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Author: Italo Vignoli

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.

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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)

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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.

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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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LibreOffice Conference 2020 – it could be in your city

The LibreOffice Conference 2020 will be an event to remember, for a couple of reasons: it will be the 10th in a series of successful conferences, and it will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the LibreOffice project and the 20th of the FOSS office suite. In 2020, The Document Foundation will be on stage at many FOSS events around the world, and the LibreOffice Conference will be the most important of the year. Organizing this conference is a unique opportunity for FOSS communities, because the event will make the history of free open source software.

So far, LibreOffice Conferences have been organized in Paris, October 2011; Berlin, October 2012; Milan, September 2013; Bern, September 2014; Aarhus, September 2015; Brno, September 2016; Rome, October 2017; Tirana, September 2018, and Almeria, September 2019.

The Call for Location for LibreOffice Conference 2020 is open until June 30, 2019. TDF’s Board of Directors wants to to give next year’s event organizers the opportunity to attend this year’s conference in Almeria, Spain, September 11 to 13, 2019, to familiarize with the community and the structure of the event. For historical and practical reasons, the LibreOffice Conference takes place between September and November, with a preference for September.

More details about LibOCon 2020 Call for Locations are available on the original blog post.

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The Document Foundation welcomes Adfinis SyGroup to the project’s Advisory Board

Berlin, May 23, 2019 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announced today that Adfinis SyGroup – a Swiss FOSS company headquarted in Bern, with offices in Basel, Zurich and Crissier (Vaud) – has joined the project’s Advisory Board.

Adfinis SyGroup is using LibreOffice for office productivity, in addition to providing professional consultancy to customers with SLA contracts to support migrations from proprietary software to LibreOffice. The company has helped to organize the LibreOffice Conference in 2014, when the event was hosted by the Bern University, is contributing patches to the source code, and is also hosting various TDF servers and buildbots on their infrastructure.

More recently, Adfinis SyGroup has helped Collabora to start porting LibreOffice to Apple iOS to allow drafting and editing ODF standard documents on Apple iPads. The underlying base of the software is LibreOfficeKit, which uses the LibreOffice code base to do tiled rendering. On top of that, a HTML/JS solution builds the UI for platforms using VCL under the hood.

“Adfinis SyGroup has been a friend of The Document Foundation since forever, and has recently increased its involvement in the LibreOffice project with the port to Apple iOS. We share the same vision about FOSS as a key element for the future of technology and innovation, and open standards as the only available road to true interoperability”, says Marina Latini, TDF Chairwoman.

“Our support for LibreOffice is part of our strategy to not only use FOSS software, but actively enable its improvement, strengthening the ecosystem and through that making the solution usable for more people. We are working closely with our partner Collabora as they invest in the iOS port, as well as helping branded LibreOffice products to gain more market share in the enterprise environment. By convincing more corporate and government organizations to choose an enterprise subscription for a branded LibreOffice we help to fund resources to further improve the product and project. We’re looking forward to contribute our many years of experience as part of the FOSS community, as well as our strong network to enterprise customers, to the TDF Advisory Board in order to contribute to one of the most important FOSS projects”, says Nicolas Christener, Adfinis SyGroup CEO and CTO.
TDF Advisory Board’s (AB) primary function is to represent supporters of the project, and to provide the Board of Directors (BoD) with advice, guidance and proposals. In addition, the AB is at the kernel of the LibreOffice ecosystem, and as such is key to the further development of the project.

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