We are looking for tender ideas and proposals to improve LibreOffice

One of the goals of The Document Foundation and the community it represents is to improve LibreOffice to make it even more competitive with other office suites. One of the tools to achieve this goal are tenders for the development of specific features, such as the implementation of OpenDocument Format version 1.3, the standard format used by LibreOffice and other applications.

Until now, tenders have followed internally developed rules, which have had the merit of getting us where we have got, i.e. very high – but for the reason that we got very high, they were no longer adequate to guarantee a further step forward, given the current size of The Document Foundation and the tender projects. Also, with the arrival of two developers, our possibilities wrt. running and overseeing tenders have emerged.

As of today, the tenders will follow new rules defined by legal experts that will allow us to be aligned with the best practices of not-for-profit foundations, and to further grow LibreOffice and LibreOffice Technology, which is already the most flexible and high-performance platform for individual productivity, and can thus evolve further for the benefit of users.

To grow, we need the ideas and proposals of community members and users. Everyone is invited to send in their ideas! Beware, however, because we need contributions that allow us to further evolve LibreOffice in the area of office suites, an extremely competitive market that today is worth nearly 30 billion dollars.

So, we ask you to make an effort and avoid submitting ideas and proposals that you, individually, would like to see implemented because they fit your idea of an office suite, but to engage with other members of the community and other users and to think big, because LibreOffice is big and needs to grow even bigger.

Talk to the community, and especially to developers, because they can help you structure your ideas and proposals in such a way that they are first accepted, then evaluated and finally voted on by the members of the Engineering Steering Committee, who will be decisive from a technical point of view, before being approved by the Board of Directors.

Also, because the proposals must respect the following structure:

Cost Estimate: x week(s)
Contact: Anakin Skywalker
Reviewers: Luke Skywalker
Short Description: …

It is clear that only the contribution of one or more developers makes it possible to calculate the cost in terms of development weeks, and to describe the functionality in such a way that it is comprehensible to those who must assess its feasibility, place it in the context of a complex development process such as that of LibreOffice, and prioritise it. Cost estimates can also be added by other parties at a later stage of the process, but proposals without a cost estimate cannot be accepted for final consideration.

Before you make your proposal, you can consult the existing ones on the wiki to get an idea of what the Engineering Steering Committee expects from all of you: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Budget2023

The deadline for proposals is Sunday, May 28, at 1800 (UTC+2, Berlin time). Any proposals made after this date will as a general rule not be considered in this round of evaluation, unless very exceptional circumstances exist.

As soon as the evaluation and ranking of proposals by the Engineering Steering Commitee begins, we will announce the details, including the “live” ranking spreadsheet, in a follow-up blogpost.

When you are ready, register and add your text. We look forward to your contributions! Again, everyone is welcome to contribute, and we look forward to your ideas!