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Author: Italo Vignoli

UK Government Digital Service joins The Document Foundation Advisory Board

Berlin, July 22, 2019 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces that the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) has joined the project’s Advisory Board, effective immediately.

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is part of the UK Cabinet Office [1]. It leads the digital transformation of Government in the UK, helping people interact with government more easily and supporting government to operate more effectively and efficiently.

In July 2014, the UK Cabinet Office announced the selection of the Open Document Format (ODF) for sharing and viewing government documents.

The Open Standards Team within GDS support and encourage the use of open standards in government. Their aim is to help identify and contribute to open standards for software interoperability and to promote data formats that will help to meet user needs across the UK government and support the delivery of common components.

“GDS has been a long-term supporter of the adoption of Open Document Format, and their participation in the TDF Advisory Board represents a strong endorsement of the project’s commitment to the advancement of open standards and ODF”, says Simon Phipps, TDF Director.

John Strudwick, Interim Director for Service Design and Assurance at GDS, said: “GDS are delighted to have joined the Advisory Board of TDF. We believe that open standards are important in meeting the needs that users have of Government and that ODF plays a big role in helping to deliver this.”

TDF Advisory Board’s (AB) [2] primary function is to represent supporters of the project, and to provide the Board of Directors (BoD) with advice and guidance. In addition, the AB is at the kernel of the LibreOffice ecosystem, and as such is key to the further development of the project.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/cabinet-office
[2] https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.2.5

Berlin, July 4, 2019 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.2.5, the fifth bug and regression fixing release of the LibreOffice 6.2 family, targeted at tech-savvy individuals: early adopters, technology enthusiasts and power users. Users in production environments can start evaluating LibreOffice 6.2.5.

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://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/, to improve LibreOffice by contributing back in one of the following areas: development, documentation, infrastructure, localization, quality assurance, design or marketing.

LibreOffice 6.2.5 provides many bug and regression fixes over the previous version, contributed by a thriving community of developers, which are described in the change log pages: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.2.5/RC1 (changed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.2.5/RC2 (changed in RC2).

Enterprise Deployments

LibreOffice 6.2.5 still represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, but may also be considered for enterprise class deployments. In early August, when LibreOffice 6.3 will be released, LibreOffice 6.2.5 will replace LibreOffice 6.1.6 as the best choice for production environments.

Organizations looking for an enterprise class application backed by support and service level agreements (SLA) should source a LibreOffice LTS (Long Term Supported) version from those TDF Advisory Board members who provide this product (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/).

Also, value-added services for enterprise class deployments – related to software support, migrations and training – should be sourced from certified professionals (https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

Sourcing software and/or services from the ecosystem of certified professionals represents the best support option for enterprises deploying LibreOffice on a large number of desktops. In fact, these activities are contributed back to the project under the form of improvements to the software and the community, and trigger a virtuous circle which is beneficial to users and all other stakeholders.

Availability of LibreOffice 6.2.5

LibreOffice 6.2.5 is immediately available from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.9. 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 service, 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.

LibreOffice 6.2.5 is built with document conversion libraries from the Document Liberation Project: https://www.documentliberation.org.

The COSM Project

In 2017, contributors to the Open Document Format (ODF) specification at OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) noted that while the Technical Committee continues to generate changes, the integration of these changes – a substantial task, which is key for the future of the ODF standard – is only being conducted on a volunteer basis.

To support current adoptions of the ODF standard format by governments and enterprises and potential adoptions in the future, it would have been important to release the new ODF 1.3 version in a timely manner, to avoid that delays could affect the position of ODF in the marketplace.

Open Document Format 1.0 was published as an ISO/IEC international standard ISO/IEC 26300 – Open Document Format for Office Applications in 2006. Open Document Format 1.2 was published as ISO/IEC standard in 2015.

In early 2018, the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation addressed the need of evolving the standard by establishing the independent COSM – Community of ODF Specification Maintainers – project at Public Software CIC (a UK Community Interest Company) to hold funds and to retain editors to work at the Technical Committee.

The COSM project co-ordinates with the OASIS TC, solicits and secures funds from ODF stakeholders, solicits experienced editors and arranges for one or more to work at the direction of the TC to edit the specification.

As a major ODF stakeholder, TDF donated a seed of Euro 10,000 to get the COSM project started, plus up to Euro 20,000 to match each euro donated by other stakeholders. So far, the COSM project has been backed by Microsoft, Collabora, CIB and the UK Government.

Editors have been working on the ODF 1.3 specifications, which have been regularly reviewed during the weekly meetings of the Technical Committee, and are expected in the third quarter of 2019. A number of features have been also been assigned to ODF 1.4. The COSM Project is now soliciting funds for future work.

Significant contributions to the specifications have been made by Regina Henschel (volunteer from The Document Foundation) and Michael Stahl from CIB.

ODF Advocacy at OASIS

Following the initiation of the COSM project, team members of The Document Foundation and CIB have got in touch with OASIS management to re-launch the defunct ODF Adoption TC as ODF Advocacy. The project has been accepted and has been launched as OASIS Open Project in May 2019, with the objective of increasing the awareness of ODF and fostering adoption by governments.

LibOCon Almeria Call for Papers New Deadline

Call for Papers deadline for LibOCon Almeria, in Spain, has been extended to July 15, 2019. The event is scheduled for early September, from Wednesday 11 to Friday 13.

Whether you are a seasoned presenter or have never spoken in public before, we want to hear from you! So, if you have not yet submitted your talk proposal and have something interesting to share about LibreOffice or the Document Liberation Project, you still have time to act!

Proposals should be filed by July 15, 2019, in order to guarantee that they will be considered for inclusion in the conference program, which will be based on the following tracks:

a) Development, APIs, Extensions, Future Technology
b) Quality Assurance
c) Localization, Documentation and Native Language Projects
d) Appealing Libreoffice: Ease of Use, Design and Accessibility
e) Open Document Format, Document Liberation and Interoperability
f) Advocating, Promoting, Marketing LibreOffice

Presentations, case studies, workshops, and technical talks will discuss a subject in depth and will last 30 minutes (including Q&A). Lightning talks will cover a specific topic and will last 5 minutes (including Q&A). Sessions will be streamed live and recorded for download.

Please send a short description/bio of yourself as well as your talk/workshop proposal to the program committee address: conference@libreoffice.org

If you do not agree to provide the data for the talk under the “Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License”, please explicitly state your terms. In order to make your presentation available on TDF YouTube channel, please do not submit talks containing copyrighted material (music, pictures, etc.).

If you want to give multiple talks, please send a separate email for each.

Thanks a lot for your participation!

(Image credit: José Juan Sánchez, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons)

LibreOffice 6.3 on Linux, a statement

Following the availability of LibreOffice 6.3 Beta, there have been speculations about 32-bit compatibility based on a the missing 32-bit binaries for Linux.

We have prepared a short and a long statement to clarify the situation.

TL;DR

  1. The Document Foundation is ending the provision of 32-bit binaries, and NOT 32-bit compatibility as a whole.

  2. Distro vendors or anyone running a more current 32-bit Linux system can still create 32-bit versions of LibreOffice, as developers have not in any way removed 32-bit compatibility from the source code. Additionally, we are not removing any 32-bit builds that were previously created.

  3. Most Linux users are sourcing LibreOffice from their distro repositories, which are usually compiled against the distro’s version of the various external libraries. We do not anticipate distros dropping 32-bit LibreOffice packages.

  4. TDF does not anticipate the same decision happening for LibreOffice 32-bit binaries for Windows any time soon.

LONG

  1. During the last two years, the number of downloads of the 32-bit Linux distribution-neutral binaries provided by The Document Foundation have decreased to a very low number. Today, the time needed to compile, test, maintain and distribute those binaries is not worth the effort, based on current download numbers. So, TDF is ending the provision of 32-bit binaries, and NOT 32-bit compatibility as a whole.

  2. Today, 32-bit packages are very much the domain of specific Linux distros rather than a general user need. So, we are leaving them to distros, who will upstream fixes. Indeed, distro vendors or anyone running a more current 32-bit Linux system can still create 32-bit versions of LibreOffice, as developers have not in any way removed 32-bit compatibility from the source code. Additionally, TDF is not removing any 32-bit binaries that were previously created.

  3. Most Linux users are sourcing LibreOffice from their distro repositories, which are usually compiled against the distro’s version of the various external libraries. LibreOffice by itself ships a number of external components to avoid dependencies, while distros link against the versions of those components which are part of the distro anyway. TDF does not anticipate distros dropping 32-bit LibreOffice packages.

  4. The Document Foundation does not anticipate the same decision happening for Windows 32-bit binaries any time soon. Of course, if downloads of Windows 32-bit binaries from TDF mirror servers drop to the same very low number as Linux 32-bit packages, TDF will reconsider the situation.

LibreOffice Paris HackFest

The LibreOffice Paris HackFest 2019 will take place on the weekend of July 5th-6th, at le 137, which is at 137 Boulevard Magenta, Paris 10e, France. The event is sponsored by INNO3, hosting the hackfest in their building, and The Document Foundation, providing reimbursement for travels and accommodations.

LibreOffice Paris HackFest will start on Friday at 10AM. During the day there will be an informal meeting of the French community, to discuss local activities, while developers and other volunteers will hack the LibreOffice code. The venue will be available until 2AM. On Saturday the venue will open at 10AM, to allow people to continue working, and share hackfest results. The event will officially end at 8PM, but on Sunday there will be a city tour.

More details on the LibreOffice Paris HackFest are available on the wiki at the following link: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfest/Paris2019.

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