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Author: Italo Vignoli

Conference Announcements

LibreOffice Conference opens in Berlin

LibreOffice Conference, Berlin, October 17, 2012 – Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board of The Document Foundation, has officially opened the 2nd LibreOffice Conference (http://conference.libreoffice.org) addressing the authorities and the community members gathered in the capital city of Germany from the five continents.

“As of today, LibreOffice is being used by close to 60 million people. It is the standard free office suite on all major platforms, available in over 100 languages. Large cities and organizations are deploying it very successfully, more and more schools and universities are rolling it out, and there’s not a single month where it is not covered by major media around the globe – because we always have good news to share. The Document Foundation has become a member of leading organizations for free software and open standards, and at the very same time, is widely seen as a the leader in its area, built on strong reputation and credibility. Last but not least, the ecosystem is growing rapidly, as more and more enterprises discover the business benefit of truly free software.”

“We are now a family of thousands of contributors around the globe. I not only have colleagues all over the world, but more important, true friends, and I am honoured to be part of a large family. Everyone with their very own story, their very own background, and their very own skills. Different ages, cultures and languages, all united by one goal: providing the best free office suite ever, and giving power to those who contribute by passion. By living our values day by day, we make possible what we never dared to dream of two years ago.”

LibreOffice Conference 2012 is hosted by the Federal Ministry of the Interior (http://www.bmi.bund.de) and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (http://www.bmwi.de) of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Freies Office Deutschland e.V. The event is sponsored by Canonical (http://www.canonical.com), Google (http://www.google.com), SerNet (http://www.sernet.de), bitbone (http://www.bitbone.de), Lanedo (http://www.lanedo.com), Red Hat (http://www.redhat.com) and Univention (http://www.univention.de).

The main conference sessions will be broadcasted online, while all sessions will be recorded and made available on the conference website. To access both real time and recorded video, the infrastructure team has created a single webpage at http://conference.libreoffice.org/streams.

LibreOffice 3.6.2 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center. When downloading the software, you might consider about donating some money to The Document Foundation for the development of LibreOffice and the growth of the community, by accessing our donation page at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

LibreOffice is booming

Over 2 million downloads in September, over 540 developers,
a community of over 3,000 volunteers from the five continents,
over 100 languages (representing 95% of the world population)

LibreOffice Conference, Berlin, October 17, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces that the German city of Munich is migrating to LibreOffice, following a growing trend of migrations and adoptions worldwide. “After a careful risk-assessment, Munich city council has decided to migrate to LibreOffice. In favour of that decision, among others, was the greater flexibility of the project regarding consumption of open source licenses. In addition, Munich wants to rely on a large and vibrant community for any Open Source product it employs,” says Kirsten Böge, head of public relations.

Just before the city of Munich, a similar announcement was made by the French Prime Minister, who mentioned LibreOffice as a pillar in the overall migration of free software of all government bodies. MimO, the technology group taking care of the migration project, has already certified LibreOffice as the free office suite of choice.

Several other large migrations to LibreOffice have happened or are happening in Denmark (Hospitals of Copenhagen), Italy (Regione Umbria, City Councils of Provincia di Bolzano, and one of the largest IT company in the banking sector), Spain (City of Las Palmas), Ireland (City of Limerick), Greece (Municipality of Pilea Hortiatis) and the US (City of Largo in Florida).

Chicago Public Library deploys LibreOffice on several PCs, as a service for the people who need to create or edit documents, and provides trainings to learn the free office suite.

LibreOffice is developed by a large and diverse hacker community, which has grown from 20 to 550 members in two years. This group is backed by an even larger number of active volunteers taking care of localizations, quality assurance, community development and marketing at global and local levels. Overall, the number of these people is over 3,000, if we take as a measure those who have contributed to the project wiki.

LibreOffice has been downloaded over 20 million times – and over 2 million in September, following the announcement of version 3.6.2 – from The Document Foundation mirror system (over 80% Windows + 10% MacOS), with a large number of additional downloads from software and magazine websites. In addition, LibreOffice is featured on a large number of covermount CDs, which account for other installs. TDF estimates a grand total of 60 million users, half of them being desktop Linux users who get LibreOffice from their distribution repository.

“Looking at these figures, one can hardly believe that it all happened in just two years,” comments Italo Vignoli, Director of The Document Foundation in charge of marketing communications. “During these months I have traveled the world to speak at free software conferences about the project, and I have met hundreds of people who recognize in LibreOffice the legitimate heir of OpenOffice. Today, the numbers we are releasing show that also governments and enterprises share this perception, and support the idea that only a focused independent free software foundation could provide a path forward for the OpenOffice code base.”

LibreOffice 3.6.2 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center. When downloading the software, you might consider about donating some money to The Document Foundation for the development of LibreOffice and the growth of the community, by accessing our donation page at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

LibreOffice Conference: Streaming

LibreOffice Conference live session streaming will be available from http://conference.libreoffice.org/streams, starting from tomorrow at 10AM (CEST, or UTC+2).

There will be 3 live video streams of the talks and presentations:

  • Stream 1 from the Aula (Wednesday through Friday),
  • Stream 2 from the Eichensaal (Wednesday and Thursday) or the Hörsaal (Friday), respectively,
  • Stream 3 from the Konferenzraum 2 (Wednesday through Friday).

In order to choose the sessions to follow, you can access the entire conference program at http://conference.libreoffice.org/program.

Live streaming has been made possible by kind cooperation of Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin – University of Applied Sciences, The Document Foundation, and Freies Office Deutschland e.V.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.2

Berlin, October 4, 2012 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.6.2, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, solving bugs and regressions and further improving the stability of the program for corporate deployments. The best free office suite ever is quickly becoming the de facto standard for migrations to free office suites, thanks to the quickly growing feature set and the improved interoperability with proprietary software.

The growing number of LibreOffice adoptions by private and public enterprises is a demonstration of the improvements brought to the legacy code by TDF, thanks to over 500 developers who are focusing on stability and quality (in addition to new exciting features).

The latest public administration to migrate has been the city of Limerick, Ireland’s third largest city, where LibreOffice is now used on all 450 desktops in use at the city’s six main locations including the three public libraries, the fire department, the municipal museum and the City Gallery of Art.

The community behind LibreOffice will gather in Berlin for the second LiboCon from October 17 to October 19. During three days, company representatives and volunteers will discuss their experiences, learning from each other in the true spirit of the community.

Registration for the conference end on October 8, Registration for the conference ends on October the 8th. If you want to join in, please register at this address: http://conference.libreoffice.org/registration.

LibreOffice 3.6.2 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

Change logs are available at http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-6-2-release-3.6.2.1.log (fixed in 3.6.2.1) and http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-6-2-release-3.6.2.2.log (fixed in 3.6.2.2).

—

The infographics offers a representation of the growth of the developers community over the last 12 months, in addition to the growth of downloads from TDF mirror system.

Some TDF Numbers as of September 2012

You can download the Hybrid PDF at the following link: TDF Infographics September 2012 – Hybrid PDF.

The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary and starts fundraising campaign to reach the next stage

Fourth quarter’s donors define the communities budget for the next year

Berlin, September 28, 2012 – The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary since the announcement of the project on September 28, 2010. During the last 12 months, the foundation was legally established in Berlin, the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee were elected by TDF members, where membership is based on meritocracy and not on invitation, Intel became a supporter, and LibreOffice 3.5 and 3.6 families were announced. In addition, TDF has shown the prototypes of a cloud and a tablet version of LibreOffice, which will be available sometime in late 2013 or early 2014.

On October 1st, The Document Foundation will start a fundraising campaign with the objective of supporting the next wave of the growth. “So far, volunteers have provided most of the work necessary to sustain the project, but after two years it is is mandatory to start thinking really big”, says Italo Vignoli, the dean of the Board of Directors. “We had a dream, and now that thousands around the world made that dream come true we want to get to the major league of software development and advocacy. By donating during the fourth quarter of 2012, donors will define the budget we have available for 2013”.

Community members have set up a dedicated donation page – with several options including PayPal and credit cards – at http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the fundraising campaign. The page will be updated on the fly, to show current achievements, and concrete goals achieved with the donations.

“In just 24 months, we have achieved what many people thought was impossible when the project was launched”, says Thorsten Behrens, SUSE developer, Deputy Chairman of the Board. “We have managed to aggregate a large number of people around the idea that an independent foundation was the only reasonable choice to provide a sustainable future to the legacy OOo code. According to Ohloh, in just two years we managed to become the third largest free software project focused on the development of a desktop application with 325 active committers over the last 12 months, after Firefox and Chrome”.

LibreOffice is the result of the combined activity of 540 contributors – including former OpenOffice.org developers – having made more than 40,000 commits. The program is faster and more reliable, and has a richer feature set than predecessors and competitors thanks to a growing hacker community where more experienced developers are mentoring newbies in order to bring them up to speed. Today, the group is well balanced between people looking after infrastructure, new features and patches.

Downloads since January 25, 2011, the date of the first stable release, have just exceeded 18 million, and amount to over 20 million when you add external sites offering the same package. In addition, millions of users install LibreOffice from CDs burned from the ISO images available online or bundled with magazines in many geographies. Around 90% of installations are on Windows, with another 10% on MacOS.

Linux users, in contrast, get LibreOffice from their distribution repository. Based on IDC reckonings for new or updated Linux installations in 2012, TDF estimates a subtotal of 30 million Linux users, as LibreOffice is the office suite of choice for all Linux distributions.

The community around TDF will gather in Berlin from October 16 to October 19, 2012, for the second LibreOffice Conference (http://conference.libreoffice.org/). Interested people need to register at http://conference.libreoffice.org/registration/ by October 8th.

LibreOffice can be downloaded from http://www.libreoffice.org/.

Meet the Membership Committee

The Members of The Document Foundation have just elected the new Membership Committee, with five members – Sophie Gautier, Fridrich Štrba, Eike Rathke, Cor Nouws and Jean Weber – and two deputies – Simon Phipps and Leif Lodahl.

I think that there are a couple of significant facts to underline here: the number of the original TDF founders is lower than the number of new TDF members (although several of them have been active in the project for a long time), and the number of independent members is higher than the number of people affiliated with companies sponsoring TDF.

I suppose that people are curious about the activity of these seven people, inside TDF and outside TDF.

I think that the best way to meet them is to link their web presence, as everyone has at least a blog. Of course, it will be soon possible to find them on the Membership Committee page on TDF website, and meet them at LibreOffice Conference in Berlin.

Sophie Gautier does not need any introduction: she is the history of the project, a TDF founder and a pillar of several projects: French localization, QA and certification. She has a website, a blog and a Google+ page.

Fridrich Štrba is a SUSE developer, with a passion for hacking filters (Visio and Corel Draw), who speaks a large number of languages including Italian. He has a website and a Google+ page.

Eike Rathke is a RedHat developer, and a longtime Calc hacker living in Hamburg where he has breathed the OOo code for the last twenty years. He has a website and a blog, while here you can learn about his erAck programmer name.

Cor Nouws is a TDF founder and a long time member of the project, active in several projects: Dutch localization, QA and certification. Together with Sophie, he brings a huge amount of wisdom and sense of community to TDF. He has a website and a blog.

Jean Weber is the leader of the documentation project, and the representative of the southern emisphere inside the Membership Committee (she lives in Australia). She has a blog and a Google+ page.

Simon Phipps is the President of the Open Source Initiative, and has been the engine behind Sun’s open source efferts for 10 years. He has a website and a Google+ page, and is featured on Wikipedia.

Leif Lodahl is a TDF founder, and has been instrumental in the first large migration to LibreOffice at Copenhagen Hospitals. He has a blog and a Google+ page.

Of course, the best way to meet the entire Membership Committee and discuss with them will be the LibreOffice Conference in Berlin.

LibreOffice Localization Program in Saudi Arabia announced to enhance Arabic language related features

The Document Foundation and the National Program for Free and Open Source Software Technologies (Motah) at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia work at the further enhancement of LibreOffice

Berlin, September 13, 2012 – The Document Foundation and the National Program for Free and Open Source Software Technologies (Motah: http://www.motah.org.sa) at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia announce a Localization Program to enhance the Arabic language support in LibreOffice and solve related bugs, and contribute to the improvement and development of LibreOffice.

liberoffice_imageMotah LibreOffice Project (http://motah.org.sa/en/?q=node/94) is one of the activities of Motah program at KACST, where several software products in various fields are studied to explore the extent of Arabic support and their suitability to the needs of Arab users. Thereafter, Motah team will work at improving the selected software products to meet those needs and requirements. LibreOffice was selected to be the first localization project because of its importance as an office suite whose functions are needed by all computer users.

The main objectives of the project are the following:

  1. Study LibreOffice and identify the bugs related to Arabic language, and validate that the software correctly supports languages written from right to left in all its functions and operations.
  2. Work to solve these bugs and improve the LibreOffice support to languages written from right to left. The bugs are either discovered by Motah team members or posted in the LibreOffice Bugzilla website.
  3. Work on simplifying and enhancing LibreOffice graphical user interface, to enhance the usability of the software.
  4. Work on improving the Arabic Documentation as well as improving the Arabization of the graphical user interface, by reviewing and enhancing the existing translation.

arab-language“As the first leading project in the Arabic region to support LibreOffice, Motah program is committed to support Arabic language and its use in modern technologies. Through local software engineers, young and open source enthusiasts, Motah has made its first contribution to LibreOffice 3.6.1 solving several bugs related to Arabic language and RTL format support. Motah will continue solving related bugs as well as improving the Arabic help and documentation as part of its contribution to the Arabic speaking ICT community. It is fascinating to see The Document Foundation combining people from different cultures, languages and geographical locations around the development of LibreOffice, the best free office suite ever”, says Abdulrahman Alarifi, Motah Program Director.

“Motah key contributions to LibreOffice are a demonstration of the unique advantages of TDF as an independent body, capable of pushing forward the free office suite and raising the bar of interoperability”, comments Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board of The Document Foundation. “Only the balanced mix between organization and volunteer activities within TDF can guarantee the global reach of LibreOffice, and offer users a free office suite in their native language independently from their geography or language”.

Modern Standard Arabic is the official language of 26 states (Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen), and is spoken by as many as 440 million native speakers.

The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran (known as Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic) and is widely taught in schools, universities, and used to varying degrees in workplaces, government and the media.

LibreOffice is available in their native language to over 95% of the world’s population, thanks to a global volunteer community spanning over the five continents

LibreOffice can be downloaded at http://www.libreoffice.org/download.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, meritocratic organization, which builds on ten years of dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org Community. TDF was created in the belief that the culture born of an independent foundation brings out the best in corporate and volunteer contributors, and will deliver the best free office suite. TDF is open to any individual who agrees with its core values and contributes to its activities, and warmly welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community. As of August 30, 2012, TDF has over 140 members and over 2,000 volunteers and contributors worldwide.

Media Contact Motah

Abdulrahman Alarifi – Motah Program Director
Mobile: 00 966 561939678 – Email: aarifi@kacst.edu.sa

Media Contacts TDF

Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
Phone: +49 8341 99660880 – Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org – Skype: floeff
Charles H. Schulz (based in Paris, France, UTC+1)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 – E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Eliane Domingos de Sousa (based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UTC-3)
E-mail: elianedomingos@documentfoundation.org – Skype: elianedomingos
Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 – E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
Skype: italovignoli – GTalk: italo.vignoli@gmail.com

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