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Community Member Monday: Peter Schofield

Today we’re talking to Peter Schofield from LibreOffice’s documentation community…

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I am Yorkshire bred and born, which was a very long time ago. Left home at 16 to join the Royal Air Force. Served for almost 19 years as an Aircraft Technician, which is where my engineering knowledge started.

Became interested in Technical Writing in the early 80s and became qualified as a Technical Writer in 1985. This has enabled me to work in aviation, defence, mining, plant machinery, construction, electronics, telecommunications, computer peripherals and software. This did involve working in several countries, which has given me a very broad outlook on life.

Now official retired from paid work and have settled down in Poland with my lovely Polish wife.

How did you get involved in LibreOffice?

First came across an early version of LibreOffice in the 90s when I started using Star Office, which then became OpenOffice. I have always been interested in open software being freely available to users to help them save money, not having having to pay the big corporations.

I took to LibreOffice when I retired and realised how good it is, so I decided to help the project. This gave me the chance to create user guides that LibreOffice users could easily understand (I hope). I am now in charge of the Impress and Draw user guides and starting to upgrade both of them to LibreOffice 7.4.

What else are you planning to work on?

My plans for the future is continue being a willing volunteer on the LibreOffice Documentation Team with the hope that I can improve usability of the user guides for the majority of users. I do believe that some parts of the LibreOffice user guides do need improvement because of the poor language used. With this in mind, I am now updating the template to help improve the quality of the user guides. This means that there are hints and ideas in the template on how to improve ones writing.

Eventually I would like to see all the user guides using an easy to understand English. This means it would make the text easier to translate into the languages LibreOffice is available in, and make the English easier to understand for users where English is not their first language. This idea is already in practice with several companies throughout the world. These companies use one of the versions of Simplified English that are available.

Many thanks to Peter for all his help! Everyone is welcome to join the Documentation Team and build up skills for a potential career in technical writing…

Community Member Monday: রিং/ring (S R Joardar)

Today we’re talking to রিং/ring (S R Joardar) from Bangladesh, who’s helping to spread the word about Free Software (as in freedom) – including LibreOffice – in his country…

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I am a GNU/Linux user, lover, translator and supporter since 2000, and a sysadmin since 2003 using Red Hat 5.0, later Fedora and RHEL. I am using Ubuntu in personal computers since December 2006. Canonical sent me a zero-priced gift pack of 10 CDs with Ubuntu 6.10 back then. I have started deployment of Ubuntu servers with Ubuntu 8.04 manual installations in 2009, and just provisioned a few instances with 22.04 on Linode and Digital Ocean. In the years 2009-2017, I personally made over 6,000 new desktop or laptop installations with Ubuntu and LinuxMint.

I am from Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2011, I along with 21 more Free software enthusiasts formed an organization titled “FOSS Bangladesh (Foundation for Open Source Solutions Bangladesh)” and started with official tour to the Universities here in Bangladesh. Up to December 2019, FOSS Bangladesh had organized 75 events in various universities and colleges and schools to spread out the digital freedom knowledge among the pupils, the future leaders. I have invited Mr. Richard M. Stallman came in Dhaka, Bangladesh at Daffodil International University for a session in 2014 and he agreed to my request and visited. I am also a Mozillian (Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird Fan, User and Supporter and end user support volunteer). At present I am working as the General Secretary of FOSS Bangladesh.

I am an IT Freelancer, working on PPH and Freelancer. I love to cook food and play cricket besides my computing and voluntary support to spread Free Software knowledge. 🙂

How well is FOSS, LibreOffice, GNU/Linux etc. known and used in Bangladesh? What are the obstacles to adoption?

In 2011, FOSS Bangladesh ran an online survey to gather approximate user data about GNU/Linux users, with the help of various online local language forums sites here in Bangladesh. Back then, it was around 9,000 people. As per my statistical knowledge nowadays, the pupils I had served with installations and had met by 2017 became professionals, and GNU/Linux users is now more than 100 times of that 15,000 count.

The obstacles to adoption of GNU/Linux and LibreOffice in here in Bangladesh is the lack of law bindings regarding software piracy. So far, can obtain a pirated copy of Windows 10 with Microsoft Office, and many more and get used to that closed, bind and blinded ecosystem. So when it comes to the professional workplace, most people got bound into that closed software ecosystem. They do not think that they are stealing – and on the piracy index globally, they make Bangladesh ashamed. Government offices here also go alike with the closed software ecosystem.

But the scenario is changing day to day. Those who once got the chance to get out of that closed system embracing the GNU/Linux ecosystem or the Free Software getting hold for his/her lifetime. They also spreads the enjoyment of Freedom to their surroundings.

Spreading the knowledge of Free Software and Digital Freedom is a must. Only sharing and caring, and contributing to the Freedom Ecosystem, can make that happen in the future. But the COVID-19 pandemic affected local events ing FOSS Bangladesh since 2020. We hope to start with a new run soon, by November 2022.

You’d like to grow the LibreOffice community in Bangladesh. How can others help out and get involved?

Translation and helping others to use LibreOffice can help grow the community in Bangladesh more quickly. Since 2010, I have transformed three industries in Bangladesh from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu, and then LibreOffice came along. To this date, date they are using Ubuntu 20.04 or Linux Mint 20.3 with LibreOffice 7.3.2. I have to install, train end users to get into the ecosystem, and provide day-to-day user support. Around 500 users are migrated and get evolved in this Free Software ecosystem, and using it in the professional arena. I can recall 15,000 valid contacts, but the real count is many more than that.

In Bangladesh, I know that there are there are more private companies running only on Free software.

Finally, how can people get involved and help to grow the LibreOffice and Free Software community in Bangladesh?

We have already have setup a Telegram group – join it here.

Many thanks to Ring and all members of the Bangladesh community for their work and support!

LibreOffice project and community recap: June 2022

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

  • We’re still maintaining the LibreOffice 7.3 branch, of course, and on June 9 we released LibreOffice 7.3.4 with over 80 bugfixes and compatibility improvements.

  • Meanwhile, রিং/ring (S R Joardar) from the Bangladeshi LibreOffice community told us about his efforts to spread the word about Free Software in his country. The community has set up a Bangladeshi Telegram channel to coordinate activities. Thanks to everyone involved!

  • And finally, The Document Foundation is supporting a student through the Deutschlandstipendium initiative. We caught up with Julian Hübenthal to find out what he’s doing, and what he knows about FOSS already…

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!

LibreOffice 7.3.4 Community has been released

Berlin, June 9, 2022 – LibreOffice 7.3.4 Community, the fourth minor release of the LibreOffice 7.3 family, targeted at technology enthusiasts and power users, is available for download from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

The LibreOffice 7.3 family offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite market segment, starting with native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – beating proprietary formats in the areas of security and robustness – to superior support for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files.

Microsoft files are still based on the proprietary format deprecated by ISO in 2008, which is artificially complex, and not on the ISO approved standard. This lack of respect for the ISO standard format may create issues to LibreOffice, and is a huge obstacle for transparent interoperability.

LibreOffice for enterprise deployments

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners, with long-term support options, professional assistance, custom features and Service Level Agreements: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

LibreOffice Community and the LibreOffice Enterprise family of products are based on the LibreOffice Technology platform, the result of years of development efforts with the objective of providing a state of the art office suite not only for the desktop but also for mobile and the cloud.

Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud. They may have a different name, according to each company brand strategy, but they share the same LibreOffice unique advantages, robustness and flexibility.

Availability of LibreOffice 7.3.4 Community

LibreOffice 7.3.4 Community is the best office suite for personal productivity. With the LibreOffice 7.2 family approaching the end of life, all users are invited to upgrade to this version as soon as possible.

LibreOffice 7.3.4 change log pages are available on TDF’s wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/7.3.4/RC1 (changed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/7.3.4/RC2 (changed in RC2). Over 80 bugs and regressions have been solved.

LibreOffice Technology based products for Android and iOS are listed here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/, while for App Stores and ChromeOS are listed here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-from-microsoft-and-mac-app-stores/

LibreOffice individual users are assisted by a global community of volunteers: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/community-support/. On the website and the wiki there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos. Donations help the project to make all of these resources available.

LibreOffice users are invited to join the community at https://ask.libreoffice.org, where they can get and provide user-to-user support. People willing to contribute their time and professional skills to the project can visit the dedicated website at https://whatcanidoforlibreoffice.org

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can provide financial support to The Document Foundation with a donation via PayPal, credit card or other tools at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate

LibreOffice 7.3.4 is built with document conversion libraries from the Document Liberation Project: https://www.documentliberation.org

Winners in the Month of LibreOffice, May 2022!

At the start of May, we revved up a new Month of LibreOffice, celebrating community contributions all across the project. We do these every six months – so how many people got sticker packs this time? Check it out…

Awesome work, everyone! Hundreds of people, all across the globe, have helped out in our projects and communities. We’re hugely thankful for your contributions – and, of course, everyone who’s listed on the wiki page can get a sticker pack, with these stickers and more:

How to claim

If you see your name (or username) on this 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 a bunch of stickers for your PC, laptop and other kit.

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

There is one more thing…

And we have an extra bonus: 10 contributors have also been selected at random to get an extra piece of merchandise – a LibreOffice hoodie, T-shirt, rucksack or snazzy glass mug. Here are the winners – we’ll get in touch personally with the details:

  • Andrew Watson
  • Yotam Benshalom
  • Yuvarani
  • Ulrich Gemkow
  • klaatu1
  • Christophe JAILLET
  • gregors15
  • Riyadh Talal
  • qsu
  • Siddhant Chaudhary

Congratulations to all the winners, and a big thanks once again to everyone who took part! Your contributions keep the LibreOffice project strong. We plan to have another Month of LibreOffice next May, but everyone is welcome to see what they can do for LibreOffice at any time!

LibreOffice project and community recap: May 2022

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

  • We kicked off May with the Month of LibreOffice. This is an event that we run twice a year, awarding sticker packs (and the chance to win more merchandise) to everyone who contributes to LibreOffice. We posted an update later in May – and we’ll soon post the final results on this blog!

  • During the month, we released two updates to the suite: LibreOffice 7.3.3 on May 5, and 7.2.7 on May 12. (The latter is the last release in the LibreOffice 7.2 series. Also, LibreOffice is now available to download on SourceForge.

  • Then we had updates about the LibreOffice Conference 2022, which will take place in Mikan, northern Italy from September 28 – October 1. We announced the Call for Papers, followed by the sponsorship package. We look forward to seeing you there – in-person, or online!
  • Our Indonesian community reported on recent activities, including an online session to broaden students’ knowledge of LibreOffice and FOSS (free and open source software) in general.

  • We’re glad that more in-person events are becoming possible again, and LibreOffice community members were present at the Univention Summit 2022 in Bremen, northern Germany.

  • In May, LibreOffice won two awards: SourceForge’s Open Source Project of the Month, and Software Informer’s Editor’s Pick.

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!

Press Releases

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.4

Berlin, 18 December 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.4, the fourth minor update to the free office suite developed by volunteers for…

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