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Community Member Monday: Leif-Jöran Olsson

Members of The Document Foundation – the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice – help to steer the project, vote for the Board of Directors, and spread the word. Today we’re talking to Leif-Jöran Olsson, who has recently become a member of TDF…

To start with, tell us a bit about yourself!

I am from beautiful Sweden, more precisely from the land of deep forests and white rivers in the middle of the country.

I work as a research engineer and IT operations supervisor at the Swedish Language Bank (a language technology research institute) daytime. I also run the consultancy company Frirogramvarusyndikatet.se, which among other things provides IT admin to TDF, and is a Collabora Productivity partner.

I am soon to become a grandfather for the first time. So, exciting times ahead.

What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?

Translations are ongoing, and the review of the grammar and spell checking infrastructure is running since last year. But the largest contribution in time and effort is the current work on a LibreOffice Online-based Sailfish OS app (like the ones for Android and iOS).

Why did you decide to become a member of TDF?

After promoting LibreOffice for many years, we decided to do a significant push for LibreOffice Online in late 2016. And since we from that time also provided IT admin services to TDF, I have been hanging around at hackfests etc.

But since the membership obligations are more towards personal contributions, I did not feel that I contributed enough to become a member. So in addition to becoming a Collabora Productivity partner at the FOSDEM hackfest 2018, I started to think about what I could do as personal contributions.

Since I work with language technology, I prepared for a review of the grammar and spell checking infrastructure in LibreOffice. In the dark ages I actually did a Swedish dictionary extension for the release of OpenOffice 3 with the new packaging format. I also started to contribute to the Swedish translations of LibreOffice. This is something I also do for other projects like Nextcloud, OTRS, SailfishOS, Matomo etc.

Anything else you plan to do in the future? What does LibreOffice really need right now?

I will also try to get closer to the standardisation and evolvement of the Open Document Format specification, since I have experience from SIS the Swedish part of ISO. In addition, as an eXist-db core developer, XML is close to my heart.

We need to get closer to valuing/counting all contributions equally. I felt the translations were not counted as real contributions in the way code is (and I say this with a free software coding experience of 25+ years). This makes me a bit sad that we are not ahead of other projects in this aspect. But let us start changing this with the very positive 10/20 years celebrations with a grand Fest Noz now. Kenavo / på återseende!

Thanks to Leif for all his contributions! And to anyone else reading this who’s involved in the LibreOffice project and community, consider becoming a member:

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Update on openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference

Organizers of the openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference had a meeting this week to discuss various topics surrounding COVID19 and how it may affect the conference and planning for it. At this point, it is uncertain what restrictions governments may keep in place in the coming months. While October is some months away, there are many aspects we are considering as to how to run the event, including travel restrictions, flights, hotel and venue availability, event capacity and our community members’ ability to attend the conference. We hope to make a decision about the conference at the latest by mid-June.

In these difficult times, we want to assure our communities that we are actively engaged in a good outcome for all members, sponsors and interested parties involved with a successful openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference. We are looking at alternatives for the conference like possibly doing a virtual conference and exploring what tools might help us to achieve this should we decide it’s a viable option.

Please remember that the Call for Papers is open and people can submit their talks until July 21. We are moving forward, assuming the conference will take place as planned from October 13 to October 16 in Nurnberg, and will keep our communities informed of any decisions we make regarding the plans for the conference and any alternative options like a virtual conference. Stay safe, healthy and strong during these hard times and we hope to see all of you later this year; celebrating together our anniversary under much better circumstances!

Indonesian LibreOffice community: Online translation marathon

Communities around the world help to translate and localise LibreOffice in over 100 languages. We really appreciate their efforts! Even when they can’t meet in person, they hold online events to make progress, as Ahmad Haris reports:

March 28, 2020: The Indonesian LibreOffice community held an online translation marathon, which focused on the user interface. Normally, we have in-person meetings for such translating marathons, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation, we held it online. We use Jitsi and deploy to our community server. The results were quite positive, since we’re heading towards reaching 100% translation. Only a few strings (21) remain untranslated because we also use the same string in the Indonesian language.

A big thanks to everyone in the Indonesian LibreOffice community who took part! Everyone around the world is welcome to join our translation projects and make LibreOffice accessible for all, regardless of language or location. It’s a great way to use your skills, contribute to a well-known FOSS project, and have fun!

LibreOffice monthly recap: March 2020

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more. March was a difficult month for many people around the world, so we’d like to say en extra big thank you to everyone who contributed time and effort to our software and community.

  • LibreOffice includes a wide range of features for home users and professionals, but it can be extended further. We’re working on a new extensions and templates website, with a streamlined design and improved usability for authors and users. We’ll post more updates on this blog as it progresses!

  • Open Badges for LibreOffice is a new service we’ve set up, crediting members of the community for their work. Open Badges are PNG images that are awarded to contributors for reaching a certain threshold – such as a number of commits to the codebase, or answering questions on Ask LibreOffice. But these images are something special: they contain metadata describing the contributor’s work, which can be verified using an external service.

  • Petr Valach from the Czech LibreOffice community reported back from InstallFest 2020 in Prague, which took place on February 29 and March 1. We really appreciate the help of our Czech supporters for spreading the word about LibreOffice!

  • LibreOffice 6.4.2 was released on March 19. It’s the second revision release of the 6.4.x series, and includes over 90 bugfixes and compatibility improvements.

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 for everyone!

LibreOffice Online Guide translated into Czech

the LibreOffice Online Guide was created as part of the Google Season of Docs programme, and released in December 2019. Today we’re announcing that the Czech LibreOffice community has finished translating the guide, and it can be downloaded here. (See this page for English documentation.)

It was a team effort, and participants were Petr Kuběj, Zuzana Pitříková, Zdeněk Crhonek, Roman Toman, Tereza Portešová, Petr Valach and Stanislav Horáček. Thanks to all volunteers! The Czech team continues with the translation of the Getting Started Guide, and is always open for new volunteers, translators and correctors. Give them a hand!

Document Freedom Day 2020

Document Freedom is based on Open Formats, such as ODF or Open Document Format, the ISO standard native file format of LibreOffice and other FOSS office suites.

What is an Open Format?

When you save a document on your computer, it is stored in a computer file. Whether it is a text file, a picture, a video or any other kind of work, it is saved with a specific coded structure, known as the file format.

To be able to share data, software programs must be able to communicate with each other. It implies that no barrier whatsoever may hinder the exchange of data and the related write or read operations. For such a seamless exchange to be possible, software programs are required to be “interoperable”.

Interoperability is guaranteed when it relies on open standards, i.e. public technical specifications, freely usable by everyone, without restriction nor compensation, and maintained by an open decision-making process. File formats based on these open standards are “Open Formats”.

Where software interoperability is set aside, or if a program editor does not give access to the key information for interoperability or if the file design recipe is kept undisclosed, or if the file design recipe is available but is not followed by the program, file formats are considered to be “closed” and do not allow interoperability. For a software user, choosing between an Open File Format or a closed one has a deep impact on the ownership of and the access to his/her own data and their availability over time.

What are the benefits of Open Formats?

  • Open Format documents are readable and writable, by oneself or by third parties.
  • Open Format document readability is guaranteed over time as the format evolves without disruptions.
  • Open Formats have the advantage of being freely usable by many software programs, enabling interoperability.
  • Open Formats support freedom of choice as they do not promote any company’s specific format. They help avoid the monopolistic position of software editors who aim at locking users through their own proprietary formats.

Free Software and open formats, the perfect duo!

Free Software are programs that offer four freedoms to users: the liberty to copy and to distribute the software to others, the right to use it for every kind of use, the right to study it in order to know its functioning, and the right to modify in order to improve it. Free Software designers usually favour existing Open Formats, and contribute to their evolution.

Furthemore, as Free Software developers publish their source code (the software design recipe), recording methods and format descriptions used are de facto distributed with the software.

Open Formats and Free Software share the same goals: to be at the service of eveyone and to ensure users the full ownership and control over their data as well as perennial availability of those data.

Let’s celebrate Document Freedom Day 2020 by sharing with other people the information about the importance of Open Formats. Create your own DFD Dove.

[This text is almost entirely based on a document developed by April (https://www.april.org/en) for a previous Document Freedom Day, and released under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 License]

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