April 1, 2026
April Fool or office-suite knife fight?
The Document Foundation ejects its core developers
April Fool vibes, real fallout: forums cry mutiny, jokes fly
TLDR: A Collabora post alleges The Document Foundation kicked out dozens of LibreOffice contributors, joking it’s April 1 but insisting it’s real. Comments split between ‘mutiny!’ and ‘what’s happening?,’ mixing rebellion memes with worries about volunteer governance and demands for receipts—because an open‑source office suite many rely on is at risk.
Open-source office drama just went full telenovela. A fiery Collabora blog alleges The Document Foundation (the nonprofit behind LibreOffice) just kicked out 30+ members, including several of the project’s biggest code contributors. Then came the twist: the post drops on April 1, winks at April Fool’s… and then insists it’s actually true. That’s all the internet needed.
The comments lit up. One user pointed to a brewing uprising in the forums with a “rebellion” vibe, while others begged for a clearer explainer. “I read the entire article and still can’t figure out what the author is talking about,” sighed one, calling it more rage than receipts. Another compared it to the “Reddit moderator problem,” arguing that when a project runs on unpaid volunteers, politics can eat the work. There’s also crossover whiplash: people invoked the recent Ruby Central blow-up and wondered if 2024 is simply “the year of open-source governance chaos.”
Of course, the internet brought jokes. One commenter imagined a wild plot twist: LibreOffice merging back into OpenOffice — “the circle of the decade.” Memes dubbed it the Office Suite Civil War and a “double April Fool.” Beneath the snark, a real worry: if these claims are true, pushing out veteran contributors could hurt the software millions use, and the crowd wants transparency, timelines, and both sides to speak up.
Key Points
- •The article claims TDF’s Membership Committee ejected all Collabora staff and partners (over 30 people) from TDF membership, including seven of the top ten core committers currently at Collabora.
- •It lists several founders—Thorsten Behrens, Jan “Kendy” Holesovsky, Rene Engelhard, Caolan McNamara, Michael Meeks, Cor Nouws, Italo Vignoli—as no longer TDF members, noting remaining active founders are paid TDF staff not coding core.
- •The piece alleges governance issues at TDF: non-technical board stacking, overridden decisions, process violations, and reviving old code to compete with Collabora without a clear technical plan.
- •Further allegations include misuse of donor funds for legal actions, inconsistent trademark enforcement, flawed tendering and non-payment for delivered code (while selling it in app stores), election delays/overturns, bylaw changes, and ejection of conference organizers.
- •Framed with an April 1 setup, the author asserts the situation is real and reiterates Collabora’s commitment to LibreOffice, crediting historic contributors like StarDivision, Sun, Oracle, SUSE, and Red Hat.