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Comment by mksaunders2 | Hacker News Reader

> I still don't understand there isn't a supported version of LibreOffice that I can pay for

But there are, and has been for years, such versions: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business...

> In that way, you can get long-term Service Level Agreements (SLA), personalised assistance, technical support, and custom new features.

Thanks, but not quite what I'm looking for. I want a fully maintained and supported offline word processor and spreadsheet for Linux, much as Windows/OSX has Microsoft Office.

If I felt that LibreOffice was maintained and supported, I would not be asking.

I'm very confused about what you are asking, exactly. In your first post, you ask for "a supported version of LibreOffice that I can pay for", when it's pointed out to you that you can, it's not actually LibreOffice that you want to pay for, because you insinuate it's not maintained and supported?

Even though the paid offer includes technical support and a simple git log shows 50 commits in the past 24 hours in the core repository?

We have different definitions of "supported and maintained". My definition means that it doesn't crash, and that it opens my clients' documents without mangling them. I have absolutely no interest in how many lines of code went into a source code repo in any time period, and I don't want one-to-one technical assistance.

Libreoffice doesn't crash and doesn't mangle documents when opening them. When was the last time you used it?

I use it near-daily. I agree it no longer crashes often. It most certainly does mangle the formatting of imported Word documents.

> It most certainly does mangle the formatting of imported Word documents.

Old binary word docs or recent OOXML based ones? Do you file bug reports?

Typically old binary; unfortunately these are the documents which clients' accounting and legal departments tend to send me. OOXML is better, though not always identical to the Word rendering. Spreadsheets, in fairness, tend to do pretty well.

Bug reports: no. I do participate in open source projects, but I really just want to pay someone else for an office suite.

You could probably pay for someone to fix the few rendering/incompatible issues with those old binary formats as a patch. Any paid solution would likely have similar issues, so paying for the functionally you want/need directly is likely the only alternative to just using Word directly, and you could give back to the community in a big way if that's something you value. It might cost as little as $200 or so.

The problem is I think so few people care about those old binary formats these days, so there probably isn't much demand to improve compatibility for the edge cases you are encountering.

You can use Collabora's version.

https://www.collaboraonline.com/subscriptions/

Specifically Collabora Office - https://www.collaboraonline.com/collabora-office/ - since one of the points was off-line (those subscriptions are for the browser-based version)

Hmmm...the linked Linux version is an unsupported snapshot...to get the supported version you need to contact them.

[1] https://www.collaboraonline.com/collabora-office-latest-snap...

Yeah, as I understand it you have to buy it to get the supported version.

Not sure why they don't have an online store or something and you have to contact them to purchase it though, that seems to add unnecessary friction for someone who just wants a single license (makes more sense for enterprise users).

You can buy the Mac and Windows version online for a small fee. I guess interest in a "boxed" Linux version is low enough they don't make it easy to buy a single license.

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