Author: Mike Saunders

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

• We started June by announcing the winners in the Month of LibreOffice, May 2022. Sticker packs and bonus merchandise are on their way – so a big thanks to everyone who took part! 😊

• Our community and certified developers are working on LibreOffice 7.4, the next major release. In June, the first Beta release was made available – help us to test it! And see the release notes for details about the changes. All being well, it’ll be released in mid-August…

• We’re still maintaining the LibreOffice 7.3 branch, of course, and on June 9 we released LibreOffice 7.3.4 with over 80 bugfixes and compatibility improvements.

• Meanwhile, রিং/ring (S R Joardar) from the Bangladeshi LibreOffice community told us about his efforts to spread the word about Free Software in his country. The community has set up a Bangladeshi Telegram channel to coordinate activities. Thanks to everyone involved!

• And finally, The Document Foundation is supporting a student through the Deutschlandstipendium initiative. We caught up with Julian Hübenthal to find out what he’s doing, and what he knows about FOSS already…

Keep in touch – follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join us and help to make LibreOffice even better!

At the start of May, we revved up a new Month of LibreOffice, celebrating community contributions all across the project. We do these every six months – so how many people got sticker packs this time? Check it out…

Awesome work, everyone! Hundreds of people, all across the globe, have helped out in our projects and communities. We’re hugely thankful for your contributions – and, of course, everyone who’s listed on the wiki page can get a sticker pack, with these stickers and more:

How to claim

If you see your name (or username) on this page, get in touch! Email mike.saunders@documentfoundation.org with your name (or username) from the wiki page so that we can check, along with your postal address, and we’ll send you a bunch of stickers for your PC, laptop and other kit.

(Note: your address will only be used to post the stickers, and will be deleted immediately afterwards.) If you contributed to the project in November but you’re not on the wiki page, please let us know what you did, so that we can add you!

There is one more thing…

And we have an extra bonus: 10 contributors have also been selected at random to get an extra piece of merchandise – a LibreOffice hoodie, T-shirt, rucksack or snazzy glass mug. Here are the winners – we’ll get in touch personally with the details:

• Andrew Watson
• Yotam Benshalom
• Yuvarani
• Ulrich Gemkow
• klaatu1
• Christophe JAILLET
• gregors15
• Riyadh Talal
• qsu
• Siddhant Chaudhary

Congratulations to all the winners, and a big thanks once again to everyone who took part! Your contributions keep the LibreOffice project strong. We plan to have another Month of LibreOffice next May, but everyone is welcome to see what they can do for LibreOffice at any time!

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

• We kicked off May with the Month of LibreOffice. This is an event that we run twice a year, awarding sticker packs (and the chance to win more merchandise) to everyone who contributes to LibreOffice. We posted an update later in May – and we’ll soon post the final results on this blog!

• During the month, we released two updates to the suite: LibreOffice 7.3.3 on May 5, and 7.2.7 on May 12. (The latter is the last release in the LibreOffice 7.2 series. Also, LibreOffice is now available to download on SourceForge.

• Next up: we posted various sections from our Annual Report 2021, which describes activities in The Document Foundation and our projects. First was LibreOffice Quality Assurance in 2021, followed by TDF’s infrastructure and Attracting new contributors to LibreOffice.

• In documentation news, the Czech community announced a translation of the LibreOffice Getting Started Guide 7.3. Many thanks to community members for all their work!

• Then we had updates about the LibreOffice Conference 2022, which will take place in Mikan, northern Italy from September 28 – October 1. We announced the Call for Papers, followed by the sponsorship package. We look forward to seeing you there – in-person, or online!

• Our Indonesian community reported on recent activities, including an online session to broaden students’ knowledge of LibreOffice and FOSS (free and open source software) in general.

• Another update from the docs team: the Impress Guide 7.3, covering LibreOffice’s presentation tool. There’s also the Draw Guide 7.3 to check out too!

• We’re glad that more in-person events are becoming possible again, and LibreOffice community members were present at the Univention Summit 2022 in Bremen, northern Germany.

• In May, LibreOffice won two awards: SourceForge’s Open Source Project of the Month, and Software Informer’s Editor’s Pick.

• Lastly, we announced projects selected for LibreOffice in the Google Summer of Code 2022. We’re already looking forward to seeing the results!

Keep in touch – follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join us and help to make LibreOffice even better!

So far, 233 sticker packs have been awarded in the Month of LibreOffice, May 2022. But there’s still one more week to go – so if your name (or username) isn’t on the list, join in, help to make LibreOffice even better, and get some cool swag! We’ll have 10 bonus pieces of merchandise to give away, to 10 lucky people…

How to take part

So, let’s get started! There are many ways you can help out – and as mentioned, you don’t need to be a developer. For instance, you can be a…

• Handy Helper, answering questions from users on Ask LibreOffice. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.

• First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 7.3.2”.

• Drum Beater, spreading the word: tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter or Mastodon! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim your stickers.

• Globetrotter, translating the user interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.

• Code Cruncher, contributing source code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started.

• Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.

Join in, learn new things, and have fun! We’ll post the final results in early June…