LibreOffice Stakes Claim as Strategic Sovereignty Tool For Governments (documentfoundation.org) 46
The Document Foundation, which operates the popular open source productivity suite LibreOffice, is positioning the suite's newest release, v25.8, as a strategic asset for digital sovereignty, targeting governments and enterprises seeking independence from foreign software vendors and cloud infrastructure.
The Document Foundation released the update last week with zero telemetry architecture, full offline capability, and OpenPGP encryption for documents, directly addressing national security concerns about extraterritorial surveillance and software backdoors. The suite requires no internet access for any features and maintains complete transparency through open source code that governments can audit. Government bodies in Germany, Denmark, and France, alongside national ministries in Italy and Brazil, have deployed LibreOffice to meet GDPR compliance, national procurement laws, and IT localization mandates while eliminating unpredictable licensing costs from proprietary vendors.
"It's time to own your documents, own your infrastructure, and own your future," the foundation wrote in a blog post.
The Document Foundation released the update last week with zero telemetry architecture, full offline capability, and OpenPGP encryption for documents, directly addressing national security concerns about extraterritorial surveillance and software backdoors. The suite requires no internet access for any features and maintains complete transparency through open source code that governments can audit. Government bodies in Germany, Denmark, and France, alongside national ministries in Italy and Brazil, have deployed LibreOffice to meet GDPR compliance, national procurement laws, and IT localization mandates while eliminating unpredictable licensing costs from proprietary vendors.
"It's time to own your documents, own your infrastructure, and own your future," the foundation wrote in a blog post.
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Is that of any importance to a governmental organization with their own private network and centrally managed VPN?
It's 2025 and the buzzword of the day is zero trust.
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Forget about encryption, LibreOffice is missing collaboration on documents in real time, and this is of importance.
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As we realised at work decades ago, having to send our data over networks operated by our competitors, if you want to talk about things which involve the network carrier, then the way to do it is offline, not on-network.
Automatically encrypted documents, with the keys required on every decryption and stored completely separately is the way to go. You cannot assume the network is a neutral player.
Is it compatible with your business' workflow? Maybe not. That is a problem for you and your workflow.
Re: EEE (Score:1)
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Penguins are birds.
Penguins are mammals.
Penguins are not dinosaurs.
Therefore, only SOME birds are dinosaurs.
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Penguins are not mammals. Their young are not born alive, nor do they produce milk for the young.
All birds are dinosaurs.
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It is true.
And I did run out of space in the sig. I tried about 20 ways of phrasing it before I settled on that one. Which was about 2000, as I recall.
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https://www.alamy.com/a-vertic... [alamy.com]
Check and meet libtardo.
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You are correct. It was a rare error on my part.
I was thinking of your mother, not penguins. My mistake. I do apologize.
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Just because they're inside an eggshell, breathing through it's pores, consuming it's internal yolk, and excreting into it's internal amnion, doesn't mean they're not alive. It may not be life like yours (running, jumping, chasing wombats), but it's still life.
Corollary : having chicken's eggs for breakfast is the moral equivalent of eating your mother's periods - they're potential lives that didn't meet the right environment to develop (a sperm, various biochemical factors, and an implantable substrate).
I
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Go milk a penguin then.
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Thank you Jack Byrnes
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And you sir, are either a moron, or believing what your cult-leader is telling you.
If penguins are birds, then penguins are not mammals.
I'll grant a window for incomprehension, and allow that penguins are both birds and homeothermic. Most birds are homeothermic. In order to operate at the power levels required for flight, flying animals need their muscles to be warm, which requires maintenance of a fairly constant (Greek :"homeos-") internal temperature (Latin or Greek? : "-thermos"). Homeothermy is necessa
That's wierd (Score:4, Interesting)
Can I just have a software that works on my computer, stores data on my computer, and does not do all that fancy "telemetry" thing, please?
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The Though Police from NSA/ ICE will be knocking the remains of your door off their breaching weapons any minute now. How DARE you even think about not having their benign oversight of your obviously terrorist thought processes.
Re:That's wierd (Score:5, Funny)
Re: That's wierd (Score:1)
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Luckily, I am in Canada, so NSA / ICE / FBI have no jurisdiction here.
Yet.
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... I am in Canada...
I'm so sorry. My deepest sympathies.
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I am just saying that failing empires have a bad habit of expanding their borders in order to loot other countries so they can keep their coffers full as the incompetent and corrupt boobs running the country empty them...
I noticed nobody else in the world helped us Americans out when Russia was attacking our elections with crazy amounts of propaganda.
Your ruling classes are hoping that as America falls they will rise.
That would work if America wasn't so crazy that we
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And if we'd commented on $Crazy_Ad$ number 346890 as being obviously insane Russian propaganda, which turned out to have been written by the Mothers of the KuKuxKlan (Kansas Khapter), a genuine cross-burning bigot group from (some Kansas village) ... well, how the fuck are we meant to tell. One insane bigot sounds very much like an advertising executive team trying to sound li
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No, but you have your own equivalents, plus MI6.
Someone got your truckers bank account a few years ago, or have you forgotten?
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Someone got your truckers bank account a few years ago, or have you forgotten?
That was a good thing. These truckers had been occupying our country's capital for weeks, financed illegally by foreign countries. And this was a conspiracy movement, looking to overthrow the government. I understand and am 100% behind my government seizing their funds. They were also blocking some major commercial borders and routes across Canada. This is the nearest you can be from an attack by a foreign country without receiving actual bombs.
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MI6 are a UK body.
While they probably do operate in Canada, it will be against Canadians planning or carrying out crimes in Britain, and with the cooperation of the Canadian authorities.
And the Canadian authorities similarly carry out operations in Britain against Britons with criminal plans in Canada.
It's a concept called collaboration within the law. Perhaps you could introduce it to your authorities. All we get is teenagers splattered over the bonnets of drunken American's cars, followed by expedited ren
Re:That's wierd (Score:5, Informative)
I thought that online capability was a feature. It seems nowadays that "offline capability" is now the feature.
They are both features, and LibreOffice offers both, and you neither have to pay subscription fees nor are there any hoops to jump through to switch, or to use both at once.
Can I just have a software that works on my computer, stores data on my computer, and does not do all that fancy "telemetry" thing, please?
Yes, you can have LibreOffice and use it in that way. You can disable any phoning home, automatic updates, etc.
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I thought that online capability was a feature. It seems nowadays that "offline capability" is now the feature.
It's almost like different features exist for different purposes. Did you type this on an iPad, Laptop, gaming PC? Why do all three exist?
Can I just have a software that works on my computer, stores data on my computer, and does not do all that fancy "telemetry" thing, please?
You can, LibreOffice. On the other hand other people may want Collabora Online to suit their workspace better. All the benefits of online collaboration groupware without the Microsoft stink. Your use case is not the same as everyone else's.
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It's almost like different features exist for different purposes. Did you type this on an iPad, Laptop, gaming PC? Why do all three exist?
The CEO of Apple will fix this situation.
He will don a collared black sweatshirt and sneakers,
and announce that "Today, we are bringing you three
new products: an iPad, a Laptop, and a Gaming PC."
An iPad. a Laptop. and a Gaming PC...
An iPad...a Laptop...and a Gaming PC...
With iPadTopOS 1.0, we will integrate all three of
our platforms into the world's best mobile device.
It even integrates with your phone and watch.
And we've decided to go back to our roots,
so the new device will feature our best innovation
in u
US Thought Piolice will soon (Score:1)
be using "they have terrorist software on their computer" - viz : LibreOffice - as evidence of intention to perform un-American Activities.
To quote the Dead Kennedys, "Holiday in El Salvador".
Mickeysoft Orifice is trash, and so is Windows (Score:1)
I launched Excel yesterday. Today it was unresponsive and when I tried to quit it, it popped up a tiny window with no contents. I had to force it to quit from the task mangler because Windows (10) never offered me the option to force it to quit no matter how many close gadgets I clicked on without success.
I can leave LibreOffice Calc running for days or even weeks with no issues.
Running Windows or Office is asking to be abused.
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I've had excel running for months with no issues. Of course, it's an old version running on an old OS on old hardware, all of which was pre-enshittifications.
What's missing (Score:3)
1990s me is very surprised (Score:3)
1990s me is very surprised that somebody would have to go out of their way to make sure a word processor ran on their computer without automatically connecting to a network, and without needing a network for full functionality.
Every so often I put myself in the mindset of 1990s me looking at technology today, and what I mostly hear is, "Wow, you have a lot of capability, but WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???"
Microsoft file format support (Score:2)
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There is a lovely Venn diagram meme running around with two circles, "Incel" and "Excel". The overlap is labeled "Incorrectly assuming something is a date".
Having to paste, change formats, and paste again is part of the ritual of using Excel. Nobody should be using it for science-ing when they could use a database and a real reporting tool, it's irritating enough when handling financial info. I used to be paid to use Crystal Reports. These days when I want to view some data, I use Drupal, and a fairly simpl
Hoping Governments do more than just use. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm hoping governments that like this see the sense in putting resources into development, not just using it. A lot could be achieved if governments invest part of what they save by not paying Microshaft subscription fees.
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Germany has the sovereign tech fund (STF) that pumps money into open source, and the EU is looking at an EU-wide version of the same thing!
Here comes another tariff (Score:1)
Trump is going to slap a tariff on countries that donâ(TM)t use office software from Microsoft or Apple.
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Trump is going to slap a tariff on countries that don't use office software from Microsoft or Apple.
Only after taking a 10% stake in both. Tribute must be paid.