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Author: Italo Vignoli

LibreOffice 10/20 Logo Community Contest

The year 2020 will be the 20th anniversary of the free office suite (OpenOffice.org was announced on July 19, 2000) and the 10th anniversary of LibreOffice (announced on September 28, 2010). We have the opportunity to celebrate both during the year, to reaffirm the fact that LibreOffice today is the leading free office suite available in the market.

For the anniversary project, we need a specific logo which celebrates the 10/20 anniversary without making a difference between the two dates, as the concept is that LibreOffice was born 20 years ago as OpenOffice.org, and evolved into LibreOffice 10 years ago.

The 10/20 logo should be easy to associate to the current LibreOffice logo (with tagline), and follow TDF design and style guides (Corporate Image) published on the wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Branding.

The 10/20 logo will be used for presentations, event signage, swag and gadgets (like stickers). It should be easy to recognize and read at small sizes.

The 10/20 logo must be developed with free and open source software, and released in vector-based (SVG) as well as bitmap-based (PNG, JPG) formats. The logo must be available in a squared or nearly squared format, plus other formats as appropriate.

One example of a possible implementation should also be provided with the proposal.

Intellectual property must be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), while a copyright transfer to TDF is not required.

Authors must declare in writing that they are the sole owners of all rights related to the artwork they have developed.
It should be clear that this is not a request for a mascot, and any kind of proposal which could be interpreted as a mascot will be rejected. Also, the 10/20 logo must be global and as such any reference to a regional styling approach (such as Anime or Manga) will also be rejected.

Logo proposals must be sent to: italo@libreoffice.org by November 30, 2019, at 11:59PM UTC. TDF will select the best proposal, which will be announced on December 16, 2019.

The author of the winning proposal will be announced at FOSDEM 2020, where the 10/20 logo will be displayed for the first time during a global FOSS event.

Interview with Ilmari Lauhakangas, Development Marketing

Ilmari Lauhakangas, based in Helsinki (Finland), is in charge of Development Marketing.

We have asked him a few questions, about his relationship with free software and his role in the community.

How did you become involved with free software and LibreOffice? Are you contributing to other FOSS projects?

I did localisation for FOSS projects in the early 2010s. Around 2012, I started contributing more to Retroshare, a secure communication platform, doing recruiting, translation coordination and web design.

In 2014 I began doing quality assurance for LibreOffice. People like Yousuf Philips, Joel Madero and Robinson Tryon were instrumental in making me understand the relevance of QA work. The attitude towards recruiting more contributors was spontaneous and immediate in the QA team.

I have focused on LibreOffice for the past few years.

You have been involved in the LibreOffice project for quite a long time, in QA and other areas. Can you summarize your activities?

I have: 1. somehow touched over twelve thousand reports in TDF Bugzilla, 2. improved and written technical documentation in TDF wiki, 3. improved help content, 4. done development for the web help, 5. edited content for the main website, 6. piloted the use of the translate extension for TDF wiki and guided people in its use, 7. helped new contributors get started in development, QA, documentation, design and infra, 8. recruited contributors through various channels such as VolunteerMatch.

You have explored several tools to attract new contributors. What do you think we should do as a project to keep the high level of contributions necessary for a large FOSS project such as LibreOffice?

We should make sure our technical documentation is high quality. When developers run into good documentation, they are very happy.

We should invest in improving the user experience of our web-based tools.

You are responsible for Development Marketing since September 1. How can you describe your responsibilities? Who should get in touch with you?

Basically everyone who wants to improve LibreOffice should get in touch. If you have no idea of how you could even be useful, I will help you find out, because everyone can be a part of the community and contribute! I hope to encourage strong cross-team collaboration. I want people to be credited for their work. I want us to have a safe and supporting environment for everyone to challenge themselves, try new things and learn new skills.

Technology focused high schools and universities, what should we do to grow the interest and the willingness to contribute among students?

This is more of a political question. If money and resources are lacking in education, teachers will not have time to offer structured introductions to free software projects. Likewise, if higher education is not free, students will have to work alongside their studies and will not have the energy contribute to FOSS.

On our part, we need to provide students with software they can rely on. In Finland, thirty thousand students in advanced secondary education use LibreOffice every year. If they find the software enjoyable, surely they are more inclined to contribute.

Happy 9th Anniversary, LibreOffice

Happy 9th Anniversary to LibreOffice, to the community of volunteer contributors  – represented by The Document Foundation – and to every person who made the dream possible with a donation or a simple download. If you have developed, patched, localized, tested, triaged, documented, communicated, promoted, explained, supported, certified, trained or migrated either the software or the organizations deploying it or the people using it, you should celebrate. Together, we have been able to transform a dream into a reality.

Thanks to Geralt for the image, released with a Pixabay License.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.3.2

Berlin, September 26, 2019 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.3.2, the second minor release of the LibreOffice 6.3 family, with many bug and regression fixes. LibreOffice 6.3.2 “fresh” is targeted at technology enthusiasts and power users, who are suggested to update their current version.

LibreOffice’s individual users are helped by a global community of volunteers: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/community-support/. On the website and the wiki there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos. Donations help us to make all of these resources available.

LibreOffice 6.3.2’s change log pages are available on TDF’s wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.3.2/RC1 (changed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.3.2/RC2 (changed in RC2).

LibreOffice in business

For enterprise class deployments, TDF strongly recommend sourcing LibreOffice from one of the ecosystem partners to get long-term supported releases, dedicated assistance, custom new features and bug fixes, and other benefits. Also, the work done by ecosystem partners flows back into the LibreOffice project, benefiting everyone.

Also, support for migrations and trainings should be sourced from certified professionals who provide value-added services which extend the reach of the community to the corporate world and offer CIOs and IT managers a solution in line with proprietary offerings.

In fact, LibreOffice – thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and long-term support options from certified partners – represents the ideal solution for businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from vendor lock-in.

Availability of LibreOffice 6.3.2

LibreOffice 6.3.2 is immediately available from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements are specified on the download page. TDF builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/.

LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server-based platform, and should be installed and configured by adding cloud storage and an SSL certificate. It might be considered an enabling technology for the cloud services offered by ISPs or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations.

All versions of LibreOffice are built with document conversion libraries from the Document Liberation Project: https://www.documentliberation.org.

Support LibreOffice

LibreOffice users are invited to join the community at https://ask.libreoffice.org, where they can get and provide user-to-user support. People willing to contribute their time and professional skills to the project can visit the dedicated website at https://whatcanidoforlibreoffice.org.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can provide financial support to The Document Foundation with a donation via PayPal, credit card or other tools at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.

LibreOffice 6.3.1 and LibreOffice 6.2.7 announced, focusing on security

Berlin, September 5, 2019 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.3.1, the first minor release of the LibreOffice 6.3 family, and LibreOffice 6.2.7, the seventh minor release of the LibreOffice 6.2 family, with many bug fixes and a key security improvement.

LibreOffice 6.3.1 and LibreOffice 6.2.7 consider the presence of any call to a script-like thing as equally hazardous as a macro, and present the user a warning dialog about the document trying to execute a script. Users should never allow the execution of macros and scripts embedded in documents, unless they are perfectly aware of the potential risks associated with the action.

LibreOffice 6.3.1 “fresh” is targeted at technology enthusiasts and power users, while LibreOffice 6.2.7 “still” is targeted at users in production environments and individual users who prefer robustness over advanced features. All LibreOffice users should update immediately their current version.

LibreOffice’s individual users are helped by a global community of volunteers: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/community-support/. On the website and the wiki there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos. Donations help us to make all of these resources available.

LibreOffice users are invited to join the community at https://ask.libreoffice.org, where they can get and provide user-to-user support. While TDF can not provide commercial level support, there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos on the website and the wiki. Your donations help us make these available.

LibreOffice 6.3.1’s change log pages are available on TDF’s wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.3.1/RC1 (changed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.3.1/RC2 (changed in RC2). LibreOffice 6.2.7’s change log page is also available on TDF’s wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.2.7/RC1 (changed in RC1).

LibreOffice in business

For enterprise class deployments, TDF strongly recommend sourcing LibreOffice from one of the ecosystem partners to get long-term supported releases, dedicated assistance, custom new features and bug fixes, and other benefits. Also, the work done by ecosystem partners flows back into the LibreOffice project, benefiting everyone.

Also, support for migrations and trainings should be sourced from certified professionals who provide value-added services which extend the reach of the community to the corporate world and offer CIOs and IT managers a solution in line with proprietary offerings.

In fact, LibreOffice – thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and long-term support options from certified partners – represents the ideal solution for businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from vendor lock-in.

Availability of the new versions of LibreOffice

LibreOffice 6.3.1 and LibreOffice 6.2.7 are immediately available from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements are specified on the download page. Builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/.

LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server-based platform, and should be installed and configured by adding cloud storage and an SSL certificate. It might be considered an enabling technology for the cloud services offered by ISPs or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.

All versions of LibreOffice are built with document conversion libraries from the Document Liberation Project: https://www.documentliberation.org.

TDF Annual Report 2018

The Annual Report of The Document Foundation for the year 2018 is now available in PDF format from TDF Nextcloud in two different versions: low resolution (6.4MB) and high resolution (53.2MB). The annual report is based on the German version presented to the authorities in April.

The 52 page document has been entirely created with free open source software: written contents have obviously been developed with LibreOffice Writer (desktop) and collaboratively modified with LibreOffice Writer (online), charts have been created with LibreOffice Calc and prepared for publishing with LibreOffice Draw, drawings and tables have been developed or modified (from legacy PDF originals) with LibreOffice Draw, images have been prepared for publishing with GIMP, and the layout has been created with Scribus based on the existing templates.

All pictures are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License, courtesy of TDF Members from Albania, Brasil, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Nepal, Taiwan and Turkey. Stock photos are CC0 by Pixabay.

Marina Latini, Chairwoman of TDF Board of Directors, has written in the welcome address:

After eight full years, the challenge is to further grow the project, by leveraging the presence of active volunteers, enthusiastic supporters and happy users in many geographies. During the last couple of years, a growing number of events has been organized by native language communities around the world, with significant growth in Asia.

What we have achieved so far goes beyond the most optimistic forecasts of the project’s founders back in 2010, thanks to the commitment of the large group of people who manage the foundation and take care of related activities, and the volunteer contributions of organizations and individuals in every continent.
Of course, what we are now would not be possible without the generosity of thousand of donors and the valued members of the Advisory Board who support the growth of LibreOffice, the Document Liberation Project and the ecosystem around them.

Today, LibreOffice is the only suite for personal productivity with the ambition of providing desktop and cloud users with the same seamless experience, based on a solid set of features. Mobile apps are under development, to further extend the reach.

This Annual Report of The Document Foundation is a showcase of all community activities which support the growth of LibreOffice and the Document Liberation Project.

We are getting closer to our 10th anniversary. I look forward to another great year for our global community of friends, working united on the goal of creating the best free office software ever. Thank you very much to all of you who made this dream come true!

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