The challenges of FLOSS Office Suites

Why Office is not as easy as you might hope. Come and hear about office algorithms & data structures, as well as the interesting engineering challenges of interoperability from the Libre / Collabora Office experience.

Hear how many decades of accumulated backwards compatibility can make life particularly interesting. See why the temptation to start a new office suite from scratch overwhelms many people from time to time, and get some insights into the compromises that brings.

Hear about a code-base that has been loved over decades - through many tech fashions: from Java to component programming; from OS/2 to today's advertising subsidized platform of the future: the Web; from CADT methodology, to CRDT data structures; from bundled python to bundled databases.

Hear about the incredible lack of user focus that has plagued decisions and made many things worse.

Then hear our vision on driving FLOSS Office to take over the world and progress to date; see a number of pretty pixels to sooth your eyes chosen from the ergonomic beauty that is coming to make open source rock.

Finally hear how you can get involved with Collabora Online & LibreOffice.