Recently, we reported on LibreOffice, accusing Microsoft of intentionally using complex file formats as a tactic to lock in users to Microsoft Office, hindering open source alternatives like LibreOffice. Now, Microsoft has banned LibreOffice developer, Mike Kaganski, from using its services, citing an “activity that violates [its] Services Agreement”.
According to Mike, this happened last Monday when he tried to send a technical email to the LibreOffice dev mailing list, which is a normal part of his routine, but Thunderbird returned an error saying the message couldn’t be sent. His account was blocked upon retry, and he found himself completely logged out of his Microsoft account…
Just moved to Linux, can’t stomach the upgrade to Win 11. I understand nothing, am totally confused, but I’m excited to learn.
when I moved to Linux a couple years ago I felt the exact same way. I dont’ know how old you are but maybe you remember that feeling logging into win 95 or 98 for the very first time and falling in love with computers and what they could do.
I hadn’t felt that way in decades and when I switched to Linux it made me feel like I was a kid again in the late 90s with my very first PC. Switching to Linux made me fall in love with Computers again.
This! Exactly:]
It’s alright - start off easy, do some browsing/text editing/etc, don’t jump to complicated stuff. You’ll get there!
If you come to Windows merely a few weeks after, you’ll feel same discomfort that you feel now. Linux will become more familiar, easy, and predictable.
Just keep on going and enjoy your ride. Oh and - I hope you chose a simple, newbie-friendly distribution. Figuring out technicalities when you didn’t yet have basics is no fun.
This should help with some of the commands
Wasn’t there recently a ban on Distrowatch and certain Linux topics on a bigger social network? And Who was the owner of that network again?
Looks like Big Tech fell out of love with FLOSS after it looked at the GNU manifest and found that their profit interests do not align well any more with a digital civil rights movement. All what they want is people’s work for free, to sell it as theirs.
It’s fun to assume this is Microsoft being petty but the most likely scenario is Microsoft has cut their operating costs to such extremes they no longer have usable services or products.
This always happens when business majors are allowed to make decisions.
Some real Hanlon’s Razor shit.
It looks more like Microsoft’s usual incompetence than a conspiracy against LibreOffice…
“never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”
Microsoft 🍆 Open Source
i remember saying this was just pr bullshit to redditors and them scoffing at it. good times.
Well, yeah, but not like that!
Are there really people who know what open source means that would see this and actually believe it? Who is that even for?
Microsoft and other large corporations do love open source. Open source software saves them tons of money.
OpenSource, not Free/Libre-software
I hope that’s not where the libre code is hosted.
This is his blog article. https://mikekaganski.wordpress.com/2025/07/25/microsoft-anybody-home/
Looking at this, it looks more like Microsoft just screwed it’s auth system in some way for him then intentionally banned him in particular.
I as an IT guy have seen this before SOHO office accounts as well and entirely agree that MS has entirely lost the ability to do IT infrastructure in any useful way. Even at an enterprise level, Exchange and outlook used to be convoluted to learn and administer before they became cloud based, as regedit was your friend and they always buried the settings. Now, it doesn’t require a degree in IT, but rather a pointy hat and a reading of spell books to make things work… Sometimes. Sacrifices of interns might be necessary at the alter of Support, before they’ll answer the phone and you realize they have no more knowledge then you to.
WAS your friend? Bitch, I’m still yo friend! ;)
And now the important question: Sir, exactly how many interns have YOU sacrificed to Micorosoft Khorne? how many skulls did you provide for his throne?
Heck Microsoft doesn’t even allow me to use IMAP, and if I want to use a different client (and not the shitty web one), I have to get permission from my IT administrator.
Funnily enough, the same client (Thubderbid) doesn’t need any confirmation on Mac or Windows, only Linux.
Aww, is the big, predominant, incontestable and great Microsoft suddenly afraid of some foolish, little competitor who of course isn’t fit to hold a candle to them?
Microsoft and anticompetitiveness, an iconic duo
It’s a shame that show shit the bed so badly in the third season
Ok, but why are you a dev of an open source tool but use an M$ service?
Naivity:
I develop open-source code. But that never made me one of the “I hate proprietary software or IT giant corporations” types. I always saw the nice things that Microsoft offered to its users; I saw not only downsides in its products. And I also used (and continue to use) things created by it: Windows to start with (and I develop there, being able to debug and address issues specific to the platform that most of our users use); but also its email service for personal mail.
I’m decidedly NOT a computer expert, but our newest computer, which is always trying to force us to save things to “One Drive,” now no longer even lets me open Libre Office files. Is there any way I can fix that? I would think a bunch of people would be suing MS over that, except that in this current political climate, that’s probably not even going to go anywhere.
Just to make sure I’ve understood you correctly: You are trying to open LibreOffice odt or ods files on a ‘new’ computer with MS Office (365?) installed. Or did you install LibreOffice on that one?
I always saw the nice things that Microsoft offered to its users
I’d understand this perspective in 2005, but 2025?
Well, hopefully he’s learned his lesson, but I doubt it.
Ironic you’re calling them naive and then quoting this. Hahahaha
Stop being toxic.
Sorry, could you explain the irony there? I’m a bit slow.
How is that possibly ironic ? It’s a quote from the guy we are talking about.
You must be on that premium drugs, Get help
It’s incredibly difficult to get away from Microsoft in the corporate/business space.
Yes, but his private e-mail is affected.
True. In his scenario, it would definitely make sense to set up an email on a private domain (or at least self host one).
this exact same thing happened to me a while ago. I really doubt some human blocked my account though. after hours of customer support call and emails (from another account) it finally got unblocked but neither yhe support agent nor me had any clue what happened.
I learned the lesson and gradually moved the dev accounts to a proton email instead.
All the more reason to get LibreOffice
and OnlyOffice!I ditched the latter
The connection between OnlyOffice and Russia has caused some controversy. The company has moved headquarters and attempted to hide its Russian ties through shell companies[21]. The company develops its product in Russia[22] and presents itself in the Russian market as a Russian company[23]. For this reason some Ukrainian businesses have moved away from OnlyOffice[24].
Is everything Russian bad? I understand Ukraine not using anything Russian but the rest of the world?
I didn’t say that necessarily. The reason I dropped it is because I don’t trust the developers to protect the software from the Russian government if they’re based out of Russia.
If I would run a global company based in Russia, I’d also try to hide it, even if no malice is taking place.
This kind of reaction is exactly why.
As long as it’s open source, it should be fine, though.
thx. i hate russia.
If it open source who cares
There are more concerns in the world than just “is it open source?”
I’mbusing it and I haven’t donated to them and probably won’t after reading that bit so not sure how they are making money through me? So yeah it’s different to paying a subscription for something else
You using this thing helps boost metrics and alert search engines and shit. That boosts their visibility. Just using the thing helps the project.
Frankly, if libreoffice made a cleaner looking UI that wasn’t stuck in the 90s more people would take it seriously. It’s functional, but curb appeal helps to attract people, to convince them to give it a chance.
While it doesn’t bring it up to current standards, it does have a tabbed UI that you can enable by going to View --> User Interface
Personally, I don’t fully understand why they don’t make that the default and keep supporting the toolbar design as they’ve always done. I can’t imagine there would be a big backlash from existing users who prefer the toolbar UI
Us OpenSouce/Free-Software fanatics don’t seem so crazy now, dont we
use Linux, not garbage Microsoft fedware
Gosh, I can’t imagine why M$ would block competition!
