Home » tdf » Page 4

Tag: tdf

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5.7

Berlin, October 18, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5.7, the seventh and possibly last version of the free office suite’s 3.5 family, which solves additional bugs and regressions, and offers stability improvements over LibreOffice 3.5.6.

The Document Foundation suggests all users to upgrade from previous versions to LibreOffice 3.5.7.

LibreOffice 3.5.7 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

Change logs are available at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.7/RC1 and http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.7/RC2.

Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

When downloading the software, you might consider about donating some money to The Document Foundation for the development of LibreOffice and the growth of the community, by accessing our donation page at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.2

Berlin, October 4, 2012 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.6.2, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, solving bugs and regressions and further improving the stability of the program for corporate deployments. The best free office suite ever is quickly becoming the de facto standard for migrations to free office suites, thanks to the quickly growing feature set and the improved interoperability with proprietary software.

The growing number of LibreOffice adoptions by private and public enterprises is a demonstration of the improvements brought to the legacy code by TDF, thanks to over 500 developers who are focusing on stability and quality (in addition to new exciting features).

The latest public administration to migrate has been the city of Limerick, Ireland’s third largest city, where LibreOffice is now used on all 450 desktops in use at the city’s six main locations including the three public libraries, the fire department, the municipal museum and the City Gallery of Art.

The community behind LibreOffice will gather in Berlin for the second LiboCon from October 17 to October 19. During three days, company representatives and volunteers will discuss their experiences, learning from each other in the true spirit of the community.

Registration for the conference end on October 8, Registration for the conference ends on October the 8th. If you want to join in, please register at this address: http://conference.libreoffice.org/registration.

LibreOffice 3.6.2 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

Change logs are available at http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-6-2-release-3.6.2.1.log (fixed in 3.6.2.1) and http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-6-2-release-3.6.2.2.log (fixed in 3.6.2.2).

—

The infographics offers a representation of the growth of the developers community over the last 12 months, in addition to the growth of downloads from TDF mirror system.

Some TDF Numbers as of September 2012

You can download the Hybrid PDF at the following link: TDF Infographics September 2012 – Hybrid PDF.

The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary and starts fundraising campaign to reach the next stage

Fourth quarter’s donors define the communities budget for the next year

Berlin, September 28, 2012 – The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary since the announcement of the project on September 28, 2010. During the last 12 months, the foundation was legally established in Berlin, the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee were elected by TDF members, where membership is based on meritocracy and not on invitation, Intel became a supporter, and LibreOffice 3.5 and 3.6 families were announced. In addition, TDF has shown the prototypes of a cloud and a tablet version of LibreOffice, which will be available sometime in late 2013 or early 2014.

On October 1st, The Document Foundation will start a fundraising campaign with the objective of supporting the next wave of the growth. “So far, volunteers have provided most of the work necessary to sustain the project, but after two years it is is mandatory to start thinking really big”, says Italo Vignoli, the dean of the Board of Directors. “We had a dream, and now that thousands around the world made that dream come true we want to get to the major league of software development and advocacy. By donating during the fourth quarter of 2012, donors will define the budget we have available for 2013”.

Community members have set up a dedicated donation page – with several options including PayPal and credit cards – at http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the fundraising campaign. The page will be updated on the fly, to show current achievements, and concrete goals achieved with the donations.

“In just 24 months, we have achieved what many people thought was impossible when the project was launched”, says Thorsten Behrens, SUSE developer, Deputy Chairman of the Board. “We have managed to aggregate a large number of people around the idea that an independent foundation was the only reasonable choice to provide a sustainable future to the legacy OOo code. According to Ohloh, in just two years we managed to become the third largest free software project focused on the development of a desktop application with 325 active committers over the last 12 months, after Firefox and Chrome”.

LibreOffice is the result of the combined activity of 540 contributors – including former OpenOffice.org developers – having made more than 40,000 commits. The program is faster and more reliable, and has a richer feature set than predecessors and competitors thanks to a growing hacker community where more experienced developers are mentoring newbies in order to bring them up to speed. Today, the group is well balanced between people looking after infrastructure, new features and patches.

Downloads since January 25, 2011, the date of the first stable release, have just exceeded 18 million, and amount to over 20 million when you add external sites offering the same package. In addition, millions of users install LibreOffice from CDs burned from the ISO images available online or bundled with magazines in many geographies. Around 90% of installations are on Windows, with another 10% on MacOS.

Linux users, in contrast, get LibreOffice from their distribution repository. Based on IDC reckonings for new or updated Linux installations in 2012, TDF estimates a subtotal of 30 million Linux users, as LibreOffice is the office suite of choice for all Linux distributions.

The community around TDF will gather in Berlin from October 16 to October 19, 2012, for the second LibreOffice Conference (http://conference.libreoffice.org/). Interested people need to register at http://conference.libreoffice.org/registration/ by October 8th.

LibreOffice can be downloaded from http://www.libreoffice.org/.

Meet the Membership Committee

The Members of The Document Foundation have just elected the new Membership Committee, with five members – Sophie Gautier, Fridrich Štrba, Eike Rathke, Cor Nouws and Jean Weber – and two deputies – Simon Phipps and Leif Lodahl.

I think that there are a couple of significant facts to underline here: the number of the original TDF founders is lower than the number of new TDF members (although several of them have been active in the project for a long time), and the number of independent members is higher than the number of people affiliated with companies sponsoring TDF.

I suppose that people are curious about the activity of these seven people, inside TDF and outside TDF.

I think that the best way to meet them is to link their web presence, as everyone has at least a blog. Of course, it will be soon possible to find them on the Membership Committee page on TDF website, and meet them at LibreOffice Conference in Berlin.

Sophie Gautier does not need any introduction: she is the history of the project, a TDF founder and a pillar of several projects: French localization, QA and certification. She has a website, a blog and a Google+ page.

Fridrich Štrba is a SUSE developer, with a passion for hacking filters (Visio and Corel Draw), who speaks a large number of languages including Italian. He has a website and a Google+ page.

Eike Rathke is a RedHat developer, and a longtime Calc hacker living in Hamburg where he has breathed the OOo code for the last twenty years. He has a website and a blog, while here you can learn about his erAck programmer name.

Cor Nouws is a TDF founder and a long time member of the project, active in several projects: Dutch localization, QA and certification. Together with Sophie, he brings a huge amount of wisdom and sense of community to TDF. He has a website and a blog.

Jean Weber is the leader of the documentation project, and the representative of the southern emisphere inside the Membership Committee (she lives in Australia). She has a blog and a Google+ page.

Simon Phipps is the President of the Open Source Initiative, and has been the engine behind Sun’s open source efferts for 10 years. He has a website and a Google+ page, and is featured on Wikipedia.

Leif Lodahl is a TDF founder, and has been instrumental in the first large migration to LibreOffice at Copenhagen Hospitals. He has a blog and a Google+ page.

Of course, the best way to meet the entire Membership Committee and discuss with them will be the LibreOffice Conference in Berlin.

LibreOffice Localization Program in Saudi Arabia announced to enhance Arabic language related features

The Document Foundation and the National Program for Free and Open Source Software Technologies (Motah) at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia work at the further enhancement of LibreOffice

Berlin, September 13, 2012 – The Document Foundation and the National Program for Free and Open Source Software Technologies (Motah: http://www.motah.org.sa) at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia announce a Localization Program to enhance the Arabic language support in LibreOffice and solve related bugs, and contribute to the improvement and development of LibreOffice.

liberoffice_imageMotah LibreOffice Project (http://motah.org.sa/en/?q=node/94) is one of the activities of Motah program at KACST, where several software products in various fields are studied to explore the extent of Arabic support and their suitability to the needs of Arab users. Thereafter, Motah team will work at improving the selected software products to meet those needs and requirements. LibreOffice was selected to be the first localization project because of its importance as an office suite whose functions are needed by all computer users.

The main objectives of the project are the following:

  1. Study LibreOffice and identify the bugs related to Arabic language, and validate that the software correctly supports languages written from right to left in all its functions and operations.
  2. Work to solve these bugs and improve the LibreOffice support to languages written from right to left. The bugs are either discovered by Motah team members or posted in the LibreOffice Bugzilla website.
  3. Work on simplifying and enhancing LibreOffice graphical user interface, to enhance the usability of the software.
  4. Work on improving the Arabic Documentation as well as improving the Arabization of the graphical user interface, by reviewing and enhancing the existing translation.

arab-language“As the first leading project in the Arabic region to support LibreOffice, Motah program is committed to support Arabic language and its use in modern technologies. Through local software engineers, young and open source enthusiasts, Motah has made its first contribution to LibreOffice 3.6.1 solving several bugs related to Arabic language and RTL format support. Motah will continue solving related bugs as well as improving the Arabic help and documentation as part of its contribution to the Arabic speaking ICT community. It is fascinating to see The Document Foundation combining people from different cultures, languages and geographical locations around the development of LibreOffice, the best free office suite ever”, says Abdulrahman Alarifi, Motah Program Director.

“Motah key contributions to LibreOffice are a demonstration of the unique advantages of TDF as an independent body, capable of pushing forward the free office suite and raising the bar of interoperability”, comments Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board of The Document Foundation. “Only the balanced mix between organization and volunteer activities within TDF can guarantee the global reach of LibreOffice, and offer users a free office suite in their native language independently from their geography or language”.

Modern Standard Arabic is the official language of 26 states (Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen), and is spoken by as many as 440 million native speakers.

The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran (known as Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic) and is widely taught in schools, universities, and used to varying degrees in workplaces, government and the media.

LibreOffice is available in their native language to over 95% of the world’s population, thanks to a global volunteer community spanning over the five continents

LibreOffice can be downloaded at http://www.libreoffice.org/download.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, meritocratic organization, which builds on ten years of dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org Community. TDF was created in the belief that the culture born of an independent foundation brings out the best in corporate and volunteer contributors, and will deliver the best free office suite. TDF is open to any individual who agrees with its core values and contributes to its activities, and warmly welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community. As of August 30, 2012, TDF has over 140 members and over 2,000 volunteers and contributors worldwide.

Media Contact Motah

Abdulrahman Alarifi – Motah Program Director
Mobile: 00 966 561939678 – Email: aarifi@kacst.edu.sa

Media Contacts TDF

Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
Phone: +49 8341 99660880 – Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org – Skype: floeff
Charles H. Schulz (based in Paris, France, UTC+1)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 – E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Eliane Domingos de Sousa (based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UTC-3)
E-mail: elianedomingos@documentfoundation.org – Skype: elianedomingos
Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 – E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
Skype: italovignoli – GTalk: italo.vignoli@gmail.com

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…

Open Document Format

The Role of ODF in the Era of Digital Identity and Authentication

Digital identity has become an integral part of everyday life. We use it to access work tools and sign documents…