For now.

As this appears to create competition for Collabora's offering it would be interesting to get a reaction from them.

As this appears to create competition for Collabora's offering it would be interesting to get a reaction from them.

[1]Probably less than impressed given that The Document Foundation does not fund any sort of development, and as of 2020, Collabora were providing about 25 of the 40 full-time developers working on LibreOffice and complaining about the difficulties inherent in operating in this ecosystem.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/libreoffice_ecosystem_beyond_utterly_broken/

For many of us who prefer to live and work totally outside the MS world, this is a huge advantage and most certainly not a negative.

Please take your 'MS is the only solution' blinkers off. We all know that their software is shite (all those horrific patch tuesday articles are pretty damming evidence) so why keep on perpetuating the myth that the only choice is to use MS shit.

Which part of "here is how you pay for it" provides the advantage on top of "here is a free thing"?

One click installation.

And on a company Mac you can keep the security setting of 'Allow apps downloaded from the App store' turned on.

And on a company Mac you can keep the security setting of 'Allow apps downloaded from the App store' turned on.

Collabora Office, which is basically just re-skinned LO. As an added bonus, the money actually goes to a key contributor to LO and funds development, not TDF (who don't/can't fund any sort of development).

MacOS (and I think iOS as well) has a handy system for entering accents which consists of holding down a key until a popu menu appears, allowing you to choose between the various accents available by number, i.e. è means hold won 'e' for a bit, then select '4' from the menu. If you write in English and need the occaional one it's perfect (if you need lots of them you either make a shortcut or get a keyboard in that language).

The problem: LibreOffice does not use it, instead it has a very convoluted other-than-straight-ASCII entry that must stem from the days of WordPerfect and Wordstar. I think it's been repeatedly filed as a bug, but for some reason it never made it in, whereas derivatives such as NeoOffice (also available on the App Store) do, thus making those for more than just casual use the preferred option. If the Document Foundation has still not addressed this I suspect there will be plenty pressure to do so now they're charging for it as they're in principle breaking Apple's UI standards. The very fact that otherwise everything works the same on MacOS is one of the strong selling points of MacOS, so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Hmmm, a quick look in macos help reveals a way to enter accents using the 'option key'.

For example option-i followed by a gives â

That is not the same workflow. The OP is correct and you don't understand the issue.

à á â ä æ ã å ā

It took me seconds to type that using the Mac method. What am I supposed to do with LO? Remember 8 different key combinations?

French has libre and gratuit, English conflates them as free.

Libre Office is, perhaps surprisingly, libre. Free as in speech.

The FSF and other FLOSS licence writers make it perfectly clear that charging for media, convenience, configuration, support is fine.

That many do all or some of those things gratuit is just an indication of the size of actual costs involved. Too cheap to meter.

LibreOffice started from software which they did not themselves pay for. It was given away for free by Sun.

LibreOffice did not need to call itself LibreOffice to confuse the issue. They could have called themselves "NotFreeOffice", or taken a leaf out of the more-obscure-is-better naming scheme in use by some Linux distros (Iceweasel? hahaha). How about MeteorOffice or MoonOffice?

But no. To confound the issue which just causes the occasional explanation from people like yourself that Libre does not mean free or gratis. And we all get bored as a result. Because we have heard it so many times.

I use LibreOffice and support them financially. I figure if an Office 365 subscription is $10 a month, I can give the same money to LibreOffice. Charging for LibreOffice may get the Document Foundation some revenue as long as the money is put back into improving LibreOffice. Also it would be nice if they said something to the effect that the suite is available is a download free on their site. I also like LibreOffice because it isn't cloud based. Maybe someday there will be a cloud version and if so okay. At least LibreOffice will not be nagging us like Microsoft does to set up a Microsoft Account and subscribe to all of their service. Softmaker Office is also a great alternative to MS Office.

Charging for LibreOffice may get the Document Foundation some revenue as long as the money is put back into improving LibreOffice.

It isn't. The Document Foundation hosts the project but they don't fund any development.

[1]Companies toiling away the most on LibreOffice code complain ecosystem is 'beyond utterly broken', El Reg, 2020

Alongside Collabora, there were 15 developers from SUSE, five from Red Hat, one from Canonical, seven from the city of Munich (part of its embrace of open source), and some 40 others from various companies. Many of those have now dropped out, or reduced their commitment, leaving around 40 paid developers in total – of whom Collabora provides 25 and CIB, a Munich-based specialist in document management, seven.

Meeks believes "LibreOffice is at serious risk," though the matter is complex. TDF has around €1.5m in the bank, Meeks said, but something that may surprise outsiders is that the foundation cannot and does not use that money to employ developers.

Thorsten Behrens, IT lead for LibreOffice at CIB, told The Register he was "99 per cent in agreement" with Meeks, adding: "The TDF is a charity; it's not in the business of developing software and actually cannot, because that would put it in competition with the commercial ecosystem," as well as threatening its charitable status.

Most donations go to TDF so if the commercial providers of developers reduce their commitment, TDF remains but the development effort diminishes. This also means that contributing to LibreOffice by paying for support is currently more effective than donating money to TDF.

Ironically, the best way to support Libre Office development is probably to buy the Collabora Office re-skin version from (Cambridge-based) Collabora.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/libreoffice_ecosystem_beyond_utterly_broken/

I don't mind this, it's still free for personal use and should help at least a little with fundraising. $9 for LibreOffice is a price I'd be willing to pay. Hell, even if it's $9 a computer and I have 300 of them -- Microsoft Office is what, a few hundred per computer? And it's not as standards-respecting.

Charging for open-source programs in app stores is nothing new. It is Good that LibreOffice gets a share directly in this way. you can still get LibreOffice gratis for Windows, Linux and probably also for the Mac if "side-loaded" (? I have no idea if Macs still permit it, for me the Apple universe is alien).

I do occasionally send a donation to Document Foundation, as should anyone who wants to ensure there remains at least one full-featured office suite that works locally, and does not make your documents hostage to the whims of some Corporation.

and arguably be superior to the App Store offering, because that version will include Java.

Some us would would argue the exact opposite...

Not surprised that there aren't many Linux downloads. I expect most people just run apt-get / rpm / yum / whatever and use whatever their distro includes.