LibreOffice 26.8 pulled in 1,031,162 downloads in its first week, the highest ever for the office suite, after The Document Foundation doubled down on shipping zero built-in generative AI features.
Read the full story: LibreOffice 26.8 Sets a Download Record by Skipping AI →
Transcript
LibreOffice just had its best first week ever. Version 26 point 8 pulled in over one million downloads in seven days, more than any release in the project's history. And it did that while doubling down on having zero built-in AI features. The Document Foundation laid out six rules any AI feature would have to clear: user control, no data leaving your machine, no telemetry, no vendor lock-in, no format changes, and it has to stay optional. So far, nothing has cleared that bar.
Here's the twist though. Collabora, the company behind a lot of LibreOffice's actual code, got removed from the foundation back in April. And its own version just shipped AI anyway, opt-in, off by default. Same codebase, two very different answers.