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LibreOffice 4.3.1 “Fresh” announced

The software on show next week at the LibreOffice Conference in Bern

Berlin, August 28, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.3.1, the first minor release of LibreOffice 4.3 “fresh” family, with over 100 fixes (including patches for two CVEs, backported to LibreOffice 4.2.6-secfix, which is also available for download now).

All LibreOffice users are invited to update their installation as soon as possible to avoid security issues. This includes users who are running LibreOffice 4.2.6 as originally released on August, 5th 2014.

LibreOffice 4.3.1 and LibreOffice 4.2.6 will be shown on stage at the LibreOffice Conference in Bern, from September 3 to September 5, with a large number of sessions about development, community, marketing and migrations. The program of the event is available here: https://conference.libreoffice.org/2014/program.

In addition to the sessions in English, there will be a track in German focusing on open source adoptions in governments and enterprises in Switzerland, Germany and Austria: https://conference.libreoffice.org/2014/professional-user-track.

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change log here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.1/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.1/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

CVEs patched in LibreOffice 4.3.1 and LibreOffice 4.2.6 are CVE-2014-3524 “CSV Command Injection and DDE formulas” and CVE-2014-3575 “Arbitrary File Disclosure using crafted OLE objects”.

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.3.1 and LibreOffice 4.2.6 are immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to grow the infrastructure, and support marketing activities to increase the awareness of the project, both at global and local level.

ITOMIG joins The Document Foundation Advisory Board to Complement the Launch of the LibreOffice Division

Berlin, August 6, 2014 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces that ITOMIG is now a member of its Advisory Board. ITOMIG, based in Böblingen, Germany, is a spin off of the University of Tübingen focusing on open source solutions for the enterprise.

“Since 2004, ITOMIG is at the crossroad of German and French cultures, offering value added services for the introduction of OSS software such as LibreOffice in enterprises, the selection and use of open source tools for the optimization of IT processes, and the management of migration and sourcing projects”, says David Gümbel, founder and CEO of ITOMIG. “During the last couple of years, we have seen a growing demand for LibreOffice related value added services, and we have invested to grow our specific competences in this area”.

“ITOMIG will bring diversity to TDF Advisory Board, adding the perspective of German value added software consultants”, says Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation. “The announcement strengthens the entire ecosystem, because it shows that TDF vision of an independent project can foster the growth of third parties investing in LibreOffice”.

TDF Advisory Board has 15 members: AMD, CloudOn, Collabora, FrODeV (Freies Office Deutschland e.V.), FSF (Free Software Foundation), Google, Intel, KACST (King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology), Lanedo, MIMO (French Ministries), RedHat, SPI (Software in the Public Interest), Studio Storti and SUSE.

About ITOMIG

Founded in 2004 as a spin-off of Tübiingen University, Böblingen-based ITOMIG GmbH supports its clients internationally in using Free and Open Source Software in a business context. Its key areas of expertise are free office solutions (mainly based on LibreOffice), including migration support and consulting as well as software development, and IT service management consulting and implementation services based on iTop. With clients ranging from Paris to Vienna, ITOMIG has successfully supported well-known organisations such as the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Agrarmarkt Austria, and the City of Munich.

About The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation is an independent, self-governing and meritocratic organization, based on Free Software ethos and incorporated in Germany as a not for profit entity. TDF is focused on the development of LibreOffice – the best free office suite ever – chosen by the global community as the legitimate heir of OOo, and as such adopted by a growing number of public administrations, enterprises and SMBs for desktop productivity.

TDF is accessible to individuals and organizations who agree with its core values and contribute to its activities. At the end of June 2014, the foundation has over 200 members and over 3,000 volunteer contributors worldwide.

Media Contacts: https://www.documentfoundation.org/contact/.

LibreOffice 4.2.6 is ready

Berlin, August 5, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.2.6 “Still”, the seventh and last minor release of the most solid version of the software, ready for enterprise deployments and conservative users.

LibreOffice 4.2.6 arrives just one week after the successful launch of LibreOffice 4.3 “Fresh”, the most feature rich version of the office suite.

LibreOffice 4.2.6 is available from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to grow the project both at global and local level.

LibreOffice 4.3: today, you can’t own a better office suite

  • Better OOXML interoperability, and support of legacy Mac file formats

  • Better comment management, and highly intuitive spreadsheet handling

  • 3D models in Impress, and support for “monster” paragraphs

Berlin, July 30, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.3, the 8th major release of the free office suite since the birth of the project in September 2010. The application includes the combined effort of thousands of volunteers and hundreds of developers, and has reached a point of maturity that makes it suitable for every kind of deployment, if backed by value added services by the growing LibreOffice ecosystem.

LibreOffice 4.3 offers a large number of improvements and new features, including:

  • Document interoperability: support of OOXML Strict, OOXML graphics improvements (DrawingML, theme fonts, preservation of drawing styles and attributes), embedding OOXML files inside another OOXML file, support of 30 new Excel formulas, support of MS Works spreadsheets and databases, and Mac legacy file formats such as ClarisWorks, ClarisResolve, MacWorks, SuperPaint, and more.

  • Comment management: comments can now be printed in the document margin, formatted in a better way, and imported and exported – including nested comments – in ODF, DOC, OOXML and RTF documents, for improved productivity and better collaboration.

  • Intuitive spreadsheet handling: Calc now allows the performing of several tasks more intuitively, thanks to the smarter highlighting of formulas in cells, the display of the number of selected rows and columns in the status bar, the ability to start editing a cell with the content of the cell above it, and being able to fully select text conversion models by the user.

  • 3D models in Impress: support of animated 3D models in the new open glTF format, plus initial support for Collada and kmz files that are found in Google Warehouse, in order to add a fresh new look and animations to keynotes (support of this feature is currently on Windows and Linux versions only).

LibreOffice 4.3 also support “monster” paragraphs exceeding 65,000 characters (an example of an 11 years old bug solved thanks to the modernization of the OOo source code, which is an exclusive function of LibreOffice). In addition, the accessibility technology on Windows has become a standard feature, thanks to the improvements based on IBM’s IAccessible2 framework.

The entire list of new features and improvements of LibreOffice 4.3 is here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.3.

“The LibreOffice project shows that a large free software community can live and thrive without the patronage of a software vendor, to liberate PC desktops”, says Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation. “Today, you can’t own a better office suite than LibreOffice, in term of features, interoperability, support for document standards and independence. After many years, LibreOffice brings the control of the PC desktop back into the hands of the users”.

According to the Coverity Scan service, joined by LibreOffice in October 2012, the quality of LibreOffice source code has improved dramatically during the last two years, with a reduction of the defect density per 1,000 lines of code from an above the average 1.11 to an industry leading 0.08 (for more information: http://softwareintegrity.coverity.com/register-for-libreoffice-scan-report.html).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change logs here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.0/RC1 (fixed in RC1), here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.0/RC2 (fixed in RC2), here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.0/RC3 (fixed in RC3) and here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.0/RC4 (fixed in RC4).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.3 and LibreOffice 4.2.6 – which will be released on Friday – are available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions and templates to supplement the installation of the software and add specific features can be found here: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to enhance the project both at global and local level.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an independent, self-governing and meritocratic organization, based on Free Software ethos and incorporated in Germany as a not for profit entity. TDF is focused on the development of LibreOffice – the best free office suite ever – chosen by the global community as the legitimate heir of OOo, and as such adopted by a growing number of public administrations, enterprises and SMBs for desktop productivity.

TDF is accessible to individuals and organizations who agree with its core values and contribute to its activities. At the end of June 2014, the foundation has just over 200 members and well over 3,000 volunteer contributors worldwide.

Media Contacts: https://www.documentfoundation.org/contact/.

Membership Committee upcoming election

Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of the Board at The Document Foundation, has announced the elections for the Membership Committee.

Dear Community,

all members of The Document Foundation are called to vote on a new Membership Committee. Therefore, the Board of Directors hereby announces the elections to the Membership Committee with the following timeline:

  1. 2014-07-19: announcement of the elections (this e-mail); and start of the nomination phase
  2. 2014-08-27, 24:00 CET/UTC+2: end of the nomination phase
  3. 2014-09-04, 00:00 CET/UTC+2: official start of the elections
  4. 2014-09-11, 24:00 CET/UTC+2: end of the elections
  5. 2014-09-12: announcement of the preliminary results; and start of the challenging phase
  6. 2014-09-17, 24:00 CET/UTC+2: end of the challenging phase
  7. 2014-09-18: official announcement of the final results
  8. 2014-09-19: new Membership Committee officially in charge

Members of The Document Foundation as of 2014-07-01 are eligible to vote in the elections, and any eligible voter can also be elected to the Membership Committee. Members may self-nominate.

To announce your candidacy, send a message to board-discuss@documentfoundation.org with your full name, e-mail, corporate affiliation (if any), and a description of your reasons for
wanting to serve as a committee member. All candidates should also send a summary of their candicacy announcement to elections@documentfoundation.org – a compilation of the summaries will be mailed to all registered voters prior to the elections. Summaries should be no more than 75 words of continuous text (so no bullet lists or multiple paragraphs) and must be received by the nomination deadline given above.

Available slots will be filled by a single transferable vote system, seats filled in decreasing order of preference. This election is according to our statutes, and the term of office is two years.

All discussion related to the elections should be held on board-discuss@documentfoundation.org where members are invited to ask questions to one or all candidates. Instructions explaining how to vote will be sent via e-mail to all eligible voters in time before the election.

The board will announce preliminary results as soon as possible after the elections close, along with instructions on how to access the votes archive and how to independently verify the vote count.

Any eligible voter may challenge the preliminary results by e-mailing elections@documentfoundation.org within the aforementioned deadline. Once any challenges have been resolved, the board shall announce the final results.

Any questions regarding these procedures should be directed to the board by e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org

We are looking forward to all candidacies, and would like to thank you for your work, engagement and dedication for The Document Foundation!

On behalf of the Board of Directors,
Thorsten Behrens

LibreOffice 4.2.5 hits the marketplace

Berlin, June 20, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.2.5 “Fresh”, the fifth minor release of the most feature rich version of the software, ready for enterprise deployments. For more conservative users, The Document Foundation suggests LibreOffice 4.1.6 “Stable”.

LibreOffice 4.2.5, as well as LibreOffice 4.1.6, have been developed by over 800 contributors, who have joined the project since the launch in late September 2010 (source: http://www.ohloh.net). “This is a wonderful achievement”, said Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation. “We have managed to attract at least three new contributors per month, for 46 months in a row, with an average of more than 200 new contributors per year”.

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change logs here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.5/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.5/RC2 (fixed in RC2). In total, over 150 bugs or regressions have been solved.

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.2.5 and LibreOffice 4.1.6 are both available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions and templates to complement the installation of the software and add specific features are available here: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to grow the project both at global and local level.

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