In 2023, the marketing team continued the deployment of the Strategic Marketing Plan, without overlooking ongoing activities to promote LibreOffice and support the efforts of native language communities
(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2023 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)
Slide Decks and Videos for Marketing Purposes
We updated presentations on The Document Foundation (project history and digital sovereignty), LibreOffice (technology, including commentary, and sustainability) and Open Document Format (standard format, ODF and interoperability, and OOXML issues) for use by community members. Videos are also available to help tailor a presentation to the audience.
We updated the LibreOffice Technology White Paper, which explains the evolution of LibreOffice from a single desktop product to a product-based technology for personal or enterprise productivity that is the foundation for a series of products optimised for different platforms, such as desktop, mobile and cloud. To emphasise the importance of the LibreOffice technology concept, a specific logo has been created to make it visually easier to associate all products based on this technology platform.
We also created a Security Backgrounder that describes – in a language accessible to everyone, even non-security specialists – the impressive work done by the developers and quality control specialists in the security area of LibreOffice.
Finally, the project continues to invest in communicating the sustainability of FOSS. Companies need to consider that focusing on the ‘free as beer’ nature of software can seriously damage the projects they rely on as strategic assets of their infrastructure. It is a short-sighted decision because they can save a lot by not paying a single penny, but they may also have to spend a lot tomorrow if the original project is unable to sustain itself by having to revert to a proprietary solution.
The Importance of Donations
Donations are essential for the current operations and future development of The Document Foundation, as they allow us to keep the organisation alive, fund specific activities, support events and other marketing tasks organised by the native language projects, and maintain a small team working on various aspects of LibreOffice.
In 2023, donations were used to fund various activities: the organisation of the LibreOffice conference in Bucharest and the regional LibreOffice conferences in Asia and Latin America, events and other activities of the native language communities, reimbursement of travel expenses to conferences around the world, the supply of merchandise for the Month of LibreOffice, and other small projects.
Ongoing Marketing Activities
Marketing for The Document Foundation and LibreOffice is a large team effort, with contractors paid for their work – thanks to the funds provided by our generous donors – and several volunteers who run activities on both a global and local level to increase visibility and brand awareness.
One of the ongoing projects is the Community Member Monday series, where one or more community members are interviewed about their contribution to the project.
The marketing team, supported by many volunteers, created a series of New Features videos for the announcement of LibreOffice 7.6 and LibreOffice 24.2, covering the suite as a whole – and Writer, Calc and Impress in detail. These videos are a great way to demonstrate new features to end users and are often embedded in news sites. They were also translated into several languages by volunteers from the localisation community.
Activities Month-by-Month
JANUARY
In January we had two update releases for LibreOffice: 7.4.4 and 7.4.5. The Documentation team announced the availability of the LibreOffice Draw Guide 7.4, an update to the 7.3 guide, and the Czech community announced their translation of the Calc Guide 7.4.
Later in the month, The Document Foundation commented on the EU’s proposed Cyber Resilience Act, as the text in its original form could have devastating (though probably unintended) consequences for several European-based open source projects, such as most of the products based on LibreOffice Technology.
We also welcomed Juan José González, a new member of the team, in the role of Web Technology Engineer, in charge of the TDF and LibreOffice web properties: the websites, the blogs, the wiki, Weblate and much more.
FEBRUARY
The main focus was the announcement of LibreOffice 7.5, with a host of new and improved features, and participation in FOSDEM 2023 with a booth and a half-day devroom.
The documentation team proudly announced the availability of the Writer and Calc guides for LibreOffice 7.5, reducing the gap between the release of the software and the guide to just a few days.
LibreOffice had a booth at the Uninvention Summit 2023 in Bremen, Germany.
We launched The Document Foundation’s Mastodon account to increase our social media presence.
MARCH
We started the month by announcing the LibreOffice 2023 conference in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, from Wednesday 20 September (community meetings) to Saturday 23 September.
During the month we had three updates of LibreOffice: 7.5.1 on 2 March, 7.4.6 on 9 March and 7.5.2 on 30 March. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) also announced the internal use of products based on LibreOffice technology, which shows how much we care about data protection and privacy.
Members of the German-speaking LibreOffice community met at the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage, where they had a booth with merchandise, and then at the LinuxHotel in Essen. The Czech localisation team released the LibreOffice 7.3 Base Guide in Czech.
APRIL
We reported on our policy-related activities in the European Union, where the TDF has supported several campaigns in support of FOSS in the EU and helped raise awareness of the problems with the Cyber Resilience Act.
Speaking of FOSS, we looked at how it continues to grow, according to data provided by analyst reports and user statements. In 2022 over 76% of IT managers have increased their use of FOSS, while almost 22% have stayed the same and less than 2% have reduced it.
Throughout the month, we began posting sections of The Document Foundation’s 2022 Annual Report. The Brazilian community presented the LibreOffice project at FLISOL (Festival Latino Americano de Instalação de Software Livre) in Brasilia.
MAY
May is the Month of LibreOffice. This is a campaign we run twice a year to encourage users to join our community and help improve the software. People who contribute get some goodies in return. The LibreOffice YouTube channel passed the 3 million views mark.
We announced LibreOffice 7.5.3 and LibreOffice 7.4.7, the final release of the 7.4 family, and the various sponsorship packages for the LibreOffice 2024 conference in Bucharest. The LibreOffice Google Summer of Code projects for 2023 were also selected.
In May, the esLibre conference was held in Zaragoza, Spain, and members of the Spanish-speaking community took the opportunity to meet in person and talk about the project. The Italian community attended the Merge IT event in Verona.
JUNE
We announced the LibreOffice Conf Asia x UbuCon Asia 2023 in Indonesia, an event that will bring together Linux and FOSS activists, contributors, users, communities and companies in the Asian region. It will be held in Surakarta in October 2023.
We also announced a Getting Started with Development workshop at the LibreOffice Conference 2023, aimed at students from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.
We released LibreOffice 7.5.4 Community, the fourth minor update of the 7.5 family, and published some ideas from community members about the integration of LibreOffice and the Thunderbird email client.
JULY
We welcomed Michael Weghorn to the Document Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind LibreOffice. Michael is a developer focusing on accessibility improvements. The TDF team met in Munich to discuss the project, community development and software development.
The Extensions and Templates website received a number of improvements thanks to the recently hired web developer: Juan José González (aka “JJ”).
The Membership Committee (MC), responsible for managing membership applications and renewals, announced a new membership management system called Proteus.
The Documentation and Localisation Communities updated the LibreOffice 7.5 Getting Started Guide and finished a Czech translation of the LibreOffice 7.4 Draw Guide.
We also released LibreOffice 7.5.5, the fifth maintenance release of LibreOffice 7.5.
AUGUST
The biggest news in August was the release of LibreOffice 7.6, with a host of new features and updates.
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We announced the full version of TDF’s Annual Report 2022, and the LibreOffice documentation team released Impress Guide 7.5 and Draw Guide 7.5. We use Weblate to translate the LibreOffice user interface, and thanks to donations we were able to fund some improvements to Weblate to help all localisation volunteers.
We celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Debian project, which was officially founded by Ian Murdock on 16 August 1993. The Debian community has been one of the projects supporting LibreOffice from day one.
We also announced the fourth edition of the LibreOffice Latin America Conference, to be held at the UNAM Engineering Faculty in Mexico City in November.
SEPTEMBER
The biggest event in September was the LibreOffice 2023 conference in Bucharest, Romania. We had a great time with talks, workshops and social gatherings. Google Summer of Code (GSoC) students also presented some of the results of their work. Five projects were successfully completed.
We released LibreOffice 7.6.2 and 7.5.7, two major updates with security fixes. The documentation community released the LibreOffice Writer Guide 7.6, just one month after the announcement.
OCTOBER
During the month we edited and uploaded videos from the LibreOffice 2023 Conference in Bucharest, Romania.
The month was full of LibreOffice and FOSS events. We started with the LibreOffice Nepali Localisation Sprint 2023, followed by LibreOffice at the Software Freedom Law Centre in Delhi, India, and LibreOffice at LinuxDays 2023 in Prague.
The LibreOffice Conference Asia 2023 was a great success, with speakers and attendees from all over the world.
Finally, the QA community blogged about SVG support improvements and interoperability work with the Inkscape community.
NOVEMBER
November is also the month of LibreOffice. The project released LibreOffice 7.5.8, a maintenance release for the 7.5 branch with compatibility improvements and bug fixes, and LibreOffice 7.6.3, while the documentation community released the Impress and Draw guides for LibreOffice 7.6.
The LibreOffice Viewer app for Android was made available again in the Google Play Store, with experimental editing support.
We supported our friends at the Free Software Foundation Europe by signing the Open Letter “The right to install any software on any device” to the German Bundestag in support of sustainability and freedom in electronic products in the EU.
The LibreOffice Latin American Conference 2023, held in Mexico City, was a huge success with hundreds of attendees, including many students.
DECEMBER
We announced LibreOffice 7.6.4 and LibreOffice 7.5.9, and the documentation community announced the LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.6, which reflects the changes and updates in the latest version of the suite.
Meanwhile, we prepared a Security Backgrounder document that describes – in language accessible to everyone, including non-security specialists – the impressive work done by developers and QA specialists in the area of LibreOffice security.
Finally, on the last day of the year, we thanked the entire LibreOffice community for all their support and contributions throughout 2023.
