On dev@openoffice.apache.org Peter submitted the following text proposal:
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, etc.)
OpenOffice crashes. There is no workaround at this point, but we are going to fix the
issue soon.
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 participate 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 webpage.
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 maling list dev@openoffice.apache.org.
The more environments we test the sooner we can release.
The OpenOffice project thanks Jim Jagelski 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 time.
All the best and stay healthy.