LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

piker

It’s also been baked into Codex. Go figure

firefax

I've been using Libreoffice to store my diary for years -- IIRC they use blowfish on the crypto side of things? I had a weird issue a while back where I'm not sure if I forgot my diary's password, or the file got corrupted. I've had that happen a few times, each with a long space in between I keep things on paper. It's a great project that doesn't get enough love.

smokel

The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.

ChrisArchitect

Related: Yes, no (built-in) AI is now a feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553350

tiahura

Hopefully LibreOffice is one of the projects that gets free Pro Max accounts from A and O. Corporations have been trying Star/Open/LibreOffice migrations for literally 30 years at this point. And, at the pace it’s been going, it will probably take another 30 for it to reach Word 95 polish.

dotinvictim

enough with this anti ai noise resistance is futile it's getting popular due to improved ui

jgbuddy

Could also be due to the fact that every codex install includes a copy of libreoffice

hn_submit

Companies are totally blind to the fact that A.I. is a complete turn-off to many customers. Not having / using A.I. may even become a unique selling point in the future.

thataccount

This is the way!

Joel_Mckay

Are you sure it wasn't Microsoft doing a rug-pull October 13 on offline Office 2021 pro lifetime license installations for MacOS. A lot of people are not happy about that stunt. =3

rietta

This is awesome! I have used LibreOffice (and Open Office) extensively for decades now. It is my real office suite I use for real work and real business accounting tasks. Yes, I am very well aware that Calc is different than Excel but it can get nearly all the same tasks done as long as you are not tied deep into a corporate environment passing Excel-specific files around. I have also made great business uses of it in Docker too, generating perfect PDFS from templates, and normalizing document formats for analysis. I donate a modest $19/month personally to the foundation, much rather pay them than Microsoft!

advenn

Do nothing and win

jan_m_savage

Regardless of the fact that the 'record download' levels is probably due to some other factor, the world is already becoming conscious that the so-called AI is not all it's cracked up to be.

airstrike

Both Codex and Claude (on the web) use LibreOffice to edit docs, so not sure you can really conclude it broke download records because end users didn't want AI in Office and went with LibreOffice instead

mchusma

Can you control it agentically? If so it’s has all the ai features I would want. I typically don’t care for built in ai features.

esbranson

UNO is for programmatic access. StarOffice ftw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Network_Objects

bonoboTP

Very annoying that AI is this new virtue signaling topic. I guess it's a step up from a few years ago when it was about naming branches, but it's annoying. Libreoffice is free software that's the big point of it. You can mod it and stip what's you dislike. I'd be glad if people developed AI integration with it. One could do that with AI itself. I've successfully modded free software with AI in many ways, adding features to Blender, for example. This binary pro of pro and anti AI buzz is just annoying. Privacy is important. But AI is treated by some people as if it was some nuclear waste. In fact it's very similar to the anti nuclear green movement. It's an emotional aesthetic response.

alightsoul

Another reason why it might be hitting records is many companies getting rid of Microsoft 365 downloads for desktop and only allowing use of the web version. And apparently it's the first thing that comes up when you try to download Microsoft 365? People don't try to pirate it anymore, they just download LibreOffice

parasxos

No AI features is the first feature in years that shipped on time and worked on the first try.

Topgamer7

Been using libreoffice for years. Here's hoping increased usage will lead to improvements in the "table" functionality. Like when you can define a table, and hit tab at the last column will put you at the next row first column. Missed that from MS office.