The “Donate Now” popped up during a presentation by a senior developer, and the CIO said we absolutely shouldn’t be using “adware” within the IT department. It’s basically set open source back 10 years for our organization. Is there a version that doesn’t have the ads, or is there a way to disable it completely? I don’t know what imbecile decided an office suite would be a good place for adware.
Lol. So for your organization, using free software means “those slaves must do everything that we need, and we will benefit from that for free”? You are obviously trying to use the software that was created by hundreds of people, thousands of hours, and you want to use it to make profit in organization. Of course, an organization’s IT dept could be reasonable and realize that any software needs support - so it could consider some support from certified developers - but no, you require the community version to be what pleases some imbecile “CIO” - “don’t you dare to ask people to support your hard work!!!”.
April 2023, and half an hour or so ago (talk about losing time…) I got both “banners” showing up in LO at one of my computers.
I honestly do not understand the “hatred” that the OP received.
This is not about supporting or aiding LO or not, but about these “banners” showing up regularly.
They are as annoying as television commercials in TV programs.
But I want to be “constructive”… (yes, almost 2 years after this thread).
The LO devs want to ask for donations/help?
No problem - but why not an icon/button in the menu bar, at the top right, say (an icon which can stay there till the end of time, for all I care), instead of banners that show up every time?
Look at the answer from @Yal. And note that your “why not an icon/button in the menu bar” is exactly “I don’t want to see it”, when the authors’ goal is “make it visible”. There’s always a balance. Note how an infobar is much less intrusive than dialogs. So everyone insisting on removing it completely is not constructive, ignoring completely the goal, and the amount of consideration already put into the current status to make is an acceptable compromise.
The “Donate Now” popped up during a presentation by a senior developer,
I have used OpenOffice previously, and LibreOffice mostly for the last year or so. Never noticed any “donate” notice popping up. I have seen it sometimes rather prominently on other people’s computers, but it was always a “leech” product, not the official LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
I see comments confirming that “nagging” was enabled in LibreOffice from version 6.1, so it must be true, but I have missed it completely 
… and the CIO said we absolutely shouldn’t be using “adware” within the IT department.
This is not adware. Adware will download paid ads and post them within the software window or a popup window. The software vendor will generate revenue out of displaying ads to users, not out of donations from users. Usually there is an extra payment when the user clicks on the ad. To encourage those clicks, most adware will collect userinfo so ads can be targeted to the user. This means that most adware is also a kind of spyware. Nagware does not need to collect info about user, only possibly a decision of whether nagging is pertinent or the user has made a satisfactory contribution.
The CIO is right that adware/spyware is generally undesirable. He/she is wrong about this being adware. Confusion of terms and also of the underlying technology and market strategy is understandable, but can easily (and should definitely) be cleared up.
It’s basically set open source back 10 years for our organization.
Then, if your organization is really in the market for open source software, you must build a policy towards this, and win those 10 years back again.
The philosophy behind open source is that when everything is in the open, everyone can benefit from each other’s contributions. the flip side of this is that everyone is also expected to contribute some, according to ability. So, what your organization is able and ready to contribute should be part of said policy.
Is there a version that doesn’t have the ads, or is there a way to disable it completely?
You can find some pointers here and the proper solutions here (click to follow links).
I don’t know what imbecile decided an office suite would be a good place for adware.
That would be someone in Microsoft. The Microsoft Office Starter (from some 10 years back) was genuinely adware.
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I’m not about to quibble about the definition of “adware” with our CEO. And he is correct from a strategic viewpoint - if the product has a “Donate Now” banner today, then what is to prevent the same imbecile(s) from implementing a “Brought to you by KFC” banner 6 months down the road?
I followed your links and it seems like this was introduced recently in version 6.1. What is bothersome is that there is no simple configuration setting to disable the ad messages - you have to kludge a “last used” setting to get around it. That’s more consistent with the world of adware than open source.
I’ve been using Linux since the early 90’s, and OpenOffice since around 2002 or 2003. This is the single dumbest thing I have seen someone do.
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… using Linux since the early 90’s, and OpenOffice since around 2002 or 2003. This is the single dumbest thing I have seen someone do.
In that case, you have not seen much 
… what is to prevent the same imbecile(s) from implementing a “Brought to you by KFC” banner 6 months down the road?
Same reason why Microsoft won’t do it in their paid products. Common sense, basically.
MS Office will also display a fairly prominent banner in every app if you don’t activate a license to prove that you have paid for using the software. Same thing, more or less, except that MS Office also stops working, which LO doesn’t.
Development, distribution and implementation of software has a resource cost. Time. Storage. Physical space. If the organization behind a product is not able to cover that cost, that product will die.
While your CEO perhaps doesn’t need to be made aware of the (quite significant) difference between nagging and advertising, your CIO would greatly benefit from that.
Basically I see in the question the astonishing lack of understanding. An IT department (sic!) uses free software in an organization. Nice. Whenever one uses any software in an organization, one must have it supported - either by some external contractor, or by own staff - but anyway, it must be supported. If an organization goes for self-support, it means they are able to do this - including proper evaluation of the software, finding problems critical to them, fixing/workarounding them as they appear, teaching staff using it… “A senior developer” presenting something using a version that it either not tested (started for the first time?) or, if already tested, known to show infobars - and not configuring it appropriately, not searching for the critical (for you) piece of data … the organization has just incompetent IT - from CIO to “senior developer” to the OP.
And then - “It’s basically set open source back 10 years for our organization” - what is it? are you trying to describe your problem because of your lack of professionalism, or are you telling that open source has “lost” something because of that? In the first case, OK - make this help you at least by learning from your mistakes. In the second case - you are wrong: open source does not lose from anyone abandoning it, when that someone didn’t contribute.
I personally was supporting LibreOffice for many years in my former place of work, after supporting OOo for some time, after supporting MSO. And I did look for workarounds, like removing “registration” request from OOo organization-wide (there was an extension for that, and I needed to search for ways to solve, for it, then for ways to deploy). So I know what I am talking about.
you are just impudent brutes together with your CIO
Yes, I admit, I downvoted this.
An answer should attempt to answer actual questions (if any) posed in the opening question posting, and/or to help the poster towards resolving their issue. I cannot see that this does that.
Were it a comment, I would not have any objection. Posting an answer tags the question as answered, which may be counter productive.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t write here an another answer to him “question”.
Have you tried the Stop Begging extension? It does just that: remove the reminder to contribute back to LO.
As a rather new user of LO myself I also find this reminder annoying and distracting so I was really happy to install it, but I also made a donation to LO since I can’t really contribute code
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