The weekend before Easter, a number of hackers congregated in the beautiful city of Dresden, Germany for the first Impress Sprint. Hosted by Dresden Technical University’s Institute for Applied Photophysics, and run by TDF volunteers, the event was rooted in the desire to improve Impress for power users, and getting a number of those tiny, but annoying little paper cuts and needless extra hoops to jump through eliminated.
TDF Hackfests and Sprints are taking place allover the world, organised and run by local volunteers, are excellent opportunities to taste the spirit of the LibreOffice community, and get you bootstrapped in a weekend to fix your first bug or two. As such, we are firm believers in the help-to-help-yourself paradigm. And it is fun, too!
The rather long list of tackled bugs is here – thanks to all participants for making this a success!
If you want to join us the next time, following are the upcoming opportunities:
LibreOffice can only exist since people are working on it: so please, tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m a member of LibreOffice Japanese Team; working in the backyard of Japanese community. Driving translation, reporting bugs instead of people who can’t use English and attending FLOSS events in Japan.
In the team, my main task is translation of LibreOffice UI, and sometimes Wiki pages, and I’m one of the administrator of Pootle Japanese group. And now I have lots of interest about outreaching (I’ll talk about it later). It might be a special, I’m a “printer” guy. I have strong interest about the future of printing; not only print something from desktop application (e.g. LibreOffice), but also using mobile device, from cloud service, etc. In the future I want to get involved about printing related enhancement of LibreOffice.
In what other software projects have you been involved?
Ubuntu and GNOME (mostly translation), and OpenPrinting; standardize group of unix-like printing environments.
Where do you live (and/or study)?
Very east side of Tokyo (Katsushika-ku).
What do you do when you’re not working on LibreOffice?
My work is technical investigation of current FLOSS technologies, e.g, NoSQLs, Private IaaS Platforms, something something… includes LibreOffice also.
In private, reading books, sitting in front of my laptop and many many tweeting, or sometimes reading blogs or news. And just now I’ve started Yoga. It’s pretty good.
I love running rivers with a kayak. Most of 60 rivers I’ve visited, includes US and New Zealand. Paddling is wonderful 🙂
When do you usually spend time on the project?
About translation or Facebook pages administration, mostly off time of weekdays. Our LibreOffice meetup (read below) also are in weekday night. I guess almost 10 hours per week.
How did you hear about LibreOffice?
Because a friend of mine is the key person of Japanese LibreOffice (and former OpenOffice.org) community.
Why did you get involved? Is LibreOffice popular in your native-language?
Because my friend mentioned above need my help. At that time I had surprised how people in the community is active, full of love for LibreOffice itself, “wow it’s really nice community” I thought. That’s why I still spend a time for the community.
In Japan, LibreOffice is getting big I feel, but still “OpenOffice” as a brand is bigger than LibreOffice. If someone want to find fee-free office productive suite, he might google “openoffice.”
What was your initial experience of contributing to LibreOffice like?
Checking most of all printing-related UI translations and correcting because my special is printing.
What have you done since then?
About translation, I have expanded my area from printing-related to any other UI, and not only UI, but also some Wiki pages or else.
Now my most important work is to drive our own (LibreOffice-titled) event in Japan, and share them to global.
First, I’ve started monthly LibreOffice meeting “Kanto LibreOffice Study Group” (Kanto means around Tokyo area). This meeting might deal with widely theme from using how-to to introduction to development.
Then I administrate two Facebook pages: one https://www.facebook.com/LibreOfficeJa is for all of Japanese LibreOffice related people to discuss about LibreOffice in Japanese, and another https://www.facebook.com/LibreofficeStudyJapan is for LibreOffice meeting owners in Japan to exchange knowledge how to host meetings or anything else.
And I feel it’s important that we, Japanese community should let global people know how we’re active and share success stories and problems.
What would be your best suggestion or advice for anyone interested in getting involved in the localization of LibreOffice?
Don’t worry about English. If you can’t understand some translated string, the translation might be wrong. Please teach us. It’s first step to join us. No English is needed. We always need proofreading.
And LibreOffice community is very active, full of love, lots of nice people and easy to join.
What is your vision for the future and/or what would you most like to see improved in LibreOffice?
My currently interest is how to reach non-FLOSS, non-geek people in Japan to tell how LibreOffice is good for them. Most of them only know MS Office, few of them know also OpenOffice but not know LibreOffice. We need to reach them and get feedback what they want, and tell them to the global.
Of course migration in large companies and local governments from MS Office to LibreOffice is big issue, so we need supporting companies in our ecosystems in Japan. But this issue is out of focus for me as a community guy…
Anyway, my another point is writing codes. Because it is easiest way to put Japanese local requirements, but in Japan very few people have done that. So I want to became a developer and I also grow some young developers of LibreOffice.
Today we interview two great women, Helen Ushakova and Sophie Gautier, from the Russophone and Francophone communities.
LibreOffice can only exist since people are working on it: so please, tell us a bit about yourself.
Helen: My name is Elena Ushakova, also known by nicknames as Helen Russian (helenrussian, helen_russian). I am 36 years old. I’m full-time employed as a corporate web applications programmer.
Sophie: My almost full name is Sophie Gautier, also known as sgauti or sophi or sofi. I’m usually a women, traveling in the open source world since 14 years now.
In what other software projects have you been involved?
H: In the past I used to work on some projects but it was a short time. Seriously I liked only OpenOffice.org. I took care of OOo UI and Help translations. We have the user forum and the site with useful tips. Now we are making the same things for LibreOffice. Also, I’m participating a little in the Apache OpenOffice project (mainly in the wiki).
S: I’ve been deeply involved in the OpenOffice.org project, working on different areas, trying to understand all the aspect of this strange organization. I’ve done localization in French for other very small projects. I also participate in several associations.
Where do you live (and/or study)?
H: Yekaterinburg, Russia.
S: I live where my feet are 😉 I guess it’s Paris for more than a year, yeah!
What do you do when you’re not working on LibreOffice?
H: Well, I’ve got another pet project – DMOZ (Open Directory Project). I’m an ODP Editor since 2008. Also I like a lot of interesting things: whether it be cooking dinner for my family or playing musical instruments.
S: I own a consulting and training company dedicated to open source applications for the desktop. Creating objects and drawing is my favorite way to escape from the world.
When do you usually spend time on the project?
H: I don’t know… Every day. In the morning, in the evening. Each time when it is needed.
S: Any time I’ve time, I think about it or work on it, I’m afraid it’s a kind of passion (no, I didn’t say poison!).
How did you hear about LibreOffice?
H: From news. And I remember the feeling of joy “Finally someone took this step” and then there was a long period of my doubts. The whole 10 long days. 🙂
S: I’ve been involved in The Document Foundation and LibreOffice since its creation, so the first time I heard about it was probably in my dreams.
Why did you get involved? Is LibreOffice popular in your native-language?
H: First, people who are involved in the project are its precious thing. I love to be together with these people, to work in a team, to feel friendly support. Second, in the department of the company which I work, ODF is an internal corporate standard, so I dedicate a part of my work time to LibreOffice. As for the popularity of LibreOffice in Russia, we will definitely have to strive for it. However it still isn’t the main goal.
S: I got involved with localization during the Openoffice.org time, I’ve been taught by professional linguists and it was natural for me to go on with the French localization of LibreOffice. LibreOffice is more and more used in the French speaking countries and supported by the French Government, hence my motivation to continue the work too.
What was your initial experience of contributing to LibreOffice like?
H: It is obvious: I sent a file with the Russian UI translation update on 2010-Oct-8. After that it became too late to retreat. 🙂
S: I was very happy to work with so many different people, with so many skills, having so many different ways of being and with so much understanding.
What have you done since then?
H: Russian LibreOffice community does a lot of work. My contribution is not very big. Usually I translate UI, resolve some administrative questions on the user forum or sites. Sometime I help Free Office users on our forum or in G+ LibreOffice Russia community.
S: Speaking about FR l10n, not much. I’m still alone to localize the UI/Help with my old tools and my friend named grep. But now, the French QA team is helping a lot in proof reading and correcting my mistakes (and I’m sure they often have a good laugh at them 🙂
What would be your best suggestion or advice for anyone interested in getting involved in the localization of LibreOffice?
H: Don’t be afraid to start any work alone. Be ready for errors. Always begin any work in LibreOffice only in a good mood 🙂 . And in this case LibreOffice will be source of inspiration for you and your personal growth.
S: My advice would be : do not be afraid by the amount of words all around you when you’ll begin, you’ll see that fast and soon, the green will eat the grey on Pootle. Also, we are a team, always here and happy to help each other, so never hesitate to ask either on a translation or the use of the tools.
What is your vision for the future and/or what would you most like to see improved in LibreOffice?
H: I would like each NLC to have more attention from the global community and be more involved into community life. Let’s communicate more.
S: What I would like to see the most improved is the representation of the native language projects and their communication with the international project. A native language project is like a small projection of the international project, but with its specificity due to the language. It should not be seen as a barrier or a fragmentation, it’s on the contrary what makes our diversity and our plurality, but we need to communicate more, always more because we are one and only one project.
Thanks a lot for your answers and your time!
H: You’re welcome!
S: Thanks a lot for your interview!
Interview done and prepared by Charles-H. Schulz & Marc Paré.
In 2012, developers hacking LibreOffice code have been around 320, with a majority of volunteers and a minority of people paid by companies such as SUSE, RedHat and Canonical (plus a multitude of smaller organizations such as Lanedo, which is also a member of our Advisory Board and builds a significant part of its business by providing development related value added services on top of LibreOffice code).
The graphic visualization of the individual commits has the shape of a “long tail“. The pie is an explosion of the work done by the top 33 hackers with 100+ commits: 16 volunteers, and 17 paid developers (11 from SUSE, 5 from RedHat and one from Canonical). At TDF, we do not have “paid volunteers” because we love transparency and truth.
If you are not familiar with the importance of the “long tail”, especially for free software projects, you might get some interesting insights from the following TED speech, by Clay Shirky:
The cumulative number of new hackers attracted by the project since September 2010 (being LibreOffice a true free software project, there are many volunteers who come and go, and many with just one or two commits).
I have tried to summarize in a single text what we – members, developers, volunteers, native language communities, advocates and supporters – have achieved during 2012. Looking back, it has been amazing.
TDF has started 2012 with a hackers community of 379 individuals, mostly volunteers, which has continued to grow steadily – month after month – and has now reached the amazing figure of 567 developers (320 active during the last 12 months, which means that LibreOffice is the third largest open source desktop software project after Chrome and Firefox).
Monthly contributors during the last two years, with the global 12 month average shown by the green line on the upper right corner).
In early 2012, The Document Foundation – an truly community based independend organization – has been registered in Berlin, under the form of a German Stiftung (supervised by the German authorities). The oldest German Stiftung dates back to 1509, and over 250 of them have existed for over 500 years (so, stability is not an issue).
Once established, The Document Foundation has immediately attracted additional sponsors and supporters. Intel and Lanedo have joined the Advisory Board, while Project LiMux (City of Munich) and MIMO (the French Government organization responsible for the migration to FOSS) are actively supporting the project.
The long tail of LibreOffice development during 2012 (the 320 committers active between January 2012 and December 2012), with a pie explosion of the top 33 hackers with over 100 commits.
The Document Foundation and LibreOffice role inside the free software ecosystem have been recognized by the French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault in a formal letter to the members of the French government.
In 2012, The Document Foundation has announced LibreOffice 3.4.5, LibreOffice 3.5, LibreOffice 3.5.1, LibreOffice 3.4.6, LibreOffice 3.5.2, LibreOffice 3.5.3, LibreOffice 3.5.4, LibreOffice 3.5.5, LibreOffice 3.6, LibreOffice 3.5.6, LibreOffice 3.6.1, LibreOffice 3.6.2, LibreOffice 3.5.7 and LibreOffice 3.6.3. LibreOffice 3.4 has been awarded Linux Questions Office Suite of the Year 2011.
Linux Questions has awarded LibreOffice the title of Office Suite of the Year 2011.
In addition, the hackers community has started working on LibreOffice 4.0, which is already at Beta 2 and will be announced in February 2013. LibreOffice 4.0 will be a milestone release, and the first of a new generation of free office suites.
In order to further improve the quality of LibreOffice 3.5, 3.6 and 4, the QA community has organized several bug hunting sessions during 2012 and a full bug hunting marathon in December 2012 (with almost 500 bugs chased during a full week of tests).
LibreOffice community has met at FOSDEM in Brussels, at LinuxTag in Berlin, at LibreOffice Conference in Berlin, and in Hamburg and Munich for TDF Hackfests. In addition, local hackfests have been organized in the Netherlands and Brazil, and LibreOffice volunteers have attended several local events around the world.
Linux Journal has awarded LibreOffice the title of Best office Suite 2012.
In February 2012, TDF has launched LibreOffice Ask page, and the Windows version of LibreOffice has been made available for downloads from the Intel AppUp Center targeted to mobile PC and UltraBook owners.
In September 2012, TDF has joined the OASIS Consortium (Organisation for the Advancement of Standards in Information Society (OASIS). At the end of the same month, the new Membership Committee has been elected by TDF members: five members – Sophie Gautier, Fridrich Štrba (Chairman), Eike Rathke, Cor Nouws and Jean Weber – and two deputies – Simon Phipps and Leif Lodahl.
LibreOffice has been awarded the title of Free Office Suite of the Year 2011 by LinuxQuestions, and Best Office Suite 2012 by Linux Journal (in both cases, getting over 70% of the votes). In Brazil, LibreOffice has received the “Technology For Citizens Award” from Guarulhos City.
LibreOffice downloads from unique IPs during 2012. Scale on the left shows daily downloads, scale on the right shows cumulative downloads in 2012.
During 2012, many private and public organization have announced the migration of their desktop office suite to LibreOffice: several French ministries (500,000 desktops), city of Munich in Germany (15,000 desktops), the Capital Region of Denmark, Vieira do Minho in Portugal, Limerick in Ireland, Grygov in the Czech Republic, Las Palmas in Spain, the City of Largo in Florida, the municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis in Greece, Regione Umbria, Provincia di Milano and Provincia di Bolzano in Italy, and the Public Library System of Chicago.
This growth is reflected in the downloads of the Windows and MacOS X versions during 2012. The number of unique IPs who have downloaded LibreOffice has grown from just over 200,000 per week in January to well over 600,000 in December, for a total of 15 million unique IPs in 2012. Linux users, with very few exceptions, do not download LibreOffice as they can get the software from the repository of their distribution of choice.
The Document Foundation has also announced the Certification Program for LibreOffice, and the first group of certified developers. In 2013, the program will be extended to professionals active in migrations and trainings, and later to L1 and L2 support.
Florian Effenberger
The last, and in my opinion the best news of 2012, waits TDF under the Xmas tree: in fact, just a few days before Xmas TDF has hired the first employee, to manage the infrastructure and take care of administrative tasks (which, thanks to the extremely fast growth of the project, are now a full time task): Florian Effenberger, who is already popular inside the project for his volunteer work.
The Board of Directors – with the obvious exception of Florian – has unanimously chosen him for infrastructure and administrative tasks, as he is already familiar with both, being the architect behind the entire infrastructure and the person who has been talking with the authorities during the process of putting in place The Document Foundation.
Florian Effenberger has been active inside the OOo project from 2004 to 2010, as infrastructure and then marketing lead, and has been a founder of TDF. During all these years he has put an incredible amount of hours – of his personal time – behind free software, OOo and LibreOffice.
From now on, Florian will devote his working hours to TDF, and will add the usual amount of volunteer hours for his BoD duties (which must be volunteer based, according to our statutes).
Florian Effenberger is going to be a tremendous asset for TDF, because he knows perfectly our ecosystem, he is a true free software advocate, and he is knowledgeable not only on administration and infrastructure but also on marketing.
Looking at 2013 and beyond, The Document Foundation is ready to face every challenge, and win over the competition not only by providing a better product but also by creating a different and better ecosystem for free office suites.
So far, TDF has been an exciting journey, and I am sure that what has happened is just the first chapter of a long and successful history.
The intense pace of development work on LibreOffice as we approach our 4.0 release has rather delayed an update on our recent extremely successful LibreOffice hack-fest. To give an idea of the work going on, instead of the around 1500 commits per month we normally get, we had nearly a month’s worth of commits in the last two weeks before our feature freeze, with lots of bug fixing ever since; things have been busy.
Some portion of this work was done by the more than thirty LibreOffice developers that arrived to augment the existing Munich Limux developers – who kindly hosted us. Munich is a forward looking enterprise who have deployed Linux to their fifteen-thousand users, and have committed to moving to LibreOffice. First of all – many thanks to our friendly hosts who provided a great venue, helped feed us, so we could continue coding late into the night, and tidied up the detritus afterwards: your contribution is greatly appreciated.
It was also nice to meet a number of the Debian guys – who had a separate room for a parallel bug squashing party some of whom took an interest in and did a little LibreOffice work too. We had over thirty participants for LibreOffice alone, with other new people we’d never met before showing up and getting involved over the weekend which was particularly encouraging.
