Document Freedom Day is planned for March 28, 2018. If you are organizing an event to celebrate it, please remember to register it on the website.
Author: Italo Vignoli
LibreOffice Certification @ FSF LibrePlanet
Berlin, March 14, 2018 – The Document Foundation will present LibreOffice Certification to Free Software Foundation Members and free software advocates attending LibrePlanet in Boston. Lothar Becker, co-chair of the Certification Committee, will talk about migration projects and training activities related to LibreOffice, with the objective of helping enterprises to achieve the freedom associated with free software and open document formats.
Lothar Becker will present LibreOffice Certification on Saturday, March 24, during LibrePlanet, and will host a certification focused workshop on Monday, March 26, from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM.
LibreOffice Certification has been extended to FSF Members in 2017, based on the same professional pre-requisites of TDF Members. The workshop will offer a thorough overview of the skills requested and a summary of TDF’s migration and training protocols. Participation is free but must be booked in advance by sending an email to certification@libreoffice.org.
In addition, on Sunday, March 25, there will be an international certification review session for applicants for migration and training based in South America and Spain. Reviewers and applicants will join Lothar Becker, chairing the session, using a video conference system based entirely on free software from end to end.
For additional information, please write to certification@libreoffice.org.
Happy Women’s Day
Our inclusive global community celebrates March 8, International Women’s Day, with a tribute to LibreLadies, the group of female volunteers who contribute to the LibreOffice project in different areas. The picture was shot In Rome during the LibreOffice Conference. Marina Latini, first right, has been recently confirmed as TDF Chairwoman (and as such is the longest running BoD Chair since the birth of The Document Foundation in February 2012). Katharina “Bubli” Behrens, first left, is a leading developer. Sophie Gautier, middle (grey hoodie), is a key member of TDF Team, and one of the oldest members of the community. Together with them, a large group of young Albanians who will be involved in the organization of the next LibreOffice Conference in Tirana, and other volunteers from other European countries.
We would like to see more women involved in the LibreOffice and the Document Liberation projects, following the leading example of the Albanian community, where over 50% of volunteers involved in free open source software – including technical roles – are female.
LibOCon 2019 Call for Location
Once a year, the LibreOffice Community hosts its annual, global community event, the LibreOffice Conference. After a successful Paris event in October 2011, in Berlin in October 2012, in Milano in September 2013, in Bern in September 2014, in Aarhus in September 2015, in Brno in September 2016, and in Rome in October 2017, the venue for the upcoming year 2018 will be in Tirana.
To ease organization, The Document Foundation’s Board of Directors (BoD) has decided to open the call for location for 2019 in advance, so that organizers of the 2019 conference have the opportunity to attend the Tirana event, in order to get acquainted with the conference details.
Traditionally, the LibreOffice Conference takes place between September and November, with a preference for September. The LibreOffice Conference in Tirana is scheduled at the end of the month of September, from Wednesday 26 to Friday 28, on the very day of the 8th anniversary of the LibreOffice project. Community meetings will be organized on Tuesday, September 25.
All the elements which have to be included in the proposal are described with plenty of details on this page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Events/2019/LibreOffice_Annual_Conference/Call_for_Location. The deadline for sending the proposal is June 30, 2018.
After receiving the applications, TDF BoD and Team will evaluate the proposals to check if all preconditions are fulfilled, and give applicants a chance to clarify all details. A decision will be taken during the month of July.
TDF Chairwoman and Deputy Chairman announced
The Board of Directors of The Document Foundation has confirmed Marina Latini in the role of Chairwoman and appointed Bjoern Michaelsen in the role of Deputy Chairman.
I have used their own words – from the email they have sent to present their candidacy – to describe themselves, although they are both very well know both in the LibreOffice community and in the wider FOSS community.
MARINA LATINI
My name is Marina Latini, Italian and 33 years old. I studied Computer Science at the University of Perugia, and I’m a free software advocate since 2007, promoting free software and open standards. In 2010, I was one of the first Italian members of the LibreOffice community. I’ve been an active member of the Fedora Project from 2009 to 2013, and an openSUSE advocate since October 2011. I’m involved in several events, migrations and training related to LibreOffice both in the public sector and in schools. I’m working at Studio Storti as team leader of the LibreOffice Division since 2013. In the past 2 years, I was honoured to be a member of TDF Board of Directors and I’m thankful to all the people that rely on me for this important role.
From the very beginning of my career, I was focused on the relationship between society and technologies, remarking where possible the importance of free software and open standards adoption. I had the opportunity to get a job where I can share my passion and the knowledge acquired during these years. Thanks to TDF community and the election as a member of the Board of Directors, I had the possibility to maximize my efforts and work hard for one of the biggest community projects in free software history.
A lot of things have been done, but is not still enough. Together we can achieve more, spreading all over the world all the good things that this project has been able to realize. I feel that I have still a lot to offer to TDF, for the people of the community and for the ones that will come. Our project is growing fast with contributors from several countries and we need to focus much more on lowering the barriers to being a really welcoming community.
Keeping in mind our charitable entity we can’t forget to interact with schools and university, spreading the knowledge and mentoring new contributors. Finally, I would like that our community will become as much as possible inclusive, and never let out who, just in appearance, looks like different from us. Openness is a state of mind.
BJOERN MICHAELSEN
I’m Bjoern Michaelsen and I am currently serving on the Board of Directors as an unaffiliated individual. Before that, I ensured LibreOffice to be properly released and maintained through half an alphabet on Ubuntu: from the first LibreOffice release (3.3) on Ubuntu Natty to LibreOffice 5.3 on Ubuntu Zesty.
My current job is unrelated to LibreOffice. This unfortunately also limits the time I can donate to the project in various roles: as a developer, as a member of the ESC, as an organizer of events or fulfilling administrative tasks on the Board of Directors. But it also allows me to claim to be a truly independent voice.
I spare you providing a long list of my prior contributors to the project, as they are a bad prediction of those in the future. Instead, I will try to provide you with what I can bring to the role on the Board and what goals I am going to aim for:
I served as a Director or Deputy on the Board of Directors of TDF since it was first incorporated, and along the way I learned insights in the finer details of the decisions and experiences made by TDF Board of Directors. The hard core of these involves the allocation of the foundation’s resources: its brands and donations. But I also understand and contributed to the softer points: TDF carefully using its public voice as an NGO for the greater good and its stated mission.
I hope I will be able to bring this experience to the next term of the Board of Directors. I am encouraged to see strong contributors to the project as new candidates in this election and hope to share the duty of serving with them, together providing a strong and reasonable voice of independent and unaffiliated input in the Board.
Ultimately, I hope after this one last term can confidently leave TDF Board with many new diverse and independent voices in all parts of the project and foundation and retire back to spend my contributions more on e.g. the code of the project again.
The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.0.2
Berlin, March 1st, 2018 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 6.0.2, the second minor release of the recently announced LibreOffice 6 family in just over a month, with around 50 bug and regression fixes. All LibreOffice users are invited to update either to LibreOffice 6.0.2 or to LibreOffice 5.4.5 to solve potential security-related issues.
TDF suggests to conservative users and enterprises to deploy LibreOffice with the backing of certified developers, migrators and trainers (an updated list is available at: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). This is extremely important for the growth of the LibreOffice ecosystem.
Technical details about LibreOffice 6.0.2 bug and regression fixes are available in the change log: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.0.2/RC1 (fixed in RC1).
Download LibreOffice
LibreOffice 6.0.2 is immediately available for download at the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/.
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/. Donations help TDF to maintain its infrastructure, share knowledge, and fund the activities of local communities, such as the event in Surabaya, Indonesia, on March 23/25 (http://libreoffice.id) or the hackfest in Hamburg, Germany, on April 6/8 (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfest/Hamburg2018).
Several companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) provide either value-added LTS versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.