Berlin/Cambridge, January 13, 2026 – Wire, Europe’s leader in secure communication and sovereign collaboration, and Collabora Productivity, the company behind Collabora Online, today announce a strategic partnership to advance secure, interoperable, and sovereignty-focused collaboration capabilities for organizations globally.

The partnership brings together two European technology providers with a shared commitment to open standards, transparent architectures, and verifiable security. It is designed to support governments, critical infrastructure operators, regulated industries, and enterprises seeking modern collaboration solutions operated under European jurisdiction and governance.

As part of the partnership, Wire and Collabora will work together to enable seamless, sovereignty-aligned document collaboration experiences within Wire’s secure workspace environment, including future availability as part of Wire Cells — Wire’s upcoming sovereign workspace offering. The collaboration emphasizes European control, interoperability, and optionality, while maintaining Wire’s model of a unified product, single vendor relationship, and consistent support framework for customers.

A Partnership Focused on Digital Sovereignty and Interoperability

The Wire–Collabora partnership reinforces the growing demand for European alternatives to proprietary collaboration ecosystems operated outside the EU. By aligning secure communication, structured file management, and open productivity technologies, the two companies aim to contribute to a more resilient and interoperable digital ecosystem in Europe.

Both organizations share a long-standing focus on security-sensitive environments and data-protection-driven customers. The partnership supports customers who prioritize sovereignty, compliance readiness, transparency in technology architecture, and long-term independence from closed cloud platforms.

Benjamin Schilz, CEO, Wire:
“Digital sovereignty requires strong European collaboration between trusted technology providers. Partnering with Collabora strengthens our ecosystem and reinforces our mission to provide secure, interoperable collaboration for organizations that cannot compromise on control, transparency, or jurisdiction. This partnership aligns with our strategy of building a sovereign workspace that customers can rely on end-to-end under a single, accountable vendor relationship.”

Michael Meeks, CEO, Collabora Productivity:
“We are pleased to partner with Wire, a company that shares our commitment to openness, sovereignty, and user control. Together, we are helping organizations reduce dependency on proprietary ecosystems and move toward collaboration environments that are secure, transparent, and fully aligned with European values and regulatory expectations.”

About Wire

Wire is the enterprise-class secure workspace platform, delivering messaging, audio, video, and file-sharing capabilities at scale, protected by state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption based on the MLS standard. Wire provides an enterprise-grade alternative to collaboration suites offered by large technology vendors whose business models rely on data monetization. Wire removes the trade-off between productive collaboration and strong data protection, privacy, and compliance. Wire is trusted by security-sensitive government and defense agencies, global enterprises, and millions of users worldwide. More information: https://wire.com/en/

About Collabora Productivity

Collabora Productivity provides Collabora Online, an open-source solution for document editing and collaboration, complemented by desktop and mobile applications for multi-platform use. Through an extensive partner network, Collabora delivers supported, enterprise-ready deployments focused on open source, digital sovereignty, and GDPR compliance, providing secure and interoperable productivity solutions at scale.

The post Wire and Collabora Productivity Announce Strategic Partnership to Strengthen Secure and Sovereign Collaboration appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Welcome back to our interview series, where we chat with the passionate people behind the Collabora Online code. Collabora Online is made possible by the worldwide team, community, contributors and partners. Today, we’re sitting down with Skyler Grey who we previously met during her internship. Since then she has been fine-tuning the mobile experience and shares insights that illuminate why the ‘little things’ truly make a difference.

About Skyler

Skyler is a software developer at Collabora, focusing primarily on enhancing the mobile apps of Collabora Online. Based out of the Cambridge office, Skyler has a knack for catching “papercuts”—those small usability issues that, when fixed, greatly improve the user experience. Her commitment to open source extends beyond her job, as an active contributor to several other projects and a passionate advocate for free and open source software (FOSS).

What inspired you to get into Open Source? What was your first experience with tech?

I’ve been into tech for a long time – when I was 11 my parents got me a Raspberry Pi and I had some fun messing around with HTML and python. It wasn’t until the start of high school that I really got into computing though. What really got me hooked was my friends who would go in before the start of the day to hang out in the computer labs. Sometimes we played Minecraft, sometimes we opened up old teachers’ laptops, sometimes we wrote code together. The first time I released code publicly it was because GitHub didn’t allow private code without paying. I wanted my code to be on GitHub so I put a note in the README saying “please don’t use this” and put it out into the world. I soon found, however, that releasing code publicly wasn’t so scary and I quite enjoyed it. My code stopped having notes in READMEs to avoid people using it and started to have open source licenses. It became a habit to release every project of mine into the world. Eventually I started finding and fixing issues in the projects I used as well as the ones I made, and the rest is history.

How did you first hear about Collabora Online?

Michael Meeks gave a talk about how to solve large problems at my sixth form college. I had already heard of and used LibreOffice at that point, but it was my first time hearing about Collabora Online. At the end of the talk, he said that if we wanted an internship over the summer we should send him an email. I did, and it was such a great fit that I’m still here 3 years later!

What does working with Open Source mean to you?

It means that the code I write is really, truly free. I mean free as in freedom here. If I worked on code that was not open source, I would have to hide what I was doing and how I was doing it. My code would not be contributing to the community of people who’s work I use and thrive off of every day. As my code is open source, anyone can take code that I have written and use it in their own projects without further permission from me. I think that collaboration, freedom and the feeling of an empowered community is something that we have in open source which you don’t really get in proprietary projects.

What’s the one Collabora Online feature you’re most excited about right now?

It’s the little things that excite me. I think one thing I’m very happy about – which I see as emblematic of more improvements – is the new notebook bar changes. That’s things like the collapsing of large sections down into smaller ones when your screen size changes, say. I see it as emblematic of UI improvements all around Collabora Online. In-fact, what I’ve just been working on falls into that category too: changing the search icons so they match up better between light/dark theme and computers/mobile devices. It’s a tiny papercut really, but papercuts add up.

What are going to be the biggest development challenges over the next few years?

Technology, and the world as a whole, have changed a lot over the past few years. It’s really hard to predict the future, but if I had to say then I would say it’d be weathering that change. That can often mean adapting to what browsers and device manufacturers are doing just to stay the same – for instance I’ve recently been working on a bug which only appeared when you accessed Collabora Online from an Android 16 device. Keeping stuff working as the world changes also shouldn’t have an effect on you, so it’s sometimes fairly thankless, but it’s vital. It’s the salt in your cooking; if it’s properly done, the food may not taste particularly salty – but you’d miss it if it weren’t there. When you’re writing for the platforms we write for, working to the very edge of what is possible on the web sometimes, there can be a lot of maintenance to keep something ticking over without many visible changes.

Describe working at Collabora in three words.

“It’s so open!” I mean this in several ways. First, the people and the culture are very open. At Collabora, people tend to be very receptive to thoughts, ideas and feedback and cross-team communication is encouraged. For example, I’ve had chats with people on the marketing team about technical details so they can better understand and write about the product. I have friends who work in companies where communication of technical people with marketing, sales, etc. is very locked down. I prefer what we have much more.

Second, being open and responsive to our community is encouraged. I enjoy answering questions across different platforms to help others find the solution to their problems. We also incorporate feedback from the app stores into what we plan to do.

And thirdly, and perhaps most obviously, our code is open. Every feature I have written for Collabora Online has been contributed to the commons; shared to the public for everyone to enjoy and build off. I think that’s a beautiful thing.

What’s one productivity tip you swear by?

Spend time making the right thing easy and the wrong things hard. When I don’t follow this, I waste time and procrastinate. When I do follow this, I come to do something and find that a lot of the hard work is already done for me. It’s also – handily – a nice tip for making good user interfaces

Outside of your work, what’s a hobby or interest that you’re passionate about?

I do lots of programming outside of work too; I’m involved in open source even outside of Collabora. I recently was invited to give a talk at the Gerrit User Summit about Jujutsu, and I’ve contributed to projects big and small (REUSE.software for licensing, Fava for my personal accounting, Nixpkgs, Tangled, etc.). I also have the usual bunch of software I make for myself but release under free licenses. Outside of programming I like lots of indoor hobbies – think playing board games, watching television, reading, anything in that area really.

What’s your ‘day in the life’ really like?

Something great about working at Collabora is it’s really flexible. I tend to call with a lot of friends in America so my sleep schedule is “less than ideal”. I work in the Collabora Cambridge Office, which is unusual – most of us work from home – and it’s a short cycle ride away from my house. I normally check my email/messages, do anything that needs to be done – replies to community members, code review, etc., and then settle in to whatever thing I’m working on (normally something about how Collabora Online works on mobile devices). After I’ve worked, I go home. I spend the rest of my day doing my hobbies
and then I go to bed. That, as I say, is a “normal” day – but they don’t all turn out like that. I’ve recently started having a call with some of the people working on the git project which intersects with time when I’d normally be at work – that’s ok, I break for the call and come back afterwards. There’s always options, and I think that’s really nice.

Skyler’s journey is a great example of how starting small, even with a Raspberry Pi and a desire to code with friends, can lead to a career dedicated to contributing to open source. From addressing crucial mobile compatibility issues, to championing the freedom of open source code, her work contributes to ensuring Collabora Online remains a powerful, reliable, and user-friendly office suite for everyone.

The post An Interview with Skyler: Open Culture, Open Community, Open Code appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

This is a text-based press release. View the full release blog here.

Same look. Same code. Your files, your device.

Nov 26, 2025 at 12.00 pm GMT / 13.00 pm CET / 7.00 am ET / 4.00 am PT

Cambridge, November 26, 2025 – Today, Collabora Productivity is excited to share the first release of the new Collabora Office for desktop that brings the familiar, powerful Collabora Online experience, to run locally on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Open it and feel instantly at home: ODF or DOCX, quick edits or deep dives, a clean, ergonomic interface that helps you get work done without getting in the way.

Collabora Online (COOL) is the company’s open-source solution for document editing and collaboration online and at scale. COOL provides a consistent, discoverable user interface (UI) designed with intuitive toolbars and a tabbed interface, which focuses on the tools most people use every day and enables current users to get their work done without clutter.

Today, a first version of the familiar, powerful Collabora Online UI experience enjoyed by over a hundred million downloaders, and that powers businesses, organisations and government bodies across the world, is available to install and run locally as well as online.

“We’re excited to bring a first release of Collabora Office to the desktop, letting desktop users work both on-line and off-line in comfort. We look forward to working with and gaining valuable feedback from our partners, customers, users and community. This release provides an opportunity to see the direction of Collabora Productivity’s products, and as an open source company, we love to work with others to shape and collaborate on new features.”
— Michael Meeks, CEO of Collabora Productivity

What Collabora Office Offers on Desktop

Contemporary office suite: Collabora Office is a streamlined office suite that includes a word processor and desktop publishing program, spreadsheet application, and presentation program, and drawing application for vector graphics and flow charts.

The suite focuses on offering the workflows that most professionals use every day to create, edit, and collaborate, online and offline. For example, the new Collabora Office chooses streamlined defaults and simpler settings than other open source office suites. (See the new Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic comparison table for more details, below.)

Great document interoperability: Being able to open, work on and save different document files is important to users and organisations, which is why Collabora Office supports the OOXML format used by Microsoft Office applications, including Microsoft Word (e.g., DOCX), Microsoft Excel (e.g., XLSX) and Microsoft PowerPoint (e.g., PPTX). As strong advocates for open standards, the new office suite also supports the internationally recognised Open Document Format (ODF), which includes, e.g., ODT for word processing text documents and ODS for spreadsheets.

Privacy by design: Collabora Office is 100% open source code, guaranteeing no spy-ware. The office suite is offline-first—so no documents need to leave a device unless you choose to share them. Collabora only develops productivity solutions that respects a user’s data, their processes, and their digital sovereignty.

Beautiful user interface: Collabora Office uses a consistent and easily discoverable UI with intuitive toolbars and tabbed interface.

Simpler stack: While still based on the LibreOffice core technology, Collabora Office has no Java dependency, which means a cleaner install, smaller footprint and a single, self-contained download.

“Nextcloud has a long-standing, close partnership with Collabora, and we are pleased to have been able to bring our UX engineering expertise to help make Collabora Office more ergonomic and intuitive. This, combined with strong privacy-first design and document interoperability, powers Nextcloud Office as an excellent match for our users and customers’ needs.”
— Partner Quote: Frank Karlitschek, CEO and Founder of Nextcloud, the popular open source content collaboration platform

The Development of Collabora Office

As the largest single code contributors to the LibreOffice open source project, Collabora Office is based on the project’s core technology codebase (in a similar way to how the Linux Kernel is used in many types of Linux), as it provides a vast feature set around interoperable office documents. On top of this, and already implemented in Collabora Online, the suite has a responsive and predictable Web UI built with modern web technologies, such as HTML and JavaScript, Canvas, CSS and WebGL. One of the key drivers for a desktop app is being able to enhance access to key platform functionality that the browser APIs don’t handle. Over time this will enable top-of-the-line clipboard use, printing, projecting and, of course, host filesystem support.

“We are delighted to see Collabora Productivity bring this functionality from the web to the off-line desktop. Collabora is an essential component of our openDesk suite, and we are pleased to see greater flexibility and mobility for users; it is great to have a consistent experience—whether you need to edit a spreadsheet on a train with no Wi-Fi, or later collaborate with colleagues online.”
— Partner Quote: Alexander Smolianitski, ZenDiS, German Government’s Centre for Digital Sovereignty in Public Administration

Some Differences Between the New Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic

We love LibreOffice. Collabora employs several founders of The Document Foundation, and many of the top committers. We offer a Long Term supported product based on LibreOffice, branded as Collabora Office Classic, and are deeply grateful for and acknowledge many skilled community contributors we work alongside, as well as the incredible range of features that LibreOffice code enables.

While the new Collabora Office is a comprehensive productivity suite for viewing, editing and saving text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more, there are some key differences between the new suite and the old Collabora Office now renamed Collabora Office Classic.

“We are really pleased to see the Open Source code that we helped to fund for tablets brought to the desktop, and as contributors of server power for automated testing, we are excited to continue our partnership with Collabora Productivity.”
— Partner Quote: Nicolas Christener, CEO of Adfinis, a leading service provider of Open Source solutions for more than 20 years

Building Together

We encourage partners, community members and users to download and try this first release of Collabora Office, and share feedback with us. This release is an opportunity to collaborate and get involved with shaping where we are going. This is a first release. There will be bugs. Performance may vary, and features may be updated regularly while translations continue to be polished. Please report issues, get involved and help us improve Collabora Office.

Find out more about the growing Collabora Office community.

Read the community FAQ here.

View the release blog here.

“Arawa is pleased to see Collabora Productivity incorporating feedback from our joint French customers in government and industry to improve the product in another great direction. We’re looking forward to this reaching Enterprise quality, and contributing to its future.”
— Partner Quote: Philippe Hemel, CEO of Arawa, a leading French IT company that specialises in Open Source office and collaborative software

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Other Supporting Quotes

“With our CIB seven Open Source BPMN system and our stack of AI-enabled input/output solutions, we know how to provide EU-developed, effective digital sovereign software. We commend Collabora Productivity’s decision to deliver Collabora Online’s excellent, unified and familiar user experience now also for Windows, macOS and Linux. It is great to see more choice for offline-first use cases, as we see increasing demand for digital-sovereign solutions in regulated industries as well as in government agencies.”
— Partner Quote: Uli Brandner, owner of CIB Group, a technology and software development company specializing in digitalization, process automation, and artificial intelligence

“At Circularo, we are committed to delivering truly sovereign collaboration, where organizations retain full control over their data and workflows. Collabora Online has long supported that vision, and bringing its modern, intuitive experience to the desktop further strengthens our end-to-end document collaboration offering. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Collabora to advance secure, interoperable, privacy-first productivity for governments and enterprises worldwide. ”
— Partner Quote: Josef Neumann, CEO of Circularo, a leading provider of digital signing and document workflow solutions

“We at Consolidate work closely with Collabora Productivity to simplify our customers’ workflows. The new version of Collabora Office will integrate even deeper into our platform. This allows our users to edit documents more directly and fluidly. We value privacy and open standards. Collabora Office delivers on these requirements, giving our customers the secure, flexible solution they need.”
— Partner Quote: Christian Bickel, CEO and Founder of Consolidate.eu, the integrated solution for SME-teamwork

“The integration of Collabora Online and the new Collabora Office makes EGroupware a Smart Online Office, where users can easily merge their EGroupware data e.g., from contacts into documents or spreadsheets. Additionally, our e-invoicing feature wouldn’t be possible without the perfect integration with Collabora. We highly appreciate the partnership with Collabora Productivity as we share many values.”
— Partner Quote: Birgit Becker, co-owner of EGroupware GmbH, the online office for maximum digital sovereignty

“In these more geopolitically turbulent times there is a re-appreciation of actual software that you can download and properly install on your own devices—and that you know will just work no matter what happens. It is great to now have a consistent free and open source offering which is available cross-platform, from web and mobile to laptop and workstation. This reduces the dependency on individual vendors, and opens up a lot of exciting possibilities for improving productivity and making collaboration more easy. Every employee in every organisation should really have such software on all their devices, even just in case of emergency.”
— Partner Quote: Michiel Leenaars , Director of Strategy at NLnet Foundation and Project Lead of the NGI Zero European research programmes that financially contributed to the development of the software

“We are delighted to see our strategic partner Collabora Productivity taking this important step to offer even more valuable support for the leading open source office applications. It enables an even more comprehensive user experience, from web office to desktop office. This enhances the broad usage of Collabora for even more use cases, and we anticipate a significant change in the market for office applications!”
— Partner Quote: Klaas Freitag, CTO of OpenCloud, the open source platform for file management, file sharing and collaboration

“By providing and continuously developing a modern, collaborative online office solution that is Open Source and offers great compatibility with other other suites and an ever-improving user interface, Collabora has made a tremendous and important contribution to enable digital sovereignty in the world of office and collaboration. I am delighted that the result of this work will now also be available directly on the desktop. This will allow for even better integration with the desktop and other business applications and is a major step forward.”
— Partner Quote: Peter Ganten, CEO of Univention GmbH, a leading manufacturer of open source solutions for identity and access management and application integration

Download and Try Collabora Office

Collabora Office is free to download for:

• Windows 11, 64-bit only (.appx)
• MacOS 15 Sequoia or later, ARM only (.app)
• Linux x86_64 only (flathub)

Press Interview Opportunities

Michael Meeks

Michael is CEO of Collabora Productivity, Collabora’s Office division. He leads the Collabora Online and Office products, supporting customers and partners alongside his extremely talented team. He has served as a founder and Director of The Document Foundation and has contributed to both ODF and OOXML standardisation. Prior to Collabora Productivity he gained a breadth of experience as a Novell/SUSE Distinguished Engineer working on various pieces of Free Software infrastructure across the Linux stack from the base-system, boot-time and CORBA to Evolution, GNOME, MeeGo, Nautilus, and Open Source accessibility, among many others.

Michael Meeks is available for interview to discuss the launch of the product. Please email the Marketing team to arrange access.

About Collabora Productivity

Collabora Productivity provides Collabora Online: an open-source solution for document editing and collaboration, complemented by desktop and mobile apps for seamless multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity provides support subscriptions via hundreds of trusted partners worldwide. Together, they deliver document and productivity excellence integrated with our partners’ product and service offerings. Focusing strongly on Open Source, Digital Sovereignty and GDPR compliance, Collabora Productivity and partners deliver a secure, interoperable solution for deploying in organisations at scale.

Contact

Naomi Obbard, Marketing Lead
marketing@collaboraoffice.com

Collabora Productivity
The Platinum Building
St John’s Innovation Park
Cowley Rd
Cambridge
CB4 0DS
United Kingdom

The post Press Release: Bringing Collabora Online to the Desktop appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Welcome to our interview series, where we chat with the passionate people behind the Collabora Online code. Collabora Online is made possible by the worldwide team, community, contributors and partners. Today, we’re sitting down with Bayram Çiçek, Software Engineer at Collabora Productivity to discuss his journey into tech, the drive behind his work, and what excites him most about the future of Open Source software.

About Bayram

Bayram’s journey into tech began in his university’s library where he was inspired to collaborate with friends to build his own programs. His path was further defined when mentors introduced him to Linux, LibreOffice, and Google Summer of Code, which motivated him to delve deeper into learning and involvement.

What inspired you to get into tech?

I got inspired by the idea of creating my own tools and the freedom to build whatever I want. These thoughts took root during my days as a student at a local university, where I spent countless hours in the university’s library collaborating with my friends to create some programs. Then my journey expanded further when my mentors introduced me to Linux, LibreOffice and Google Summer of Code, which motivated me even more to learn and get involved.

What was your first experience with tech?

My first experience with technology began by building my own website with WordPress and creating small terminal applications with C, Python and Java during my first year at the university. At the same time, I explored web development and android programming, expanding my skills and curiosity.

During my high school years we were given Android tablets by the school – this was my first technological device that had internet access and apps to explore. This sparked my interest in technology and later led me to study computer engineering in university.

What does working with Open Source mean to you?

It means collaborating openly to build and improve software that benefits the community. It’s about sharing knowledge, contributing your own skills and learning from others to create more robust, innovative solutions to problems. For me, Open Source embodies the spirit of transparency, collective progress, and the power of community-driven development.

What do you enjoy about contributing to the community?

Contributing to the community brings an unmatched sense of fulfillment. Knowing that when you implement a feature or resolve an issue, it can positively impact people around the globe is truly rewarding. Especially when someone from the far corners of the world says, “Thanks for implementing this feature,” or “Thanks for fixing this issue – we have 30 people in our company, and we will continue using the office suite.” Such moments highlight the meaningful difference your contributions can make.

What’s the best part of working at Collabora?

Collabora has highly skilled and supportive team members, providing engineers with excellent support and valuable feedback from mentors and developers. Everyone is always willing to assist, ensuring that you thoroughly understand any challenging topics and feel confident in your work.

Describe working at Collabora in three words.

Flexibility, helpfulness, cooperativeness.

What Collabora Online feature are you most excited about right now?

Contextual toolbars! This feature is really useful – when you select a text, you will get context toolbar near the selection. This feature helps users to use less mouse travel for essential features. I’m also looking forward to more UI/UX updates.

What’s your ‘day in the life’ really like?

I typically wake up a little early, enjoy some morning exercise, and take a peaceful walk in the garden. Afterward, I begin my day by handling small tasks like checking emails and planning the day. Once I’ve had a good breakfast, I start working on the tasks. In the evening, I spend quality time with my family and read books if I have some time. In my spare time, I dedicate myself to reading, researching topics that interest me, working on personal projects, attending online courses and enhancing my English language skills.

How has remote working changed your life?

Remote working has significantly changed my life by offering greater flexibility and work-life balance. I can manage my time more efficiently, avoid long commutes, and spend more quality time with my family. It has also allowed me to create a more comfortable and personalised work environment, which has increased my productivity and overall well-being.

Outside of work, what’s a hobby or interest that you’re passionate about?

I am a beginner guitar player and I’ve been learning to play using online tutorials. I also have a keen interest in space and astronomy. As a child, I owned a space and world atlas, which provided me with a wealth of information about the universe, Earth and various countries. Since then, I have continued to follow the latest news and developments in space and science from time to time.

My other interests include repairing household items such as door handles, electrical devices, water pipes, faucets etc… Even if I don’t know how to fix them, I at least disassemble the item to see how it works, which might give me an idea of how to repair it.

Bayram’s journey represents core values of open-source: collaboration, knowledge sharing and a commitment to building software that serves the global community. His excitement for features like the Context Toolbar and his inquisitive approach to tackling challenges highlight a forward-thinking attitude that continues to drive development in tools like Collabora Online.

The post An Interview with Bayram: From the University Library to Global Code appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Welcome to our interview series, where we chat with the passionate people behind the Collabora Online code. Collabora Online is made possible by the worldwide team, community, contributors and partners. Today, we’re sitting down with Luna Jernberg who helps bring the application to a Swedish-speaking audience.

About Luna

Luna is an experienced open-source contributor with a passion for localisation and retro computers. Her personal use of Collabora Online within her Nextcloud server and the Android app on her phone, gives her a hands-on perspective within Collabora Online as she helps to make it accessible to a global audience.

How did you first hear about Collabora Online and why did you decide to contribute?

I found it on Weblate, which is a platform for translating open-source projects. I was looking for projects I could translate into Swedish. I also knew a few of the other contributors, like Leif Jöran from the FOSS Conference in Gothenburg and Andreas, another main Swedish translator for LibreOffice from the Firefox community. I decided it seemed like a nice community and project to be a part of.

What was your very first contribution, and how did it feel to see it go live?

My first contribution was Swedish translations for the Android app. It was great to see the app on my phone in my native language. It was a very rewarding experience.

How does contributing to Collabora Online connect with your personal values or professional goals?

It’s mostly connected to my personal values at the moment. I use the extensions for Nextcloud on my NAS and the Android app on my phone, so it feels good to contribute to a project that I use myself.

Can you share an example of how the Collabora community has supported you?

They invited me to the COOL Days 2025 in Budapest and sponsored my travel and lodging, which was incredibly generous. I’ve also received a lot of help via the chat channels on Telegram and Matrix whenever I have a question.

Do you have any memorable moments from working with the Collabora team?

Meeting everyone for the first time at the dinner during COOL Days 2025 in Budapest was a great moment. It was fantastic to finally talk to people I’d only known online, especially Skyler who also develops the mobile app I translate into Swedish.

What’s your most memorable moment from COOL Days?

Meeting everyone I’d only ever talked to via chat or email was the most memorable part. It was also great to see what others were working on during the lightning talks and to talk to a fellow retro computer enthusiast during lunch. The great weather and fun and games at the Lumen Café were also a highlight.

What’s the most rewarding part of interacting with other contributors or users?

Joining some of the COOL Weekly meetings and randomly meeting Pedro Silva at FOSDEM 2023 and talking to him on my way back to my hotel was a really fun, memorable experience.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to start contributing?

Don’t be afraid to talk to the main maintainers and contributors about how you can get started. When I was 17, I found a link on a Swedish Ubuntu forum about needing translators, and I just jumped in. The best way to start is to just get involved.

Outside of contributing to Collabora Online, what’s a hobby or interest that you’re passionate about?

I love collecting retro computers that are older than me, like the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and Macintosh SE/30. I was at a local Commodore meetup last weekend, and I love to play retro games and watch demoscene demos on them.

Luna’s journey reminds us that you don’t need to be a programmer to make a significant impact. Whether it’s through translation, design, documentation, or community support, every contribution matters.

The post An Interview with Luna: How Localisation Builds a Global Community appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Welcome to our interview series, where we chat with the passionate people behind the Collabora Online code. Collabora Online is made possible by the worldwide team, community, contributors and partners. Today, we’re sitting down with Banobe Pascal, Senior Frontend Engineer at Collabora Productivity, to discuss his journey into tech, his passion for open source, and what it’s really like to work at the forefront of online collaboration.

About Banobe

Banobe’s passion for technology began with a journey from simple solo projects to the dynamic world of open source. He found that while solo work was rewarding, it was also isolating. It was the shift to open source that provided him with mentors, code reviews, and the opportunity to contribute to technology used by millions. This blend of continuous learning, collaboration, and real-world impact is what continues to drive him.

What was your first experience with tech?

I started by “building” simple websites in PowerPoint, then graduated to Dreamweaver, where I used its visual editor instead of writing code. After a while, the limits became obvious, so I dove into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to get full control over layout, behavior, and polish. That’s when it really clicked for me.

What inspired you to get into Open Source?

I started with solo projects to learn new technologies. It was rewarding but also isolating and slow; Open Source changed that for me. Joining a community gave me mentors to learn from, clear standards to aim for, code reviews, real problems to solve and real product context. Contributing let me practice strong engineering habits, learn faster and be part of technology that people actually use. That blend of learning, collaboration, and real impact is what drew me into Open Source.

What’s the one Collabora Online feature you’re most excited about right now?

I’m excited about adding icons to the context menu because it improves speed and confidence. Icons reduce the time it takes to find the right action, especially for frequent tasks like copy, paste, insert, or format. The menu becomes easier to scan, the visual language matches the toolbar, and users rely less on reading long labels. This change is simple to understand for new users and it rewards power users who navigate by recognition.

How did you first hear about Collabora Online?

I first came across Collabora Online while scrolling LinkedIn. A connection had liked one of their posts, which led me to the Collabora Online page. I spent time reading through the updates, and the focus on Open Source and real product impact caught my attention. That curiosity turned into a habit of following their work more closely, and it eventually led me to explore how I could join the community.

What’s the best part of working at Collabora or contributing to the community?

For me, the standout is the mentorship culture. Experienced contributors share time for code reviews, design critiques, and thoughtful guidance, which accelerates my growth as an engineer. Collaboration is healthy and direct. We write clearly, we discuss trade-offs in the open, and we ship with shared ownership. That clarity in communication makes complex work feel achievable.

What do you think will be the biggest development challenges over the next few years?

From a UX/UI perspective, the biggest challenge is shipping feature-rich or complex products that still feel simple. The goal is to keep the surface calm with clear structure and smart defaults, reveal depth only when it’s needed, and make interactions fast, accessible, and consistent across platforms so power users can move quickly without leaving new users behind.

What’s one productivity tip you swear by?

I use journalling and scheduling. I start each morning by writing 3–5 priorities and adding them to my calendar, plus also noting potential blockers. During the day, I check the journal to stay on track. At the end of the day, I review what moved, what slipped, and why. Then, I schedule the next steps. This habit keeps me focused, reduces priority switching, and turns lessons from each day into a clear plan for tomorrow.

What’s your ‘day in the life’ really like?

I start with a quick home workout like skipping rope, mobility, and stretching, then a shower before getting started with work. I scan emails and messages, write down a few priorities in my journal, and schedule them. I protect one or two deep-work tasks and handle collaboration and reviews in the afternoon. I wrap up with a brief review, then take an evening walk or jog to reset.

How has remote working changed your life?

Remote work has made me more accountable and intentional. I set clear goals, plan my day, and manage my energy without someone looking over my shoulder. It has also improved how I collaborate across time zones and cultures by writing clearly, sharing context, and confirming alignment on next steps.

Outside of work, what’s a hobby or interest that you’re passionate about?

I am passionate about fitness and sport. I run a few times a week and mix in aerobics for conditioning. I also follow football, the NBA, Formula One, and tennis. Training keeps me disciplined and clears my head.

Banobe’s journey is a great example of how Open Source can transform a solo passion into a collaborative mission. His story is a great example of the real impact engineers can have when they’re part of a community that values mentorship, transparency, and shared ownership.

The post An Interview with Banobe: A Culture of Mentorship appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Welcome to our interview series, where we chat with the passionate people behind the Collabora Online code. Collabora Online is made possible by the worldwide team, community, contributors and partners. Today, we’re sitting down with Darshan Upadhyay, a talented developer who has found his calling in the world of Open Source.

About Darshan

Darshan joined Collabora Online in May 2023 as Software Engineer. His journey into tech started in Western India, sparked by a session at Google Summer of Code 2018 by Pranam Lashkari. The session about the true meaning of Open Source inspired his career trajectory, and he hasn’t looked back since. A fan of challenging himself and a proud member of the Open Source community, Darshan’s story is one of curiosity, learning, and building connection.

What inspired you to get into Open Source?

My journey began in college. I was completely new to the idea of open source until a Senior Software Developer from Collabora, Pranam Lashkari, held a session explaining it. His enthusiasm completely transformed my perspective on the IT world and set me on my path.

What was your first experience with tech?

My first real dive was in college when I installed Mint OS on my computer. That was a big challenge for me at the time. I also have a funny story about custom Android ROMs. I was fascinated by the idea of replacing my phone’s default OS and tried to flash a custom one. I ended up corrupting all the data on my phone! It was a massive predicament, but the challenge of restoring everything was a valuable learning experience.

What does working with Open Source mean to you?

To me, working with Open Source is like a friendly potluck dinner. Everyone brings their own unique dish—their code, ideas, or even good vibes—and suddenly, you have this incredible feast that’s way better than anything one person could cook up alone. The best part is the community. If you’re stuck, someone has likely figured it out and is happy to help. You connect with smart, passionate people from all over the globe, all trying to make cool stuff happen.

What’s the one Collabora Online feature you’re most excited about right now?

It’s hard to pick just one, but I’m really pumped about the overall UI overhaul coming in our next releases. The improved sidebar search and the smarter Notebookbar adjustments for different zoom levels are going to be fantastic. I can’t wait for users to experience all the new features.

How did you first hear about Collabora Online?

It was through Pranam, actually. He ran that awesome session about Open Source during my college days, and that’s when he brought up Collabora Online. His enthusiasm really got me interested in what they were doing.

What’s the best part of working at Collabora or contributing to the community?

It’s definitely the sheer impact and reach of what we do. We’re directly improving tools that millions of people worldwide rely on every day. There’s a real sense of purpose knowing your work makes such a tangible difference. Plus, the community is incredibly welcoming and always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in Open Source.

What’s one productivity tip you swear by?

For coding, I go for an “eat the frog” mentality. I tackle the trickiest problem first, but I’m big on breaking it down into tiny, manageable pieces. That way, it feels less overwhelming, and before you know it, you’ve knocked out the toughest part of your day!

What’s your ‘day in the life’ really like?

I’m a bit of a late riser, but once I’m up, a good shower and some quiet time for prayer help me hit reset. Then, it’s straight to the kitchen for my first cup of coffee. While I’m enjoying that, I check emails and, more importantly, dive into GitHub and check the Collabora Online community forums. After that, I plug in my music headphones, say “good morning” to my tasks, and just dive into the coding.

What do you think will be the biggest development challenges over the next few years?

The biggest challenge will be seamlessly integrating new AI tools and features into our product. We have a robust product, but the real challenge will be keeping it cutting-edge as AI evolves so rapidly. The key is to add these amazing new capabilities without compromising the core functionality and stability that our users rely on. Maintaining that perfect balance will be the real hurdle.

How has remote working changed your life?

Remote work has had a really positive impact, especially socially. I’ve always been a bit shy in person, but my confidence skyrockets in online chats. It’s been liberating. It also gives me incredible freedom to connect with people all over the world with diverse mindsets and ideas. I do miss the in-person connection, but the benefits definitely outweigh the downsides.

Outside of work, what’s a hobby or interest that you’re passionate about?

When I’m not immersed in code, you’ll find me on a cricket or volleyball field. Those are my go-to sports for unwinding. Singing is also a huge passion of mine. I’m a decent singer, but don’t ask for English songs—my heart belongs to my folk and regional tunes!

Darshan’s journey from a curious college student to a core contributor, is a fantastic example of how far passion can take you in the tech world. His love for the Open Source community shines through, and we can’t wait to see the next big things he helps build.

The post An Interview with Darshan: A Journey Into Open Source appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Tired of retyping the same phrases, boilerplate text, or technical terms? With AutoText in Collabora Online, you can save and instantly reuse commonly used snippets — streamlining your document creation process.

Whether it’s standard replies, legal clauses, or frequently used expressions, AutoText helps you stay consistent, save time, and reduce errors.

What is AutoText?

AutoText allows you to save predefined text blocks and insert them instantly by typing a shortcut or phrase and pressing F3. It’s ideal for repetitive writing tasks in professional settings like law firms, customer service, healthcare, or academia.

Imagine you’re a doctor writing dozens of patient reports each day. You repeatedly type out standard treatment advice for common conditions like the flu. Instead of rewriting the same paragraph over and over, you can save it as an AutoText snippet.

How It Works in Collabora Online

To make your AutoText snippets available in Collabora Online, you can add them through your file sync and share platform — for example, Nextcloud Office. Collabora Online supports the standard .bau AutoText file format, ensuring compatibility with Collabora Office.

Each .bau file stores your saved snippets and their associated shortcuts. Once uploaded, these entries become immediately available for use in Collabora Online.

Example Use Case

We’ve saved a snippet called “Flu Treatment Advice” with the shortcut “FLU”. Now, when you’re working in a document:

1. Type FLU
2. Press F3

The full treatment paragraph is instantly inserted.

No more hunting for the same old paragraph or copy-pasting from another file. With AutoText, you work smarter, not harder.

Why Use AutoText?

• Save time on repetitive writing
• Ensure consistency across documents
• Reduce manual errors
• Adapt easily to different document needs

AutoText is a simple yet powerful way to increase productivity in Collabora Online.

Ready to Try It?

The post Work Smarter with AutoText in Collabora Online appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

This deal unites the largest team of corporate Office engineers to deliver on Collabora Productivity’s mission to restore Digital Sovereignty to its users, while making Open Source Office Rock. It supercharges Collabora’s Online Office products and services portfolio with rich German language capability, deeper experience of vertical applications, new Web Assembly skills, and a wider unified partner ecosystem. Through improved product richness this sharpens the competitive edge of FLOSS Office productivity against mass-market proprietary alternatives.

CAMBRIDGE, UK – May 28^th 12:00 CEST – 2025

Collabora Productivity, the world’s leading provider of collaborative Open Source Office editors have completed a merger with allotropia.

Collabora has invested heavily in building Collabora Online (COOL) – a market leading, on-premise, secure, interoperable, open-source solution for document editing and collaboration deployed to any modern browser. This is complemented by desktop and mobile apps across Linux, Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and Chrome-OS. Collabora provides support subscriptions to enterprise customers worldwide via a network of hundreds of trusted partners. This is now augmented by allotropia’s partner and customer base. Together with our partners we deliver document and productivity excellence integrated with our partner’s product and service offerings.

We expect allotropia’s expertise around Web Assembly combined with Collabora Online to, in time, enable customer use-cases such as office-as-component embedding scenarios in vertical applications as well as off-line and end-to-end encrypted editing. This work builds on some visionary prototype funding from the Bundesministerium des Inneren (BMI) for a collaboration between the companies to enable the use of Collabora Online off-line in the browser.

Further details of product investment, and direction will be announced and decided in workshops with our key customers and partners at our annual COOL Days conference in Budapest next week where staff, community and our customer and partner-ecosystem meet, swap ideas, and hear about the latest work in our upcoming major release featuring improved performance, usability, interoperability and much more.

“Collabora is excited to welcome each member of the allotropia team today!” said Michael Meeks, CEO, Collabora Productivity, “We are excited to work together to accelerate our product development, enjoy our first COOL Days together, and plan the next features and possibilities to delight our customers”

Collabora has invested in building a network of hundreds of partners and is approaching one hundred million docker image downloads of its document editing server software, with millions of paying users of its products, all of whom will start to benefit from this merger from today.

We expect to bring the experience that allotropia has from its relationship with CIB around vertical desktop applications (Fachverfahren) to help partners and customers migrate their Windows & Microsoft Office based business process to easily deploy multi-platform web applications.
“With our awesome team of engineers, and our WebAssembly know how, we can add significantly to Collabora’s powerhouse of Office engineering prowess & their product offerings”, says Thorsten Behrens, CEO of allotropia, “we’ve worked with them as partners for many years, and align perfectly in our goals to make Open Source office rock!”

allotropia’s skills in supporting and contributing to the LibreOffice code-base in Germany strengthens and unifies popular shared partner products such CIB Office and Nextcloud Office. A larger team will accelerate development and improvement of Collabora Office based products, while providing an even deeper pool of support resources to rapidly respond to customers’ needs.

Together we want to pay tribute to the vast legacy of those who have worked so hard to preserve and improve the source code that we depend on from Sun Microsystems, Oracle, SUSE, RedHat, IBM, TDF, Canonical, and many more, as well as the innumerable volunteer community contributors who make the Collabora Online and LibreOffice ecosystem so rich and interesting: thank you for allowing us the privilege of working alongside you as we revolutionize the office productivity world together.

All of our code is open source and available to the public on GitHub. Join the Collabora Online Community, take part in easy hacks and discussions in the forum.

Supporting quotes

“With the importance of digital sovereignty increasing by the day, it is strategically crucial to join forces, build even stronger product teams, and achieve the critical mass needed to create competitive European software offerings. CIB is therefore looking forward to deepening our partnership with Collabora and providing more joint products and services around CIB’s intelligent process management solutions as well as our AI tools and language models, Collabora Online, and Collabora WASM Components” – says Uli Brandner, owner of CIB group

“This announcement enhances our confidence in the future of Nextcloud Office based on Collabora Online”, said Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud, “we love working with Collabora’s team, and are pleased to apply our expertise, customer feedback and incremental funding to develop features, improve user experience and overall contribute to building the next generation of open source office.”

“We are delighted that the openDesk supplier family continues to grow its capabilities.” says Alexander Smolianitski, of the German Government’s Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS), “Collabora is an essential component of our OSS suite. The merger with allotropia will further improve our access to valuable development resources—not least with regard to the integration of specialised public administration procedures.”

About Collabora Productivity

Collabora Productivity provides Collabora Online: an open-source solution for document editing and collaboration, complemented by desktop and mobile apps for seamless multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity provides support subscriptions via hundreds of trusted partners worldwide. Together they deliver document and productivity excellence integrated with our partners’ product and service offerings. With a strong focus on Open-Source, Digital Sovereignty and GDPR compliance, Collabora Productivity and partners deliver a secure, interoperable solution for deploying in organizations at scale.

Further information is available at: www.collaboraonline.com

Contact: Collabora Productivity Ltd
Michael Meeks, CEO, michael.meeks@collabora.com
Naomi Obbard, Marketing Lead: marketing@collaboraoffice.com

About CIB software

CIB (Computer Integrated Business, from 1989) based in Munich, is a technology and software development company specializing in digitalization, process automation, and artificial intelligence.

CIB develops AI-supported digitalization solutions for highly efficient and process-automated document management. Numerous users and administrations rely on our modular and integrable standard software solutions for automated business processes.

Our customers include financial institutions, insurance companies, public administrations, and international industrial companies. Business customers such as Atruvia, LHM, Volksbank, Generali, BMW, Allianz, Unicredit, and over 160,000 private customers rely on our software solutions.

Today, the CIB Group companies are represented at seven locations in Germany, Spain, Austria, and Portugal – CIB also originally spun off and therefore initiated allotropia, via a management buy-out offer to Thorsten Behrens while he was still working at CIB. Following careful consideration, Thorsten accepted the offer, and CIB participated with a minority stake of 25 percent, consistently waiving dividend payouts to support the venture’s growth.

About Nextcloud

Nextcloud is a world leading privacy-focused collaboration platform. It is used by tens of thousands of private and public organizations and tens of millions of private individuals to stay in control of their sensitive data and ensure privacy compliance.

With Nextcloud, users can edit and share documents, chat and hold videoconferences, and manage emails, contacts and calendars via easy web and mobile apps. The open-source software has a modular design and can be extended with hundreds of apps. It runs in on premises in a private cloud or with a trusted provider.

Founded in 2016, Nextcloud is fully employee-owned and has grown organically ever since. Learn more at www.nextcloud.com.

The post Collabora and allotropia merge appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

It’s competition time!

Are you ready to stick your mark on the COOL community? This is your chance to inject your creativity into the heart of our brand and create the stickers that will be seen and shared by community members worldwide!

We’re not just looking for “COOL” – we want stickers that capture attention, embody the spirit of Open Source and the power of collaboration!

The winning creations will be professionally printed and unveiled at COOL Days 2025!

COOL Days is for Collabora Online community, developers, partners and integrators, with hands-on workshops, expert insights, and a chance to build connections within our vibrant community.

Here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it:

License

The logo should be licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 and allow everyone to use the logo without attribution (BY) if your work is used as a logo for the Collabora Online project and for the COOL Days conference. Note that the attribution is going to be shown on the project’s and conference websites.

• Both monochromes and color formats are essential for submission.
• Submissions must be in SVG or PNG format.
• Design should reflect the collabora online communities.

The logo should avoid the following things:

• Brand names or trademarks of any kind.
• Illustrations that may consider inappropriate, offensive, hateful, tortuous, defamatory, slanderous or libelous.
• Sexually explicit or provocative images.
• Violence or weapons.
• Alcohol, tobacco, or drug use imagery.
• Discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.
• Bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against groups or individuals
• Religious, political, or nationalist imagery.

Size

You have a canvas of up to 50mm x 50mm

Format

.svg or .png

We recommend the artist to use Inkscape, a powerful, free and open source vector graphics tool for all kinds of design.

Branding

The stickers should be recognisable to Collabora Online. Our official logos, fonts and colour palette can be found here: col.la/branding

Connect the Community

Every sticker must include a link to where to join the COOL Community:

• col.la/io

Choose Your Tagline

• Make Open Source Rock
• Powered by Open Source
• Controlled by You, Powered by Open Source
• Secure Document Collaboration, Controlled by You
• #cooldev
• Or create your own community-focused tagline!

Submissions

The designs that are submitted will be added to a survey where the community can vote on the submitted logo designs. The final decision will be made at a COOL Community meeting and it may not be the highest scored design.

Please submit your design by doing the following:

• Email: marketing@collaboraoffice.com
• Subject: Community Sticker Contest
• Include:
  • Your name and email address to contact
  • Vector file of the design in SVG or PNG format ONLY.
  • Text about philosophy of the design

We look forward to seeing your creations!

Closing date: midnight, Sunday 27^th April 2025

The post Community Sticker Contest appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.