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Welcoming the new Board of Directors at The Document Foundation

In December, members of The Document Foundation voted for a new Board of Directors. The Board is the main administration of the Foundation’s projects and teams – including LibreOffice and The Document Foundation. The new Board will begin work after FOSDEM in February – and there are some new faces to welcome! Let’s hear from them…

Daniel Armando Rodriguez

I have been working voluntarily with TDF since January 2011 and I am a member since 2013. Whenever possible I try to evangelize regarding the advantages of adopting the ODF standard and LibreOffice as an office suite.

Considering the number of people living in this region of the world, I consider the need to add more volunteers to the community and, eventually, more members to the foundation to be a continuous effort. A significant weakness has to do with the language barrier as the number of English speakers in this part of the continent is relatively low. For this reason, I translate and publish on the Hispanic blog press releases, interviews and articles that help raise awareness of the strategic importance of adopting free tools and open standards. I work in a high school with technical orientation all day. I live in Misiones, Argentina (northeast of the country), an small province between Paraguay and Brazil.

I’m averaging the 40’s, father of two, a boy and a girl, and live and I’ve been living in a couple for almost 20 years.

Emiliano Vavassori

I am a senior system administrator, employed in a small company based in Bergamo, in the North of Italy, with its core business in providing ICT services for SMB companies. In my job, I’m mostly without any relation to LibreOffice – we install it on some customer’s PCs, but at least for the moment we don‘t have any migration process/anything bigger planned.

My operating system of choice is GNU/Linux since 2001 and from the same days I advocate FOSS and openness whenever possible, both in public events and in the business. Lately I was convinced that also open formats should have their own share of advocating so I am trying to do that as well. I am actually in the Board of both BgLUG (Bergamo Linux Users Group) and LibreItalia (Italian local “chapter” of TDF), but I am/was involved in a lot of other organizations, mostly with goals in FOSS advocacy.

In the last few years, I was involved in FOSS advocacy also inside schools, founding and leading the LibreSchool Project (www.libreschool.org) with a group of friends and colleagues from my LUG. I hope my experience would be of help inside TDF Board of Directors; I am pretty sure that I will also learn a lot.

As soon as I have been involved with TDF, I have been greeted by a full lot of passionate and welcoming people who worked hard to make yourself feel at home inside TDF and, sharing the same spirit, I would like to drive the efforts on the next two years within the BoD to make LibreOffice and The Document Liberation Project shine even more. My goals inside the Board will be mostly facilitating community interactions and activities, community inclusion and lowering the initial barriers to becoming a community member and contributor, which I can feel is still pretty high.

I would like to provide my direct help inside the TDF Board of Directors dealing with infrastructure (as it may seem legitimate by my job), marketing, event organization and native language projects.

Lothar Becker

This is a logical consequence – I think – of my long-term contributions to the project. A lot of you know me as owner of .riess applications, which was the first partner of Sun for doing migration business with StarOffice/OpenOffice nearly 20 years ago.

You might also know me from my contributions with activities for the national and international ecosystem, developing the certification process for LibreOffice professionals with others, where I nowadays serve as volunteer co-chair of the certification committee.

This gives me the chance to give something back for a lot of things I got out of this project. It‘s not just in the sense of making business, but in the sense of experiencing a healthy and powerful community of an open source project. As I’m also engaged in the German-based Open Source Business Alliance as speaker of the working group of public affairs and co-speaker of the working group for interoperability, there are a lot of topics where I can leverage each engagement through the other in the interest of all.

Helping and driving activities in the sense of growing local communities internationally (India, Africa, Asia, as well as European communities for recovering) and activating more exchange of ideas between the community and the board are some of the challenges I see for the next board period.

Nicolas Christener (deputy)

I’m Nicolas Christener, living in Switzerland, married, love skiing & music and I was born between RFC 812 and 813.

I currently work for Adfinis SyGroup which is a company delivering services (engineering, managed services, development) around F/OSS software. We partner with Collabora and together with them we brought LibreOffice to iOS.

I helped to organize LibreOffice Conference 2014 in Switzerland, the company I work for hosts some TDF servers and lately I was busy to help make the iOS app a reality. I contributed comment translations (de -> en) in the code, filed many bugs and convinced users and organizations to use LibreOffice.

I was also appointed by the current Board (which I’m not part of) to help start the The Document Collective (TDC). This transitional group only bootstraps the legal entity and I won’t automatically be involved in the future entity.

I believe that I have a good understanding of the enterprise requirements and am very community oriented which gives me a well balanced view where and how we could improve LibreOffice for the good of all of us.

Paolo Vecchi (deputy)

I’m based in Luxemburg and my two organisations, Omnis Systems Ltd (UK) and Omnis Cloud Sarl (LU), are specialised in the promotion of Open Source and Free Software platforms. During the last years, I wrote many articles promoting Open Source, Free Software and naturally LibreOffice.

Many of you may know me also from FOSDEM and LibOCon. I’ve been a part of the working group that succeed in convincing the UK Government to adopt ODF as their standard file format, convinced the City Council of Reggio Emilia to upgrade to LibreOffice and contributed in writing the Manifesto for Technological Sovereignty with the City Council of Barcelona – just to mention some of the activities.

I’m contributing to the LibreOffice project by investing time and resources to work with the private and public sector organisations showing them the social, ethical and economical benefits of replacing proprietary products with Open Source platforms and open standards.

With my new venture in Luxembourg I decided to lead by example, so I’ve setup a new “Sovereign Cloud”, providing resources and a set of free services to individuals and local non-profits. I want to show to local institutions that with Open Source platforms it’s possible to compete directly against the big players and that this change is not as difficult and expensive as they want us to believe. The services I’m providing will also be used to further promote LibreOffice, both desktop and On-Line.

I want to share my expertise with the board and bring in my passion for Open Source and Free Software.

Full list of the Board of Directors

Elected as member of the Board of Directors, in this order are:

  • Michael Meeks
  • Thorsten Behrens
  • Franklin Weng
  • Daniel Armando Rodriguez
  • Cor Nouws
  • Lothar Becker
  • Emiliano Vavassori

And elected as deputies of the Board of Directors are:

  • Nicolas Christener
  • Paolo Vecchi

Want to become a member and vote in future elections? Check out this video…

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10/20: LibreOffice 10th anniversary in 2020, a year long celebration

LibreOffice was announced on September 28, 2010, with a positive feedback from tech and business media all over the world (above, two significant titles from eWeek and Linux Gizmos). To celebrate the event, The Document Foundation has organized a year long anniversary project, starting at FOSDEM in Brussels on February 1/2 and ending at POSS in Paris in early December 2020.

LibreOffice community members will attend as many FOSS events as possible, carrying stickers and swag with the anniversary logo. The author is Rania Amina from Indonesia, a member of the LibreOffice community who has already contributed with logos and 2D animations to the success of LibreOffice Indonesia Conference in 2018.

Rania Amina will attend FOSDEM in Brussels, and will also talk about the LibreOffice Theme Changer at the Open Document Editors DevRoom.

So far, in addition to FOSDEM and POSS, events have been confirmed in Nigeria (Open Source Africa), Kosovo (FLOSSK), Croatia (DORS/CLUC), Albania (OSCAL), France (Libre Graphics Meeting and OW2con), Taiwan (COSCUP and LibreOffice Asia Conference), India (Open Source India), Germany (Chemnitzer Linux-Tage, FrOSCon and the LibreOffice Conference), US (All Things Open) and Serbia (PSSOH), but several other are being currently discussed and will be announced as soon as possible.

Stay tuned !!! 2020 will be an exciting time for the LibreOffice community !!!

Upcoming Elections for the next Board of Directors of The Document Foundation

Dear Community,

we hereby officially announce the upcoming elections for the next Board of Directors of The Document Foundation.

As per § 7 II of our statutes, [1] the Board’s term lasts two years. The current board started its duty on February 18, 2018. Therefore, it remains in charge until the end of February 17, 2020, so the new board will be in charge the day after that, which is February 18, 2020.

That upcoming term will then (regularly) end on February 17, 2022, so the next elections of the Board of Directors will take place before.

As per § 6 III, only members of the Board of Trustees of The Document Foundation, as well as current members of any of its bodies, are eligible to be elected into the Board of Directors, and the election is overseen by the Membership Committee (§ 7 II).

The active electoral right is reserved to those who have been members of the Board of Trustees before this announcement (§ 7 II).

§ 6 III also states that members of the Board of Directors or their deputies may not be members of the Membership Committee and vice versa. This means that current members of the Membership Committee are eligible to be elected, but with the acceptance of their new role they lose their current role in the MC. For clarification, they have to step down from the Membership Committee, with effect no later than to the beginning of the new term of the Board of Directors, the minute before accepting to become a member of the Board of Directors.

There is one more notable limitation: per § 8 IV of the statutes, a maximum of 1/3 members of the Board of Directors is allowed to work on an employment basis for the same company, organization, entities, affiliates or subdivisions.

Nomination of candidates fulfilling the above requirements, as well as self nomination is welcome. In total, at least seven Board of Directors members are required, and given there are enough candidates, up to three deputies can be elected (§ 7 II). As deputies are on duty quite often, we encourage many candidates to participate.

Re-election of current members of the Board of Directors is explicitly permitted (§ 7 II).

Please send nominations and self-nominations via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private) and also (!) to board-discuss@documentfoundation.org (which is a public mailing list).

We kindly ask nominees who would like to stand for elections to provide a maximum 75 words statement on their candidacy as continuous text (so no bullet lists or multiple paragraphs). In addition, please also provide your full name, e-mail address and your corporate affiliation, if any. Specifically, please indicate all information regarding § 8 IV of the statutes.

Discussions with the candidates and questions to them as well as questions about the elections should take place on the public board-discuss@documentfoundation.org mailing list. For details on how to use the mailing list, see https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/

Eligible voters will receive further details via e-mail prior to the start of elections, including a summary of the candidates, details on how to access the voting system, and instructions on how to independently verify the vote count. Please ensure the Membership Committee has your recent and correct e-mail address on file. For questions, you can reach the Membership Committee in private at elections@documentfoundation.org

Following the time line set forth in § 7 II, requiring a 45 day advance notice, we hereby announce the following time line for the elections:

  • 2019-10-18: announcement of the elections; and start of the nomination phase
  • 2019-11-27, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the nomination phase (one week before the election starts, as per § 7 II)
  • 2019-12-05, 00:00 CET/UTC+1: official start of the elections (at least 45 days after announcement of the elections, as per § 7 II)
  • 2019-12-12, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the elections
  • 2019-12-13: announcement of the preliminary results and acknowledgement of role
  • 2019-12-14, 00:00 CET/UTC+1: start of the challenging phase
  • 2019-12-19, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the challenging phase, followed by the official announcement of the final results

Be advised that the newly elected Board of Directors will only be in charge beginning from February 18, 2020. The current Board of Directors will however include them in the decision making process, to ease up the transition.

Challenges to this announcement with respect to the deadlines outlined have to happen no later than seven (7) days after this announcement, via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private).

Challenges to the preliminary results of the election have to happen until the deadline set forth above, via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private).

On behalf of the Membership Committee,
Gabriele Ponzo

[1] https://www.documentfoundation.org/statutes.pdf

The Document Foundation supports GNOME Foundation fight against a patent troll

The Document Foundation is always opposed to the use of patents to curtail Free Software development and use. The GNOME Foundation, a member of our Advisory Board, is now the target of patent troll Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC, for maintaining and shipping Shotwell, a Free Open Source personal photo manager for the GNOME desktop environment.

The GNOME Foundation has declined to settle, and has filed three different papers with the court: a motion to dismiss the case, an answer to the claim, and a counterclaim against the troll, with the aim of invalidating their patent. We fully support GNOME Foundation’s decision to fight the patent troll so that no other users or developers are in danger of being sued by this and similar organizations.

Here you can read GNOME Foundation blog post summarizing the situation: https://www.gnome.org/news/2019/10/gnome-files-defense-against-patent-troll/. The Document Foundation asks all LibreOffice community members and users to stand with the GNOME Foundation in their efforts to show the world that we in the Free Software communities will defend ourselves against any abuses of the patent system.

Happy 9th Anniversary, LibreOffice

Happy 9th Anniversary to LibreOffice, to the community of volunteer contributors  – represented by The Document Foundation – and to every person who made the dream possible with a donation or a simple download. If you have developed, patched, localized, tested, triaged, documented, communicated, promoted, explained, supported, certified, trained or migrated either the software or the organizations deploying it or the people using it, you should celebrate. Together, we have been able to transform a dream into a reality.

Thanks to Geralt for the image, released with a Pixabay License.

TDF Annual Report 2018

The Annual Report of The Document Foundation for the year 2018 is now available in PDF format from TDF Nextcloud in two different versions: low resolution (6.4MB) and high resolution (53.2MB). The annual report is based on the German version presented to the authorities in April.

The 52 page document has been entirely created with free open source software: written contents have obviously been developed with LibreOffice Writer (desktop) and collaboratively modified with LibreOffice Writer (online), charts have been created with LibreOffice Calc and prepared for publishing with LibreOffice Draw, drawings and tables have been developed or modified (from legacy PDF originals) with LibreOffice Draw, images have been prepared for publishing with GIMP, and the layout has been created with Scribus based on the existing templates.

All pictures are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License, courtesy of TDF Members from Albania, Brasil, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Nepal, Taiwan and Turkey. Stock photos are CC0 by Pixabay.

Marina Latini, Chairwoman of TDF Board of Directors, has written in the welcome address:

After eight full years, the challenge is to further grow the project, by leveraging the presence of active volunteers, enthusiastic supporters and happy users in many geographies. During the last couple of years, a growing number of events has been organized by native language communities around the world, with significant growth in Asia.

What we have achieved so far goes beyond the most optimistic forecasts of the project’s founders back in 2010, thanks to the commitment of the large group of people who manage the foundation and take care of related activities, and the volunteer contributions of organizations and individuals in every continent.
Of course, what we are now would not be possible without the generosity of thousand of donors and the valued members of the Advisory Board who support the growth of LibreOffice, the Document Liberation Project and the ecosystem around them.

Today, LibreOffice is the only suite for personal productivity with the ambition of providing desktop and cloud users with the same seamless experience, based on a solid set of features. Mobile apps are under development, to further extend the reach.

This Annual Report of The Document Foundation is a showcase of all community activities which support the growth of LibreOffice and the Document Liberation Project.

We are getting closer to our 10th anniversary. I look forward to another great year for our global community of friends, working united on the goal of creating the best free office software ever. Thank you very much to all of you who made this dream come true!

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