Donations to The Document Foundation, the non-profity entity behind LibreOffice, help us to grow our community, share knowledge about the software (and its development), maintain our infrastructure, organise events and much more. The image below shows what was made possible in 2018, thanks to your generous donations – click for a larger version!
LibreOffice developers and other community members were present at FOSDEM 2019, the biggest European meetup of free and open source software developers. Check out the talks that they gave! Click a link to find out more and watch the videos…
A big thanks to the FOSDEM organisers for their great work!
Hundreds of people around the world contribute to each new version of LibreOffice, and we’ve interviewed many of them on this blog. Now we’ve collected them together on a map (thanks to OpenStreetMap), so you can see who’s near you, and find out more! Click the image to see the live map:
Don’t see anyone near you? Help us to create a new native language community in your country! (Or if you’re already active in the project and would like to be interviewed, just drop us a line.)
One of our goals in the LibreOffice community is to make powerful productivity tools available to everyone. Releasing the software for free is an important part of that, but “free software” is about more than just the price. It’s about giving users fundamental freedoms in how they use their software and computers – giving control back to them.
For instance, the source code for LibreOffice – that is, the human-readable “recipe” behind the program – is available for everyone to see, study and modify. You can download this code, see what it does, change it for your needs, and then turn it back into an executable version for your computer. Many hundreds of people have done this already, contributing back important changes and updates to LibreOffice. And then you’re free to share the changes with other users.
In contrast, most other office suites don’t give users these freedoms; they are “closed”, so users can’t look under the hood, can’t study how they work, can’t make changes, and can’t share the software. Users become restricted and trapped, controlled by and locked into specific software from a specific company. That’s the very opposite of freedom!
So we’re different. But LibreOffice is just one example of free software. There are many other well-known programs, such as the Firefox web browser, and GNU/Linux operating system. The Free Software Foundation Europe is helping to spread the word about freedom, and has a number of campaigns to this end.
So we’re happy to support them on this day – and you can help them too! Use the hashtag #ilovefs on social media, talk about why free software is important to you, and let’s help people to get back control over their digital lives.
Improve your C++ skills with the help of LibreOffice developers! We’re running regular workshops which focus on a specific topic, and are accompanied by a real-time IRC meeting. For the next one, the topics is recursion. Start by watching this presentation:
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Then join us on 14 February, 2019 at 19:00 UTC for a discussion via our #libreoffice-dev IRC channel on Freenode. You can ask experienced LibreOffice developers questions, and learn more about the language. See you then!
With LibreOffice 6.2 now available, we return to our regular chats with LibreOffice community members! Today we’re talking to Khaled Hosny, who is working on the software’s font handling and user interface…
To start with, tell us a bit about yourself!
I’m based in Cairo, Egypt. I use IRC but not very actively – my nick is KhaledHosny. I’m a bit active on Twitter as well. I’m also on GitHub (which, after all, is a social network of sorts): https://github.com/khaledhosny.
Outside of my work on LibreOffice, I’m also a localizer and typeface designer, both in a professional capacity and as a hobby. I’m also an avid reader, and an amateur calligrapher and artist.
Do you work for a LibreOffice-related company or just contribute in your spare time?
I contribute in my spare time mostly, but some of my work was sponsored by The Document Foundation.
How did you get involved with LibreOffice?
I was trying to fix some bugs with Arabic text layout in OpenOffice.org (the predecessor to LibreOffice) on Linux. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience, to say the least, and I never got to finish the fix I was working on. So, when I became aware of LibreOffice in early 2011, I switched immediately and was able to finish and submit my first patch, which got reviewed and accepted. I have been contributing to LibreOffice intermittently since then.
What areas of the project do you normally work on? Anything else you want to tackle?
I’m mostly interested in areas of text layout and font handling, especially for Arabic and other writing systems that require advanced text layout. I also sometimes work on UI issues affecting right-to-left writing systems, as well as layout of mathematical equations.
What was your initial experience of contributing to LibreOffice like?
That was over eight years ago, so my memory is fading away, but I remember that it was much better than working on OpenOffice.org, and the build system (even then) was much more pleasant to use. Also, I think my first patch was accepted without much friction and delay, which is not my experience with many other open source projects.
What does LibreOffice need most right now?
In my humble opinion, I think the project needs a clearer vision and development agenda. Right now things seem to be moving organically without much coordination, and every one is working on whatever interests them. I understand that such development organisation is not easy or even feasible in an open source development model and might not even be desirable, but maybe The Document Foundation should take a more active role in steering LibreOffice development.
Thanks to Khaled for his time, and contributions to LibreOffice! Our community would benefit from more help in translating the website and user interface into Arabic, so if you’re interested, start here!
