LibreOffice
Verified“German foundation, EU-hosted, runs on your own machine.”
- Legal form
- Non-profit Stiftung
- Paid staff
- ~15
- Budget
- ~€1.5M
- Data model
- Offline / local
92 = midpoint of Control 96 & Data 88
Sovereignty Quadrant
Control ↑ who owns & governs the company · Data → where your data lives. Every dot is a company — click to open it.
Every number below traces to 12 sourced facts across 8 independent sources, last verified 2026-06-12. 4 open questions hold confidence at 88% — they lower confidence, never the score.
Control ↑
Who legally and economically controls the company
Legal & Jurisdiction
97
Published by The Document Foundation, a charitable foundation under German law (gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts) incorporated in Berlin in 2012. Fully EU-incorporated, EU-operating and squarely within EU/German legal enforceability. No foreign parent or holding structure.
Why 97? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Legal form is a charitable foundation under German law
TDF Foundation Overview · as of 2026-06-12
Officially incorporated in Berlin, Germany
TDF Community Blog · as of 2026-06-12
Founded by the German nonprofit Freies Office Deutschland e.V.; no foreign parent
Wikipedia: The Document Foundation · as of 2026-06-12
Control & Ownership
95
A non-profit foundation: there are no shares, no equity owners, no listing venue, and therefore no foreign capital or voting control to capture it. Self-governing via an elected 7-member board and a ~139-member Board of Trustees, all under German foundation law. Funded overwhelmingly by end-user donations. Slight deduction only because corporate advisory-board sponsors (incl. non-EU firms) fund and influence the ecosystem.
Why 95? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Non-profit foundation with no shareholders or listing
TDF Foundation Overview · as of 2026-06-12
Governed by elected 7-member Board plus ~139-member Board of Trustees
Wikipedia: The Document Foundation · as of 2026-06-12
Income is overwhelmingly end-user donations, not foreign capital
TDF Community Blog (Donations Q&A) · as of 2026-06-12
Data →
Where your data lives and who can reach it
Data & Infrastructure
90
Two reinforcing points. (1) The product is an offline desktop suite: documents stay on the user's own machine, with zero background telemetry — there is no vendor cloud holding user data, so CLOUD Act exposure is structurally near-zero. (2) TDF's own public infrastructure (website, downloads, dev systems) is hosted in Germany at Manitu in St. Wendel. Slight deduction: TDF relies on a worldwide volunteer download-mirror network and some third-party services, whose jurisdictions vary.
Why 90? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Public infrastructure hosted in Germany at Manitu, St. Wendel
TDF Annual Report 2020: Infrastructure · as of 2026-06-12
Offline suite; documents stay local with zero background telemetry
LibreOffice 25.8 Backgrounder / Privacy · as of 2026-06-12
No disclosure of website/contact data to third parties
LibreOffice Privacy Policy · as of 2026-06-12
Operations & People
86
EU-centered foundation: incorporated and administered from Germany, accounting and budget in euros (~€1.5M fixed/expected for 2026), executive director Florian Effenberger, board chair Eliane Domingos. ~15 paid staff in 2025, working remotely. Deduction: it is a small, volunteer-heavy organization and staff/contributors are globally distributed (remote), so 'workforce geography' is mixed rather than purely EU-concentrated.
Why 86? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
~15 paid staff (2025); led by ED Florian Effenberger
Wikipedia: The Document Foundation · as of 2026-06-12
Budget/accounting in euros; ~€1.5M fixed/expected costs for 2026
TDF Community (Budget 2026 preparations) · as of 2026-06-12
Adopted by EU public sector: Schleswig-Holstein (~30,000 PCs) and Denmark's Ministry of Digitalisation
TDF Blog: Schleswig-Holstein update · as of 2026-06-12
Aligned to the EU Commission’s official Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL, Jun 2026) →
What we don’t know
4 open questions — they lower confidence, never the score
- ?
Exact geographic distribution of the ~15 paid staff and key contributors (remote workforce).
Operations score assumes EU-centered coordination; a heavily non-EU staff base would lower it slightly.
- ?
Full jurisdiction map of the worldwide volunteer download-mirror network and any third-party services TDF uses.
Could add minor non-EU touchpoints to an otherwise German-hosted infrastructure.
- ?
Detailed 2024 audited income/donation figures (full report not yet published at time of writing).
Limits precision on financial scale and donor concentration.
- ?
Resolution and governance impact of the 2025 board/contributor dispute reported by LWN.
Organizational stability risk, not a jurisdictional one — does not change EU sovereignty but affects execution confidence.
EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework lens
SEAL was designed to assess cloud service providers; LibreOffice is an offline desktop suite from a non-profit foundation, so this is an analogous mapping, not a certification.
Strategic
EU-incorporated non-profit explicitly built around digital sovereignty and anti-lock-in; no foreign owner.
Legal & jurisdictional
German charitable foundation, fully within EU/German law; no foreign parent or holding.
Data & AI
Offline suite — user documents stay local; zero background telemetry; no vendor cloud holding user data.
Operational
EU-run and euro-denominated, but a small (~15) paid team with a globally distributed remote/volunteer base.
Supply chain
Open-source codebase; depends on global volunteer mirrors and some third-party services of varying jurisdiction.
Technological
Open-source, OpenDocument-native format avoids proprietary lock-in; self-hostable and auditable.
Security & compliance
Local-data model is privacy-friendly and GDPR-aligned; security depends on user patching, not a managed service.
Environmental sustainability
No specific energy/emissions disclosures found for TDF infrastructure.
EU alternatives
Enterprise web/collaborative version of the LibreOffice technology; UK-based (post-Brexit, outside the EU) but European and self-hostable.
EU-incorporated (Ascensio System SIA, Riga) office suite with self-hosting; an EU collaborative-editing peer to LibreOffice.
German-based, self-hostable collaboration platform; bundles Collabora/LibreOffice-based online editing for EU public sector.
How the method works
Methodology v2 (provisional): the score is the midpoint of two axes — Control (who owns and governs the company) and Data (where your data lives and who can reach it). Each axis is scored only on verified evidence; unknowns reduce confidence, never the score. Every input below is sourced; the weights and judgments are open to challenge.
Spotted an error? Every claim is sourced — challenge it and we correct the record.
- 2026-06-12 — Initial golden profile, authored from primary sources (human + AI review).
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Verified 2026-06-12 · Human + AI joint review (sources independently checked) · Methodology