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The COSM Project

In 2017, contributors to the Open Document Format (ODF) specification at OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) noted that while the Technical Committee continues to generate changes, the integration of these changes – a substantial task, which is key for the future of the ODF standard – is only being conducted on a volunteer basis.

To support current adoptions of the ODF standard format by governments and enterprises and potential adoptions in the future, it would have been important to release the new ODF 1.3 version in a timely manner, to avoid that delays could affect the position of ODF in the marketplace.

Open Document Format 1.0 was published as an ISO/IEC international standard ISO/IEC 26300 – Open Document Format for Office Applications in 2006. Open Document Format 1.2 was published as ISO/IEC standard in 2015.

In early 2018, the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation addressed the need of evolving the standard by establishing the independent COSM – Community of ODF Specification Maintainers – project at Public Software CIC (a UK Community Interest Company) to hold funds and to retain editors to work at the Technical Committee.

The COSM project co-ordinates with the OASIS TC, solicits and secures funds from ODF stakeholders, solicits experienced editors and arranges for one or more to work at the direction of the TC to edit the specification.

As a major ODF stakeholder, TDF donated a seed of Euro 10,000 to get the COSM project started, plus up to Euro 20,000 to match each euro donated by other stakeholders. So far, the COSM project has been backed by Microsoft, Collabora, CIB and the UK Government.

Editors have been working on the ODF 1.3 specifications, which have been regularly reviewed during the weekly meetings of the Technical Committee, and are expected in the third quarter of 2019. A number of features have been also been assigned to ODF 1.4. The COSM Project is now soliciting funds for future work.

Significant contributions to the specifications have been made by Regina Henschel (volunteer from The Document Foundation) and Michael Stahl from CIB.

ODF Advocacy at OASIS

Following the initiation of the COSM project, team members of The Document Foundation and CIB have got in touch with OASIS management to re-launch the defunct ODF Adoption TC as ODF Advocacy. The project has been accepted and has been launched as OASIS Open Project in May 2019, with the objective of increasing the awareness of ODF and fostering adoption by governments.

LibreOffice monthly recap: June 2019

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

  • In LibreOffice 6.3, which is due to be released in August, The Document Foundation won’t be building 32-bit binary packages for GNU/Linux. But! That doesn’t mean that 32-bit compatibility is being removed. We prepared a statement to clarify the position, so if you use LibreOffice on a 32-bit Linux system, make sure to read it.
  • Meanwhile, we announced a cool new website, What Can I Do For LibreOffice! As the name suggests, this site shows ways that people can help our project and community – the goal is to make it user-friendly and appealing, encouraging newcomers to jump on board. Let us know what you think of it – we’re always open for improvements!

  • The LibreOffice Conference Latinoamérica will take place in Asunción from July 19 – 20. You can still register on the website, and here’s a quick preview of what’s to come (English subtitles available):

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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!

Annual Report 2018: LibreOffice Conference

The LibreOffice Conference is the annual gathering of the community, our end-users, and everyone interested in free office software. Every year, it takes place in a different country and is supported by members of the LibreOffice commercial ecosystem. In 2018, the conference was organized by the young and dynamic Albanian community at Oficina in Tirana, from Wednesday, September 26, to Friday, September 28, the eight anniversary of the LibreOffice project. Here’s a quick video recap – read on for more details…

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On Monday, September 24, there were the internal meetings of TDF’s Board of Directors and Membership Committee, followed on Tuesday, September 25, by a meeting of the TDF Team in the morning and by the traditional community meeting in the afternoon. This is a unique opportunity for representatives of native language projects and community members to meet face-to-face and discuss localization and other topics.

Over 150 people from across the globe attended the conference, including LibreOffice developers, community volunteers and Google Summer of Code students. For several people, it was their first LibreOffice Conference and therefore the first time they had met other community members in-person.

Conference

The conference started officially on the morning of Wednesday, September 26, with an address by Erion Veliaj, Mayor of Tirana, followed by the “State of the Project” – a talk which outlined some project statistics since the Rome conference – and a Q&A session with TDF’s Board of Directors. The morning track ended with sponsors’ keynotes.

In total, there were around 80 presentations, covering all aspects of LibreOffice, from development to QA, from localization to design, from documentation to marketing, and to broader subjects such as building communities and making the LibreOffice project more inclusive.

The Development Track was the richest one in terms of the number of presentations, in two different rooms, and included the usual face-to-face meeting of the Engineering Steering Committee, the Google Summer of Code Panel and a Lightning Talk Session.

In the second room there were talks about ODF, reports about migrations to LibreOffice and the adoption of the Open Document Format in Israel, Hungary, Taiwan and Turkey, and presentations about the community and other specific topics.

In the third room there was a meeting of the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA) and workshops about inclusiveness, documentation and certification. Finally, the conference wrapped up on the 28th of September with a celebration of the eight anniversary of the LibreOffice project.

Oficina was a great conference location, thanks to the availability of a large garden where people could relax between talks, enjoy the sunny weather, discuss with other community members about LibreOffice and take a large number of pictures.

Additional Events

In the evening of Wednesday, September 26, all conference participants met for the social dinner to better know each other and discuss – mostly informally – about their activity in the community. The event was also an opportunity to sample some local beer.

During the evening of Thursday, September 27, most conference participants met at Destil for the HackNight, to work and discuss while having some food. This was a good opportunity for people to get to know core developers, and get their opinion about the future development of LibreOffice.

The full program the 2018 LibreOffice Conference in Tirana is still available online. The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice community are now looking forward to the upcoming 2019 event, which is due to take place in Almeria, Spain.

LibOCon Latinoamérica – Asunción 2019, July 19 – 20

A quick video inviting you to the LibreOffice Latin America Conference 2019! (English subtitles are available.) It will be held at the Facultad Politécnica de Universidad Nactional de Asunción (FPUNA) in Asunción, Paraguay on July 19th (Friday) and 20th (Sat). For more information about the conference please visit the website.

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Announcing a new website: What can I do for LibreOffice!

Here at The Document Foundation, we’re always encouraging people to join our projects and community. Contributing to a well-known open source project is a great way to meet new people, have fun, build up skills and experience, and help to make the world a better place!

However, large FOSS projects can be daunting too. Our Get involved page aims to make the on-boarding process for newcomers easier, by breaking the process down into smaller steps, and we plan other improvements to that page.

But today, we’re announcing a new website targeted at potential contributors: What can I do for LibreOffice. This is inspired by What can I do for Mozilla, and much of the work was done by our awesome contributors from Albania – read their blog post about it here.

In “What can I do for LibreOffice”, visitors are asked what they’re interested in, and pointed to resources to get started. So instead of large web pages with walls of text, visitors can click around and find something that catches their eyes. The website source is on Gerrit if anyone has suggestions for updates or additions, and the site can be translated too.

Anyway, click here to check it out – and let us know what you think!

Month of LibreOffice, May 2019: The winners!

At the beginning of May, we started a new Month of LibreOffice, celebrating contributions all across the project. Well, May has come to a close now, so how many people got sticker packs throughout the month? Check it out…

It’s the best Month of LibreOffice ever, beating the previous one by 10! So congratulations to everyone who won a sticker pack – and thanks so much for your contributions. It’s great to see such a passionate community helping to bring powerful, free and open source software to the world.

Now, how can you claim your sticker pack? Click the 355 above, and if you see your name (or username) on that 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 these:

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

But there is one more thing…

For this Month of LibreOffice, we have a special bonus: 12 sticker winners have also been selected at random to get an exclusive LibreOffice glass mug! It looks like this:

And here are the winners:

  • Dave Barton
  • DaeHyun Sung
  • ve3oat
  • @muvon (Mastodon)
  • Platterbaff
  • Oliver Brinzing
  • Adam Kovacs
  • Mihail Balabanov
  • @RonneyGey (Mastodon)
  • Olexandr Pylypchuk
  • Seda Stamboltsyan
  • Durgapriyanka

Congratulations to you all! We’ll be in touch with details for claiming your mugs…

So, the Month of LibreOffice has finished – but we plan to do another one in November, with another opportunity to get cool merchandise! And, of course, you can join our friendly community at any time and contribute back to the project. Cheers!

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