LibreOffice Community starts 50,000 Euro challenge for setting-up its foundation

The community around LibreOffice, the free office productivity suite, today announced its fifty-thousand Euro challenge for setting-up The Document Foundation as a legal entity. The race for funds is open until March 21st 2011, which marks the beginning of Spring in the northern hemisphere. All users – especially enterprises – are invited to donate to the capital stock of the future foundation.

“After thorough investigation, the Steering Committee came to the conclusion that a foundation based in Germany would provide the best stability, not only for our users, but also for adopters, developers and enterprises. For achieving this stability, a capital stock of at least 50,000 Euros is considered best practice in Germany,” says Florian Effenberger, Steering Committee member of The Document Foundation. “Now that we have our first release of LibreOffice, which has been downloaded and installed all around the world, the time has come to legally establish the future home for our community”.

All donations will be used for setting-up The Document Foundation, and after the fifty thousand Euros has been collected for the capital stock, donations over the top of that sum will be fed directly into the future foundation’s budget to cover operating costs. Should the race for funds not succeed, The Document Foundation will use the donations to incorporate itself in a different country that requires less capital stock, such as the United Kingdom.

To achieve their ambitious goal of a Foundation in Germany in just five weeks, the community has set-up a dedicated website with detailed information at http://challenge.documentfoundation.org The site will also give adopters, community members and corporate sponsors a voice, and will have special features rolled out at the accomplishment of each donation milestone.

“We have seen wide support from many organizations, and the amount of volunteer work that has been put into The Document Foundation is just amazing. Without people donating their free time, knowledge and creativity to what will be the future home of LibreOffice, we wouldn’t be where we are today. However, volunteer work alone can’t fund the necessary capital stock, which is why we have started a public race for donations, especially targeting contributions from enterprises and public administrations adopting LibreOffice, and those interested in an independent, vital and growing ecosystem around free office productivity software”, Florian Effenberger adds.

Information about LibreOffice can be found at http://www.libreoffice.org
The home of The Document Foundation is at http://www.documentfoundation.org

About The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation has the mission of facilitating the evolution of the OOo Community into a new, open, independent, and meritocratic organization within the next few months. An independent Foundation is a better reflection of the values of our contributors, users and supporters, and will enable a more effective, efficient and transparent community. TDF will protect past investments by building on the achievements of the first decade, will encourage wide participation within the community, and will co-ordinate activity across the community.

Media Contacts for TDF
Florian Effenberger (Germany)
Mobile: +49 151 14424108 – E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org
Olivier Hallot (Brazil)
Mobile: +55 21 88228812 – E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org
Charles H. Schulz (France)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 – E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Italo Vignoli (Italy)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 – E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org