Announcing Open Badges for LibreOffice contributors!

LibreOffice is made by volunteers and certified developers across the globe, and today we’re announcing a new system to credit their work and show appreciation: Open Badges. So what are they?

In a nutshell, Open Badges are PNG images that are awarded to contributors for reaching a certain threshold – such as a number of commits to the codebase, or answering questions on Ask LibreOffice. But these images are something special: they contain metadata describing the contributor’s work, which can be verified using an external service. Open Badges are used by other free software projects, such as Fedora.

We at The Document Foundation – the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice – will start issuing customised badges to contributors, who can then proudly display them on websites or social media. And because of the embedded metadata, contributors can use the badges as proof of their work. If you’ve been a long-time contributor to LibreOffice and are in the job market, use your badge to highlight your involvement in a large open source project!

Starting off: Ask LibreOffice contributors

The first set of badges go to the nine people on Ask LibreOffice, our community assistance website, who’ve posted over 100 answers. We’ll be in touch personally with the badges! Their usernames:

• Ratslinger
• ajlittoz
• Mike Kaganski
• Opaque
• Lupp
• erAck
• RGB-es
• ebot
• JohnSUN

Stay tuned to this blog for more Open Badges awards!