The Collabora Online Blog is by Collabora, which builds LibreOffice-based online and desktop office software.
HN links it when discussing LibreOffice-based web office options, with some praising the work and one complaining about a gated document.
May I recommend Libre Office? [0] For casual/home use, it should meet needs. Free, no subscription. Spreadsheet can collaborate. [1]
Collabra Office seems to be the port of LibreOffice to ios. (free) Look it up on the app store.
> Collabora Office is a text editor, spreadsheet and presentation program based on LibreOffice, the world's most popular Open Source office suite - and now it's on iOS, enhancing your possibilities to work on mobile devices.
Collaborative versions, a.k.a. Collabra online are available, but hosting is never free.
But TBH, I am your "more casual than casual" office suite user and the bundled Apple apps do my minimal office tasks, and are compatible with MS formats.
[0] https://www.libreoffice.org/
[1] https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/guide/collab.html
[2] https://www.collaboraonline.com/
I do like this news, but I wonder why they choose LibreOffice. It's the most widely known MS alternative, but things like OnlyOffice [0] and Nextcloud Office [1] (which is based on Collabora Online [2], which in turn is based on LibreOffice) offer much more compelling collaborative features, imho. Just plain office (like it's 1997) is quite a step back, no?
Especially OnlyOffice looks extremely similar to MS Office, I have it on all our Linux laptops at home so the kids don't feel much difference between home and school envs. I think document interoperability (as in: Looks similar) is also better.
[0] https://www.onlyoffice.com/
[1] https://nextcloud.com/office/
[2] https://www.collaboraonline.com/
Please help me understand where the missing comma is supposed to be in:
> their Membership Committee has decided to eject from membership all Collabora staff and partners over thirty people who ...
Is it:
1) "eject from membership all Collabora staff and partners, over thirty people ..."
2) "eject from membership all Collabora staff and partners over thirty, people who ..."
:-?
Edit: that's from the article this post leads to: <https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/tdf-ejects-its-core-developers/>
(Downvoted for asking for legitimate clarification? Seriously? Age discrimination _is_ a real thing, so there's no way of knowing, for lack of a comma, which interpretation was intended.)
No, I don't think LibreOffice is the answer. And I am with you here, I would love to be wrong. One issue is that it doesn't really work well online. The folks from Collabora[1] have done an amazing job at wrapping LibreOffice for the web and maybe that is a way to go?
As a sibling comment says you don't need to implement absolutely everything Excel does to _disrupt_ Excel. But you do need to provide a fantastic tool that is easy to use and solves 99% of the problems. If governments start putting their money were their mouth is I am very convinced we can create tools that supersede Excel, Word,...
[1]: https://www.collaboraonline.com/
I recommend you un-discover it and take a look at the Collabora office suite. It's basically the LibreOffice engine with a web ui on top. We've been using both OnlyOffice and CODE for years, and CODE has much better performance (both the client and the server; probably because the backend is in C++ instead of Node), it's more stable over the long term, and has better compatibility with msoffice.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/code
https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code
(it's FOSS, the language about "home use" is there to scare large companies into buying commercial versions with support contracts.)
I don't think that will work. How many of us did contribute a simple patch to LibreOffice, Firefox, or GNOME?
At least this statement doesn't hold for LibreOffice. Their Online version, including "simple" HTML/CSS components, was archived because of a lack of maintainers. For their main project, the vast majority of contributions in the last release were made by former ecosystem partners (Collabora) or TDF staff. Volunteers only did a fraction of the work [1].
[1]: https://www.collaboraonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/LO-26.2-Contributors-011-1024x675.png