29 Jul 2020
LibreOffice monthly recap: July 2020 – News, events and more…
Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…
- At the start of the month, we announced a Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 7.0 RC1. Yes, the next major release is just around the corner! You can still help us to test it before the official announcement, which is due next week…
- But we’re still maintaining the LibreOffice 6.4 branch, and on July 2, we announced LibreOffice 6.4.5. It includes over 100 bug fixes and improvements to document compatibility and interoperability with software from other vendors.
- In recent months, TDF and the community have been discussing marketing plans for the next five years. How can we keep the LibreOffice project sustainable in the long term? Volunteers are a huge part of the project and we’re immensely grateful for them, but companies in the ecosystem also write the majority of the source code to implement new features, so it’s important that they prosper too. See the first update and second update.
- On July 13, we talked to Khairul Aizat Kamarudzzaman about his work in the LibreOffice community, helping with advocacy and marketing. He recently decided to become a Member of The Document Foundation – welcome on board!
- Speaking of Members, TDF’s Membership Committee has elections coming up. The mission of the Committee is to administer membership applications and renewals following the criteria defined in the Foundation’s Statutes.
- Meanwhile, the Czech LibreOffice community announced a translation of the Getting Started Guide 6.4. A big thanks to everyone who helped out!
- July 19 marked 20 years of free and open source office suites, as Sun Microsystems announced on July 19 2000 that StarOffice, which it recently acquired, would become free and open source software. This, of course, became OpenOffice, and lives on today in the form of LibreOffice, the most active and developed successor project.
- With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, many communities are meeting online, such as the Spanish-speaking LibreOffice community. They had a live broadcast with a series of talks, over six hours, covering translations, migrations and LibreOffice Online.
- Later in the month, TDF announced a job search for a Development Mentor, along with a tender to implement a UNO object inspection tool in LibreOffice. If you’re interested in working with the small team at The Document Foundation, or applying your coding skills, check out the links!
- The joint openSUSE + LibreOffice conference will take place in October, and we’ve extended the Call for Papers until August 4. Join us, give a talk about your favourite topic, and let’s share knowledge together!
- Lastly, we talked to Sandra Louvezo, another new TDF Member, about her experiences in the LibreOffice community in Congo. A big thanks to Sandra, and everyone in our growing LibreOffice communities in Africa, for all their great work.
