this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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About the Ribbon: Apparently M$ has a patent (or multiple ones on) it, so they ultimately have the last say on what is and isn't allowed. They did make a licence availiable royalty-free, but I assume that that licence didn't cover enough of what LibreOffice needed, so they probably struck a deal with M$ about having the option, just not as the default.
I haven't researched this all that much, so mostly speculation. Although the M$ having a patent part of someting so true. And that patent (apparently) explicitly states that use in directly competing software with M$'s is forbidden, at least for-profit.
Idk, maybe it's a case of patent restrictions, or LibreOffice being LibreOffice.
Honestly, a really interesting rabbit-hole.
I know about Microsoft patent, I am not sure whether MS does license it to other software makers as it is very wide spread from big companies like Autodesk to smaller ones like NirSoft. I think they just made the patent to camp on it and intimidated big players with it, the opensource OnlyOffice do ship the Ribbon and they haven't faced any trouble for it so far.