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Author: Italo Vignoli

LibreOffice 24.8.7 is available for download

Berlin, 8 May 2025 – LibreOffice 24.8.7, the seventh and last minor release of the LibreOffice 24.8 family of the free open source, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), MacOS (Apple and Intel) and Linux, is available at www.libreoffice.org/download. LibreOffice is the only office suite that respects the privacy of the user, ensuring that the user is able to decide if and with whom to share the content they create. It even allows deleting user related info from documents. In addition, it has a feature set comparable to the leading product on the market.

The biggest advantage over competing products is the LibreOffice Technology engine, the single software platform on which desktop, mobile and cloud versions of LibreOffice – including those from ecosystem companies – are based. Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud.
End users looking for manuals can download the LibreOffice 24.8 guides from the following link: books.libreoffice.org/.

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners, with three or five year backporting of security patches, other dedicated value-added features and Service Level Agreements: www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

LibreOffice 24.8.7 availability

LibreOffice 24.8.7 is available from www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 (no longer supported by Microsoft) and Apple MacOS 10.15. Products for Android and iOS are at www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/.

LibreOffice 24.8 will reach its EOL (End of Life) in mid-June 2025. Users are encouraged to migrate to LibreOffice 25.2, which is now fully tested for all types of use in production. The current version is LibreOffice 25.2.3.

End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org. They can support the project by donating at www.libreoffice.org/donate.

LibreOffice Conference Budapest 2025 Call for Papers

Join us in Budapest and tell us what you’re doing with LibreOffice!

The Document Foundation invites all members and contributors to submit talks, presentations and workshops for this year’s LibreOffice conference in Budapest at ELTE’s Faculty of Informatics, co-organized by FSF.hu Foundation. The event will take place from 4 to 6 September, with an informal community meeting on 3 September. Whether you are an experienced presenter or have never spoken in public before, if you have something interesting to say about LibreOffice, the Document Liberation Project, the Open Document Format or the ODF Toolkit, we want to hear from you!

Proposals should be submitted by 30 June 2025 to ensure they are considered for inclusion in the conference programme.

The conference programme will be based on the following tracks

a) Development, APIs, Extensions, Future Technology
b) Quality Assurance
c) Localisation, Documentation and Native Language Projects
d) Appealing LibreOffice: Usability, Design and Accessibility
e) Open Document Format, Document Liberation and Interoperability
f) Advocacy, promotion and marketing of LibreOffice

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

Please submit your proposal – including a short description of contents and a short biography of yourself – to https://events.documentfoundation.org/. If you would like to give more than one talk, please submit a separate proposal for each one. Only software based on the LibreOffice Technology platform will be allowed on stage, while slide decks will be shared using the ISO standard ODP and PDF file formats.

If you need a VISA, please contact the organising team at conference@libreoffice.org as soon as possible to receive an invitation letter.

If you are unable to travel to Hungary and prefer to present remotely, please include a note in your proposal to allow the organisers to schedule your presentation (and organise a test session beforehand).

If you do not agree to make the data for the presentation available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 Licence, please specify your terms. In order to make your presentation available on the TDF YouTube channel, please do not make use of copyrighted material (music, images, etc.) for your slide deck.

Of course, this is only the Call for Papers, but everyone is welcome to attend the talks and events! We’ll post again soon when registration is open…

Thank you for your participation!

Celebrating 20 Years of the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) Standard

A Milestone for Open Document Formats and Digital Sovereignty

Berlin, 1 May 2025 – Today, The Document Foundation joins the open source software and open standards community in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the ratification of the Open Document Format (ODF) as an OASIS standard. Two decades after its approval in 2005, ODF is the only open standard for office documents, promoting digital independence, interoperability and content transparency worldwide.

Originally created as an XML-based format to enable universal access to documents across platforms and software from multiple vendors, ODF has become a technology policy pillar for governments, educational institutions and organisations that choose open, vendor-independent formats to assert their digital sovereignty.

“ODF is much more than a technical specification: it is a symbol of freedom of choice, support for interoperability and protection of users from the commercial strategies of Big Tech,” said Eliane Domingos, Chairwoman of the Document Foundation. “In a world increasingly dominated by proprietary ecosystems, ODF guarantees users complete control over their content, free from restrictions.”

ODF is the native file format of LibreOffice, the most widely used and well-known open source office suite, and is supported by a wide range of other applications. Its relevance – twenty years after its creation – is a testament to the foresight of its creators and the open source community’s commitment to openness and collaboration.

ODF has been adopted as an official standard by ISO (as ISO/IEC 26300) and by many governments on all continents to support digital sovereignty strategies and public procurement policies to ensure persistent and transparent access to content.

To celebrate this milestone, from today The Document Foundation will be publishing a series of presentations and documents on its blog that illustrate the unique features of ODF, tracing its history from the development and standardisation process through the activities of the Technical Committee for the submission of version 1.3 to ISO and the standardisation of version 1.4.

In addition, representatives from the Document Foundation will participate in open source community events to talk about the Open Document Format and highlight its importance to the FOSS ecosystem. The LibreOffice conference will have an entire track dedicated to ODF, coordinated by the OASIS Technical Committee.

Announcing LibreOffice 25.2.3

Latest maintenance release brings improved stability and fixes to the powerful free office suite

Berlin, 30 April 2025 – The Document Foundation is pleased to announce the release of LibreOffice 25.2.3, the third maintenance release of the LibreOffice 25.2 family for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), MacOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux, which is now available for download at www.libreoffice.org/download [1]. This release includes dozens of bug fixes and compatibility enhancements that further improve the suite’s performance, reliability and interoperability.

LibreOffice 25.2.3 is part of the LibreOffice 25.2 series, which provides a balance of cutting-edge features and production-grade stability. For users requiring a more thoroughly tested version for enterprise environments, the project recommends LibreOffice 24.8.

LibreOffice 25.2.3 is based on the LibreOffice Technology Platform, which enables the development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – including by companies in the ecosystem – that fully support the two available ISO standards for documents: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the closed and proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).

Products based on LibreOffice technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud.

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners with a wide range of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs and security patch backports: www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

English manuals for LibreOffice 25.2 Write, Impress, Draw and Math are available for download at books.libreoffice.org/en/. End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org.

Downloading LibreOffice

All available versions of LibreOffice can be downloaded from the same website: www.libreoffice.org/download/. LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project by making a donation: www.libreoffice.org/donate.

[1] Fixes in RC1: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.2.3/RC1. Fixes in RC2: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.2.3/RC2.

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.2.2 and LibreOffice 24.8.6

Berlin, 27 March 2025 – The Document Foundation announces the availability of LibreOffice 25.2.2, the second minor release of the recently announced LibreOffice 25.2 family [1], and LibreOffice 24.8.6, the sixth minor release of the LibreOffice 24.8 family [2], for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux. LibreOffice is the best office suite for users who want to retain control over their individual software and documents, thereby protecting their privacy and digital life from the commercial interference and the lock-in strategies of Big Tech. All LibreOffice releases can be downloaded from www.libreoffice.org/download/.

What makes LibreOffice unique is the LibreOffice Technology Platform, the only one on the market that allows the consistent development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – including those provided by companies in the ecosystem – capable of producing identical and fully interoperable documents based on the two available ISO standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX). The latter hides a huge number of artificial (and unnecessary) lock-in complexities that create problems for users convinced they are using a standard format. Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud.

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a wide range of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs and backports of security patches for several years: www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

English manuals for LibreOffice 25.2 and LibreOffice 24.8.6 can be downloaded from books.libreoffice.org/en/. End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org.

Download LibreOffice

Both LibreOffice 25.2.2 and LibreOffice 24.8.6 are immediately available from www.libreoffice.org/download/. LibreOffice 25.2.2 is targeted at power and tech-savvy users, while LibreOffice 24.8.6 is targeted to users who don’t need the latest features and prefer a version that has undergone more testing and bug and regression fixes.

LibreOffice is the only office suite designed to meet the actual needs of the user – not just their eyes. It offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes, optimising the space available to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away. It is also the only software for creating documents (that may contain personal or confidential information) that respects the user’s privacy, ensuring that the user can decide if and with whom to share the content they create, thanks to the standard and open format that is not used as a lock-in tool, forcing periodic software updates. All this with a feature set that is comparable to the leading software on the market and far superior to that of any competitor.

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

[1] Fixes in RC1: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.2.2/RC1. Fixes in RC2: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.2.2/RC2.

[2] Fixes in RC1: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/24.8.6/RC1. Fixes in RC2: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/24.8.6/RC2.

Celebrating Document Freedom Day

Why Document Freedom Day Matters More Than Ever

Every year, Document Freedom Day reminds us of a simple but powerful idea: we should have control over our own data. Not just where we store it, but how we access it, share it, and keep it usable for years to come. At the heart of that is the concept of open standards, file formats that anyone can read, use, and build on without restrictions.

What’s Document Freedom, Anyway?

Document freedom means being able to create and access digital documents without being locked into a specific company’s software. When you save a file – whether it’s a spreadsheet, a report, or a photo album – you should be able to open it on any system, now or in the future. That’s only possible with open standards like ODF (Open Document Format) or PDF/A.

Proprietary formats can trap your content. Ever tried opening an old project and found that the software doesn’t exist anymore or now requires a subscription? That’s the problem. Your data shouldn’t expire just because a company changed its business model.

Why It Matters

– For individuals, it’s about ownership. You shouldn’t lose access to your writing, photos, or work just because you switch devices or software.
– For organizations, it’s about long-term access and avoiding vendor lock-in.
– For governments, it’s about transparency and accountability. Public records must remain readable and accessible over time.

How You Can Support Document Freedom

– Use software that supports open formats (like LibreOffice or LibreOffice Technology based software).
– Save and share files in open formats like .odt, .ods, or .pdf (not .docx, .xlsx, etc.).
– Push for open standards in your workplace or community projects.
– Spread the word: most people don’t even realize file formats can trap them.

The Bigger Picture

Document freedom is part of a broader movement for digital rights. It’s about giving people real choices and protecting their autonomy in the digital world. As AI, cloud services, and proprietary platforms grow more complex, the risks of losing control over our content also grow. Open standards are a small but essential line of defence.

So today, take a minute to think about the files you create. Are they truly yours to keep?

Happy Document Freedom Day

(this text has been drafted in Italian, my native language, and translated with the help of AI based translation services)

Press Releases

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.4

Berlin, 18 December 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.4, the fourth minor update to the free office suite developed by volunteers for…

Open Document Format

The Role of ODF in the Era of Digital Identity and Authentication

Digital identity has become an integral part of everyday life. We use it to access work tools and sign documents…