Red Hat has announced its decision to halt the supply of RPM packages containing Libreoffice for the next major branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 distribution. The company will also decrease its involvement in Libreoffice packages for Fedora, a previous engagement of Red Hat workers. Users who intend to install LibreOffice will be encouraged to utilize packages in the Flatpak format instead.
Mathias Clasen, the leader of the Fedora Desktop Team and participant of the Gnome Release Team, disclosed the solution. According to him, it is because of the redistribution of resources in the Red Hat Display Systems Team, which was assembling Libreoffice for Fedora and Rhel. The team’s priorities will shift towards addressing issues and flaws related to the Wayland protocol and incorporating HDR support, color management mechanisms, and other workstation-related enhancements deemed necessary by users.
As a compromise, they decided to stop work on desktop applications, discontinue the provision of Libreoffice in the upcoming Rhel branch’s primary composition, and refrain from supporting packages that contain Libreoffice for Fedora. The accompanying packages containing Libreoffice in the current RHEL 7.8 and 9 branches will remain unchanged. Additionally, they plan to transfer corrections to improve the potential for an office package in Flatpak format, making the format RHEL’s primary method of installing Libreoffice in the long run.
It is possible that the community will undertake their support for Libreoffice packages in the RPM and Flatpak format. But since the delivery of Libreoffice constitutes a substantial block of bags and dependencies, it will necessitate a significant amount of work.