LibreOffice Conference 2017 in Rome – video wrap-up

This year’s LibreOffice Conference, held from 11 – 13 October, was a great success with over 200 attendees from around the world. Thanks to everyone who took part, and the hard-working organisers! Check out our short video wrap-up of the event:

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With the conference finished, the community is now focused on LibreOffice 6.0, due for release in late January 2018. See the release notes for a list of new features and changes added so far, and join our upcoming Bug Hunting Sessions to help make it a really polished and robust release – stay tuned to this blog for details!

Coming up on Friday: first Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 6.0 Alpha 1

The LibreOffice community has returned from a great conference in Rome (more on that later this week), and we’re now working eagerly on LibreOffice 6.0, which is due to be released at the end of January 2018. This version will include a large number of new features – and those already implemented are summarised on the release notes page.

In order to find, report and triage bugs, the LibreOffice QA team is organizing the first Bug Hunting Session on Friday October 20, 2017. Tests will be performed on the first Alpha version of LibreOffice 6.0, which will be available on the pre-releases server a few days before the event. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), macOS and Windows, and will run in parallel with the production version.

Mentors will be available from 08:00 UTC to 22:00 UTC. Of course, hunting bugs will be possible also on other days, as the builds of this particular Alpha release (LibreOffice 6.0.0 Alpha 1) will be available until mid November.

During the day there will be two dedicated sessions: the first to chase bugs on the main LibreOffice modules between 15:00 UTC and 17:00 UTC, and the second to test a set of the top 5 features between 17:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC. All details of the second bug hunting session are available on the wiki.

During the dedicated sessions, we will concentrate our efforts to chase and reproduce bugs, in order to confirm and file them in a more comprehensive way. Of course, the more comprehensive the bug report, the easier it will be for developers to solve the bugs in time for the final release. Thanks in advance for your help, and we look forward to your input!

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.4.2

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).

Download LibreOffice

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.

LibreOffice community celebrates 7th anniversary

Results of survey amongst desktop users confirm project’s momentum

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.

Results of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Default Desktop Applications Survey

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).

Download LibreOffice

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).

The Document Foundation welcomes Kopano to the project’s Advisory Board

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