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Free software becomes a standard in Dortmund, Germany

2021-04-022021-04-10

LibreOffice is free and open source software, which means that it’s much more than zero-cost. Anyone can study how it works, modify it, and share those modifications with other users. (So the “free” is more about freedom than price.)

There are many other well-known free software projects, such as the GNU/Linux operating system, Firefox web browser, and Thunderbird email client. Free software helps companies, organisations and governments to reduce costs, improve reliability and free themselves from dependence on a single vendor.

Now, the Council of the German city of Dortmund has announced that it’s moving to free and open source software, where possible. Here’s a translation of the original German blog post:

Memorandum – Digitalisation 2020 to 2025

The Dortmund Council has declared digitalisation to be a political leadership task in its Memorandum 2020 to 2025. In the course of this, two central resolutions for free software were passed on February 11, 2021, for which the minutes were published on March 30:

“Use of open source software where possible.”
“Software developed by the administration or commissioned for development is made available to the general public.”

Open source wherever possible

With this resolution, city policy takes on the shaping of municipal digital sovereignty and digital participation. The resolution means a reversal of the burden of proof in favor of open source software – and at the expense of proprietary software. In the future, the administration will have to justify why open source software cannot be used for every proprietary software application. Based on the report of the Dortmund city administration on the investigation of the potentials of free software and open standards, open source software is understood in the sense of free software.

Public Money? Public Code!

So, the Council’s decision is in line with the concerns of the campaign Public Money, Public Code. What is financed with public money should be available to the general public for use. For software, this is achieved by means of a corresponding free license. With this resolution, local politicians ensure that the city of Dortmund not only draws from the free software community, but also contributes to it. In this way, inter-communal synergies can be achieved true to the motto develop together, use individually.

Support for open standards

Through the Digital Dortmund Charter 2018-2030, among other things, Open Standards were established as a requirement for further digitalisation.

Politically unanimous in favor of Free Software

The resolution for free software is supported by a broad political base. The motion was passed unanimously by the City Council of Dortmund. The digitalisation motion was jointly introduced by the following parliamentary groups: CDU, SPD, Die Grünen (Greens) and Die Linke (The Left).

Conclusion

The city of Dortmund has ushered in the political turning point and begun the exit from the proprietary era. Now it is important that the city finds the appropriate means to implement this process practically, by means of a proprietary exit strategy and to dissolve existing vendor lock-in. For Do-FOSS, the decision of the Memorandum 2020 to 2025 is the result of a functioning democratic local discourse. The practical management work for Free Software has the necessary political backing to succeed.

New Generation: Flyer for schools and universities

2021-03-092025-01-29

In late January, we announced LibreOffice New Generation, which focuses on bringing younger contributors into our projects and communities. We’ve had many discussions in our Telegram group since then, and today we’re announcing our first finished project: a LibreOffice flyer for schools and universities:

The goal of this flyer is to not only make students aware of LibreOffice, but also encourage them to get involved and help to improve it. Joining a free and open source software project is a great way to build up skills and gain experience, for potential future career options.

Thanks to Fabio Pesari, Timothy Brennan Jr. and Maharaj for their help and suggestions!

So what’s next?

We’ve put the flyer source file on our wiki (in ODG format, for opening in LibreOffice Draw – font used is Vegur), so translations in more languages would be great! If you make a translation, please email it to us and we’ll add it to the wiki. Here are the translations we have so far:

Spanish (Daniel Armando Rodriguez and Ever Medina)
Turkish (Yusuf Sansarkan)
Norwegian – nynorsk (Kolbjørn Stuestøl)
Norwegian – bokmål (Kolbjørn Stuestøl)
Italian (Italian-speaking community)
Slovene (Miha Kočar and Martin Srebotnjak)
Dutch (Kees)
German “Du” and German “Sie” versions (Jürgen Donauer/Bitblokes)
Czech (Petr Valach)
Hindi (Ravi Dwivedi; reviewed by: Suresh Yadav and Vijay Kumar)
Portuguese (Vítor de Matos)

And then: let’s get the flyers out there! We’ll print copies of these flyers, so if you want to distribute them in your school or university, send us an email and we’ll talk further.

Onwards and upwards!

This is just the first project in New Generation – and we have many more ideas…

Create certificate for skills: creating presentations, spreadsheets, illustrations
Provide materials for local training in schools, universities etc.
Set up a contest (eg Python macro programming) with rewards
Set up a survey for students and teachers to spread around on campus
Use Open Badges to reward contributors and confirm their work

But we need your help to make them a reality! Join our Telegram group and let’s do awesome things together 😊

Announcing LibreOffice New Generation

2021-01-292021-01-30

Today we’re announcing a new project: LibreOffice New Generation. This isn’t about the software, but about the people behind it. As you probably know, LibreOffice is made by a worldwide community of certified developers and volunteers, working on the source code, translations, documentation, design, QA, marketing, infrastructure and other areas.

Well, we want to reach out to even more people, so read on to find out more…

What is this?

LibreOffice New Generation is our project to bring new – and especially younger – people into the LibreOffice community. While we’re proud that our community is diverse and has people from all ages, younger people help to bring fresh ideas and approaches to the project. So we want to make it easier for everyone to join, get involved and have fun – regardless of age.

Who can join?

Anyone! If you’re a school or university student and use LibreOffice, we’d love to hear from you. What do you use LibreOffice for? How can it be improved? Can we help you to spread the word? Join us and let’s work together to make LibreOffice even better!

But everyone else is welcome to join too. The Document Foundation is a small non-profit, so we’d appreciate all help with bringing younger contributors into the project and helping them to get involved with our teams.

What will you do?

Many students who contribute to free and open source software projects like to have something which confirms their work. At TDF we’ve been issuing Open Badges for community contributions – these are special badges with metadata inside, showing what someone did. So we’d like to start issuing these to younger and newer community members too.

We have other ideas and projects, but we’d like to hear from you about your experiences! What else can we offer? How can we credit and reward contributors for their work? Let us know what you think…

How can I join?

If you’d like to discuss ways to get more younger people involved in the LibreOffice community, join our Telegram group where we can discuss Open Badges and other ideas for LibreOffice New Generation. (For all other discussions and suggestions for LibreOffice, please see the general group.) If you’d like to suggest something directly, email me (Mike) and we’ll have a chat.

We look forward to meeting you, and hearing your ideas and experiences!

Get cool LibreOffice merchandise – T-shirts, hoodies, mugs and more

2020-12-11

Show your love for LibreOffice with some snazzy merchandise! You can get T-shirts, hoodies, bags, mugs, baseball caps and more from online shops. And even better: some of the proceeds from sales go to The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice. This helps us to grow our community, organise events, share knowledge and keep making LibreOffice even better.

Click here to see what’s available!

LibreOffice 7.0 branding: Blender 3D model

2020-11-10

LibreOffice 7.0, released in August 2020, includes new branding elements for the splash screen and other places, thanks Bayu Rizaldhan Rayes and the Design team. Now Barbara Tostes has made a 3D model for use in Blender, so if you want to make a video or animation about LibreOffice, check it out!

And indeed, if you make any kind of video or tutorial and want us to spread the word, join our marketing mailing list or Telegram channel and say hello. Also take a look at the Design community’s work too. We love having more ideas and feedback!

Community Member Monday: Marcin Popko

2020-10-192020-10-19

Today we’re talking to Marcin Popko, who is helping to grow the LibreOffice community in Poland…

Hey Marcin! Tell us a bit about yourself…

Hello! I’m from Bialystok, a city in north-east Poland. I work as an electromagnetic compatibility tester – it’s a seriously crazy and interesting area of electronics development. I’m quite an artist soul; in my free time I dance bachata and sing in a folk band called “Kurpie Zielone”. I also write a blog about dance, emotions and technology here.

What is the free software/Linux/LibreOffice scene like in Poland?

FLOSS (free/libre and open source software) has rather more awareness in geeky and technological domains, than in everyday normal life. LibreOffice is not well know among my friends – some of them are using Microsoft Office, and some of them are even using OpenOffice. So that’s my mission here: inform them 🙂 Companies use LibreOffice when they can’t afford Microsoft Office or when it’s not seriously needed.

You’ve recently been running Polish LibreOffice social media. How did that get started, and how has it developed?

If found a blog post about abandoned native language projects and social media sites, wrote an e-mail to the mailing list, and there I started working with Mike Saunders from The Document Foundation.

We couldn’t reach the the existing administrator of the old Polish LibreOffice fanpage, so we decided to create a new one. Then I also added a Twitter account. Step-by-step, I did surveys about our community, and I wrote articles on Polish technology sites about the current LibreOffice situation, like this one.

Then we reached 150 fans on Facebook, and I ran a sticker giveaway – thanks to Mike and TDF I can pass these stickers on to the community. We’ve also prepared a new official Polish LibreOffice site (the old one has corrupted download links).

Any tips for other people who want to start LibreOffice/FOSS social media in other countries/languages?

If you don’t know something, don’t be afraid to ask anyone from the LibreOffice community. People are helpful there and they redirect you to appropriate place if you get lost.

Many thanks to Marcin for his superb work and help! And for everyone reading this who wants to start (or expand) social media in more languages, get in touch and we’ll assist you along the way. You can gain valuable experience running social media, and of course it helps to spread the word about LibreOffice too!

Category: Marketing