The free Office alternative LibreOffice has gained new momentum and is now downloaded by almost a million users a week. In total, an estimated 200 million have now switched from tech giant Microsoft’s closed program.

LibreOffice is a free alternative based on open source software. It has become the most popular open source Office program, overtaking Apache’s OpenOffice, among others. Last week, The Document Foundation, which manages its development, released version 25.2.

Now the number of downloads is approaching one million a week.

– We estimate around 200 million users, but it’s important to note that we respect users’ privacy and don’t track them, so we can’t say for sure Mike Saunders, an alternate board member at The Document Foundation told Computerworld.

The majority of users, 85 percent, use Windows, followed by Mac and Linux. Several Linux distributions come with LibreOffice pre-installed.

There is also a growing interest in free software among companies and authorities, according to Saunders. For example, the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein decided last year to move the entire state’s government computers from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice.

LibreOffice users prefer simpler interfaces and would like to avoid an AI that is “helpful’ by poking its nose into their work” as many are often reminded of “Clippy from the bad old days”.

– We have zero plans to put AI into LibreOffice, says Saunders.