LibreOffice on social media: stats for June 2016 – April 2017

To help spread the word about LibreOffice and get feedback from users (and contributors), The Document Foundation operates various social media accounts. Some of these have been running since the start of the project – while others are relatively new. We’ve been collecting statistics about our social media accounts for a while, so let’s share them with the world.

 

Twitter

Our Twitter account is used mainly for announcements, links to blog posts and videos, and retweeting interesting messages from LibreOffice users. We sometimes get questions as well, although it’s hard to provide long answers in 140 characters, so we often point users at Ask LibreOffice instead. Here’s our follower count in recent months:

 

Facebook

Meanwhile, our English-language Facebook page is getting busier, and via it we receive lots of messages of support (along with requests for new features). The audience tends to be made up of end-users rather than developers, although we encourage people to get involved with non-coding tasks such as translations, testing and documentation. This graph shows the growth in page likes over the last 11 months:

 

Google+

We also have a Google+ page, which isn’t as busy as Facebook, but our followers there tend to be more technical – so it’s a great place to bring in potential contributors. In terms of followers, the growth here over the last 11 months hasn’t been huge, but there’s steady progress:

 

YouTube

We’ve been tracking the total number of video views on our YouTube channel since November 2016. Due to the new content we’ve been adding, including new features videos, interviews and tutorials in many languages (thanks to our worldwide community), the total view count has shot up:

 

Others

The LibreOffice community on Reddit is quite small, but we’re posting regular updates and encouraging users to help one another with questions. Then there’s our Telegram group which we launched late last year – this has reached almost 400 members.

Finally, if you think LibreOffice and/or The Document Foundation should be active on some other social media that we’ve not covered in this post, join our marketing community and let us know!

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.3.3

Berlin, May 11, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.3.3, focused on bleeding edge features, and as such targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters, and power users. LibreOffice 5.3.3 integrates over 70 patches, with an update of the Sifr monochrome icon set and several fixes for interoperability with Microsoft Office documents.

For all other users and enterprise deployments, TDF suggests LibreOffice 5.2.7, with the backing of professional support by certified professionals (updated list available at: http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change log with a detailed list of all patches here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.3.3/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.3.3/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.3.3 is immediately available for download from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/. LibreOffice 5.3.3 in Flatpak format is available here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates, and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Several companies sitting in TDF Advisory Board (http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) are providing either value added Long Term Supported versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.

Video interview: Thorsten Behrens, LibreOffice developer

Thorsten has been involved with LibreOffice (and OpenOffice.org before that) for many years. He’s a developer and in The Document Foundation’s Board of Directors (BoD). We talked to him about how the project was born, and what the BoD does.

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Announcement of LibreOffice 5.2.7

Berlin, May 9, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.2.7, the seventh minor release of the LibreOffice 5.2 family, targeted to enterprises and individual users in production environments.

TDF suggests deploying LibreOffice in large organizations, public administrations and enterprises with the backing of professional support by certified people (a list is available at http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change log here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.2.7/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.2.7/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.2.7 is immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates, and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Several companies sitting in TDF Advisory Board (http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) are providing either value added Long Term Supported versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.

Month of LibreOffice, May 2017: First week’s results

On May 1st we started a new Month of LibreOffice campaign, to give credit to contributions all across the project. So, after the first week, how is it looking? Well, here’s how many stickers have been awarded so far…

That’s a great start – 121 members of the LibreOffice community who’ll get a shiny sticker at the end of the month. Click the number to see how the contributions are spread across code, QA, documentation, user support and other areas. Of course, there’s more to come, and if you want to get a sticker for your laptop or other device, read on! Every contribution to LibreOffice can help millions of users across the globe.

How to get a sticker

There are many ways you can help the LibreOffice project and claim a sticker:

  • Help to confirm bugs: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 5.3.2”. (Make sure you’re using the latest version of LibreOffice.)
  • Contribute code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started. Once you’ve submitted a patch, if it gets merged we’ll send you a sticker!
  • Translate the interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.
  • Write documentation: Another way to earn a badge is to help the LibreOffice documentation team. Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.
  • Answer questions from users: Over on Ask LibreOffice there are many users looking for help with the suite. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim a shiny sticker.
  • Spread the word: Tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim a sticker. (We have a maximum of 100 stickers for this category, in case the whole internet starts tweeting!)

Stay tuned to this blog for further updates during the month!

TDF at MucGov17 BarCamp in Munich

On April 29th, the City of Munich in southern Germany held an event called MucGov17. Subtitled “Digital city – ideas, projects and apps”, it provided an opportunity for people involved with Munich’s IT infrastructure to get together, exchange ideas, and come up with new projects. The Document Foundation (TDF) attended and took part in various sessions.

Because the event was a BarCamp, sessions were planned on an ad-hoc basis; attendees could suggest presentations and talks, which were then allocated to different rooms. Other people at the event could then visit the talks they found most interesting.

Topics included: removing barriers in the digital world (eg making Munich’s websites and software more friendly to users with special needs or disabilities); improving the systems used in schools and education; and how to digitalise older, printed materials – making them more available to residents in the city.

TDF organised a discussion about the relationship between open data and open source. A question was raised: as cities, local councils and governments pay more attention to open data, should we be working harder to advocate the benefits of open source (and free software) as well? Is open data just one step on the road towards adopting open source, or do people find it hard to see a connection?

We also discussed how open source can mitigate duplication of effort. For instance, the City of Munich is working on an app to help residents (and visitors) find out about events and places to visit. Other cities in Germany are working on their own apps as well. Would it make more sense for all cities to work together on a single open source “core” app, and then individual cities could add their data on top?

Finally, we had an opportunity to talk to various people about LibreOffice, explaining how it is developed, what new features are being worked on, and how to get involved. So it was worth attending, and later in the year, TDF hopes to be present at Munich’s Open Government Day in October.