CalicoUK

Following up, again, as Collabora Office's PR hat one: We have written a statement in response to press coverage on the Danish Ministry of Affairs pilot. The pilot was put on hold and reported issues were resolved. Work in Denmark is continuing. We would ask that coverage reflects this. Press are welcome to contact us: https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/denmark-continues-its-w... Stories being corrected this morning: https://www.nordiskbil.com/update-collabora-pilot-in-denmark...

I work in PR at Collabora (part-time, I write copy the rest of the time). I'm posting a response from Michael Meeks, CEO of Collabora Office on this story as some coverage has linked the pause in Denmark’s trial to problems reported last December. That link isn’t the situation.

"Rumours that Denmark has abandoned seeking alternatives to Microsoft Office do not reflect what we’re hearing on the ground. There was an election in Denmark earlier this year, and as a result of that and ministry changes, the Collabora Online trial at the Ministry of Digital Affairs by cBrain, our integration partners, is paused. We understand it's due to start again with a new stakeholder group before the end of the year.

“The problems cited by some press recently, were addressed last year, and throughout the trial Collabora Office has worked to satisfy the needs of the Ministry of Digital Affairs (now merged into the Ministry for Research, Education and Digitalization) and our partner, cBrain.”

“Collabora Office began work on the trial in July 2025. In the interests of advancing Open Source software use within government, we supplied an 80-user enterprise account for free to facilitate the test, and our senior engineers have been involved in investigating and resolving reported issues. We are pleased to participate in this trial and look forward to hearing the Ministry’s findings.”

I'll add that Computerworld.dk’s original report was accurate, but some follow-ups connected it to the older problems without contacting us. Happy to answer questions (hopefully, I can answer them).

Apparently, I'll never know the reason, because I don't have a subscription. It's a huge article so I can appreciate why it's paid-for, and I don't know HN's policy on that stuff, but it would be better if that had been mentioned up front.

Funny really, when I see Demis Hassabis' name, I always think of him as the videogame dev who was always trying to push what was possible in sims and AI, and now he's betting Google on world models "that can understand and simulate the real world, not just predict the next token." I wonder if he'll end up making something like The Oasis as an incidental side project?

Yes, you're talking about Thorsten Behrens, one of the founders of The Document Foundation. His German company, Allotropia, merged with Collabora Productivity in 2025.