Red Hat Discontinues LibreOffice RPMS Maintenance and Shifts to Flatpak Packaging
Red Hat announced that it will stop maintaining the LibreOffice RPMS packages for future RHEL releases, labeling them as orphaned and encouraging users to adopt the Flatpak version while refocusing engineering effort on Wayland, HDR and related display improvements.
Red Hat has decided to reduce its investment in desktop application development and has marked the LibreOffice RPMS package as "orphaned," meaning it no longer has active maintainers.
Consequently, in upcoming releases (likely RHEL 10), Red Hat will cease providing LibreOffice in RPM format for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
Red Hat explains that users will primarily use the Flatpak‑packaged version of LibreOffice, allowing the engineering team that previously maintained the RPMs to concentrate on higher‑priority work such as improving the Wayland display server, adding HDR support, and other display‑related enhancements.
Despite ending direct RPM maintenance, Red Hat will continue to maintain LibreOffice on RHEL 7, 8, and 9 for the remainder of their lifecycles, providing necessary security fixes and contributing upstream improvements to ensure the Flatpak version runs smoothly.
The decision, while concerning to some, aligns with Fedora’s philosophy of using Flatpak for better stability and security.
There is curiosity about why the open‑source community has not taken over LibreOffice RPMS maintenance; although possible, the task is large and demanding.
Related link: Fedora development mailing list discussion
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