On dev@openoffice.apache.org Peter submitted the following text proposal:

Blog post was published on 2021-01-07: https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/new-release-for-apple-s



Draft


Dear Apache OpenOffice® Users,


Thank you for your interest in Apache OpenOffice® and your on-going support over the
years. You may have heard (e.g., through our support forums) that OpenOffice has
problems with Apple's new macOS 11 (Big Sur).

When opening modern Microsoft Office Documents (files that end with docx, xlsx,  for
example), OpenOffice crashes. There is no workaround at this point, but we are going to
fix the issue soon.

We would be happy to give you more details if you want to help us with testing. Just
write a mail to the developers mailing list dev@openoffice.apache.org.

The main reason is to fix the bug on Big Sur. We will also include some other minor fixes
in the release, so all platforms can benefit from the new release. We know that this is a
pressing issue to our Mac users, so you can expect the release soon on our
download web page.

In order to identify the issue we took a closer look at our build to exclude any issues with
an error in prior releases. Next, we updated the build to a newer SDK issue to exclude any
issue in our support structures. We believe that our upcoming version 4.2.0 (which is not
yet production-ready) is not affected by this issue. In an effort over Christmas a comparison
took place between the 4.2.0 and 4.1.8 versions to locate the issue. We have found the
code change that solves the crash on Big Sur.

We are testing the solution at this point. If you want to join the test of the new version of
this fix, drop an e-mail in English to the developers mailing list dev@openoffice.apache.org.
The more environments we test the sooner we can release.

The OpenOffice project thanks Jim Jagielski for his endless effort during Christmas time, and
the French forum users  who supported the development effort with dedicated testing.

We wish you a peaceful year-end.

All the best and stay healthy.

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