This year’s LibreOffice Conference, which is being held in Rome, has started. Over 160 people have registered, and the event begins with an overview of The Document Foundation, LibreOffice and our sponsors. If you’re attending the conference, we hope you have a great time! We’ll be posting regular updates on social media.
(Photo: Simon Phipps)
Berlin, October 5, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.4.2, the second minor release of the LibreOffice 5.4 family, which was originally announced in early August. LibreOffice 5.4.2 continues to represent the bleeding edge in terms of features, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts and early adopters.
TDF suggests that conservative users and enterprises deploy LibreOffice 5.3.6 with the backing of certified professionals (an updated list is available at: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).
LibreOffice 5.4.2 includes over 100 bug and regression fixes. Technical details about the release can be found in the change logs here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.2/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.2/RC2 (fixed in RC2).
LibreOffice 5.4.2 is immediately available for download from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/.
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/. Donations help TDF to maintain its infrastructure, share knowledge, and organise events such as the LibreOffice Conference, which is taking place next week in Rome (https://conference.libreoffice.org).
Several companies sitting on TDF’s Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) provide 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.
Berlin, September 28, 2017 – Today, the LibreOffice community celebrates the 7th anniversary of the leading free office suite, adopted by millions of users in every continent. Since 2010, there have been 14 major releases and dozens of minor ones, fulfilling the personal productivity needs of both individuals and enterprises, on Linux, macOS and Windows.
LibreOffice deployments are supported by certified developers and professionals (list available at: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). Many are employed by companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/), who provide either value-added Long Term Supported versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for development, migrations and training.
LibreOffice is available in over 100 native languages, and as such is contributing to the preservation of native cultural heritages, as in the case – for instance – of the Guarani language in South America, and the Venitian language in Northern Italy. All localizations are managed by local volunteers.
LibreOffice is also a reference implementation of the Open Document Format (ODF) ISO standard for office documents, which today represents the only choice in the market for true interoperability.
LibreOffice’s leadership amongst office suites has been recently confirmed by the survey of Ubuntu users for desktop productivity software, with 85.52% of the votes. The closest competitors were Google Docs with 4.29%, WPS Office with 3.22% and Apache OpenOffice with 1.96%.
The Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Default Desktop Applications Survey produced over 15,000 responses in total, with over 6,400 for the office suite category. LibreOffice received the largest margin of preference of the entire survey. Results are available here: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2017/09/results-of-ubuntu-desktop-applications.html (video and slides).
Current versions of LibreOffice are available for download from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/.
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/. Donations help TDF to maintain its infrastructure, share knowledge, and organise events such as the LibreOffice Conference, with the next one taking place in October in Rome (https://conference.libreoffice.org).
Berlin, September 26, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announced today that Kopano, the leading European provider of open source groupware and collaboration software, has joined the project’s Advisory Board. Kopano wants to contribute to the project in areas of its expertise, for example in user experience.
Kopano is a continuation of Zarafa. It offers a platform for communication, content sharing and self-organization, is entirely modular, and provides third party software vendors with simple integration options (e.g. via widgets).
Most features and integrations are available via a browser, thanks to Kopano WebApp, while smartphones, tablets and Outlook can be connected through Z-Push – the open source implementation of the Exchange ActiveSync Protocol (EAS). Kopano’s desktop client DeskApp is available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Solutions like Kopano, combined with LibreOffice, help users to free themselves from the dependency of Microsoft and other cloud software, and enable companies to retain freedom and ownership of their data and software stack.
“Kopano is a welcome addition to the LibreOffice community, as they are extending the reach of LibreOffice in self-hosted Enterprise-environments by integrating LibreOffice Online with their collaboration solution. By becoming a member of the project’s Advisory Board, Kopano will provide experiences and insights necessary to improve the presence of LibreOffice Online”, says Simon Phipps, TDF Board Member.
“With our collaboration-products for messaging, ChatOps, Video Meetings, e-mail and groupware we offer the benefits of cloud-software in a self-hosted open source-stack. A powerful LibreOffice Online is the missing puzzle-piece for Enterprise-customers to keep their whole stack of modern collaboration under their own control”, says Brian Joseph, CEO of Kopano.
TDF Advisory Board’s (AB) primary function is to represent sponsors of the project, and to provide the Board of Directors (BoD) with advice, guidance and proposals. In addition, the AB is at the kernel of the LibreOffice ecosystem, and as such is key to the further development of the project.
About Kopano
Kopano is a leading European provider of open source groupware and collaboration software serving thousands of customers ranging from European governments to larger organizations. As a continuation of Zarafa, Kopano puts messaging, collaborative editing, video meetings, email and calendaring in one single interface. Website: https://kopano.com
Thursday, 28th September 2017 will be a special day – not only is it the seventh birthday of The Document Foundation, but we will also be running an “Ask me (us) Anything” session on Reddit – specifically, the /r/linux subreddit.
Team and board members from The Document Foundation will be on hand to answer questions and point people in the right directions. The AmA will run from 12:00 UTC, and we’ll be around for several hours to answer questions. (And indeed we’ll check the post the following day for any extra questions).
We look forward to taking part and talking to everyone!
Yesterday, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced that the opportunity to apply for LibreOffice certification for migrations and training is now available to FSF Associate Members. In 2015, TDF began offering LibreOffice certification to certify “individuals actively promoting LibreOffice deployments, thanks to their competence in specific areas” including development and L3 support, migrations to LibreOffice, and LibreOffice training. In 2017, TDF Certification Committee decided to open the certification process to members of other FLOSS projects, starting from those sitting in TDF Advisory Board.
People certified in LibreOffice migrations and training are able to help companies and government offices make the switch away from proprietary office suites, and that raises the value of a deep understanding of LibreOffice. Italo Vignoli, Chair of the LibreOffice Certification Committee, said: “By extending LibreOffice certification to FSF members, we are widening the reach of our program to foster migrations to LibreOffice. In several geographies, the availability of certified professionals has triggered a number of large deployments in public administrations and enterprises.”
