LibreOffice and Google Summer of Code 2017 – get involved!

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a yearly programme in which Google funds university students to work on free and open source software projects. LibreOffice has benefited from this – last year 11 students were accepted into GSoC to do various programming jobs, helping to improve the software.

GSoC students are assisted by experienced “mentors” in the LibreOffice community, as 2016 student Jaskaran Veer Singh explains:

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For 2017, LibreOffice is once again an organisation in the GSoC programme, so if you’re a university student and want to get experience working on a well-known free software project, while also being paid for your efforts, get involved! But don’t delay: the application period runs from March 20 to April 3, so it’s not far off.

To get started, check out some ideas for projects you can work on. Each project describes what’s involved, the skills required, and the mentor you can contact to get help. If you see something you’d like to work on, contact the mentor as soon as possible! Then you can discuss how to proceed.

After that, read the general GSoC 2017 page on our wiki, which provides more information on the GSoC programme and tells you how to apply. You will have to complete an Easy Hack (simple programming challenge) to be accepted, which demonstrates that you’re comfortable modifying the LibreOffice source code, building it, and submitting a patch.

So, check out the ideas, talk to the mentors, and good luck with your projects!

Job Search for a Development Mentor

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks an individual – or individuals part (or full) time – to be:

a Development Mentor

to start work as soon as possible. The role requires the following:

  • Self-starting, remote working experience
  • Experience contributing to FLOSS communities
  • C++ or LibreOffice coding experience
  • Excellent communication skills

The role is a for a minimum of 10 hours per week, and includes amongst other items:

Supporting existing mentors in the LibreOffice community including:

  • Building relationships between existing mentors and new contributors
  • Identifying and onboarding new contributors
    1. Affirming and encouraging their contribution
    2. Building initial relationships with them
    3. Encouraging them to join IRC to meet the team
    4. Introducing them to domain experts for deeper learning
  • Helping to educate new contributors by
    1. Positively reviewing their code contributions
    2. Introducing them to our tooling & culture
  • Attracting new contributors by promoting the project

Previous experience with such tasks is highly welcome, so is using free software. Speaking and writing English reasonably well is a mandatory requirement.

The work time during the day is flexible, apart from some fixed times when availability is required (e.g. during meetings, which usually take place at 14:00 or 15:00 UTC once per week).

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, including curriculum vitae, your financial expectations, and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than April 11, 2017. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

If you haven’t received feedback by May 16, 2017, your application could not be considered.

Announcement of LibreOffice 5.2.6

Berlin, March 9, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.2.6, the sixth minor release of the LibreOffice 5.2 family, targeted to enterprises and individual users in production environments.

TDF suggests to deploy LibreOffice in large organisations, public administrations and enterprises with the backing of professional support by certified people (a list is available at:
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change log here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.2.6/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.2.6/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.2.6 is immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Several companies sitting in TDF Advisory Board (http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) are providing 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.

International Women’s Day: #BeBoldForChange

March 8 is the International Women’s Day. The theme for 2017 is #BeBoldForChange.

Amongst the members of The Document Foundation there are only 19 women (10% of the total number): Belinda Dibra (Albania), Christina Roßmanith (Germany), Chrystina Pelizer (Brasil), Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Brasil), Ellen Pape (Germany), Emma Pietrafesa (Italy), GĂŒlßah Köse (Turkey), Irmhild Rogalla (Germany), Jean Hollis Weber (Australia), Jona Azizaj (Albania), Katarina Behrens (Czech Republic,), Marina Latini (Italy), Priyanka Gaikwad (India), Regina Henschel (Germany), Rosemary Sebastian (India), Sigrid Carrera (Germany), Sonia Montegiove (Italy), Sophie Gautier (France) and Vinaya Mandke (India).

Marina Latini is the current ChairWoman of the Board of Directors, while Katharina Behrens is a member of the Membership Committee.

Women active in the LibreOffice and Document Liberation communities are definitely more than 19. They should apply for membership, not only to be recognized for their contributions but also to elect and be elected to the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee. They can find the application form on the website: http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/members/application/.

Announcing the Getting Started with LibreOffice 5.2 Guide for Immediate Download

Berlin, March 6, 2017 – The Document Foundation’s Documentation Team announces the immediate availability of the new Getting Started with LibreOffice guide version 5.2. The guide was updated to include the developments of LibreOffice 5.2 and previous releases.

The Getting Started guide is an introductory text for end users on using the LibreOffice office suite. It is written for individuals as well as organizations that deploy LibreOffice as their preferred office suite tool. The text allows users to get familiar with the features and resources of LibreOffice and shorten the time to become productive in office document edition.

The guide is written in LibreOffice Writer in Open Document Format (ODF). The team worked to not only update the contents but also to clean the formatting used in the text with a double objective: One is to make the text suitable for computer aided translation (CAT) tools and the other is to generate an online version (XHTML) of the guide.

The documents composing the Guide were formatted using styles only, avoiding direct formatting that has impact on CAT tools and on HTML export. For HTML export, the underneath template of the documents was adapted to handle the unmatched formatting properties between ODT and XHTML. At the end, a unique content source was able to produce the guide in ODT, PDF and XHTML formats.

The Getting Started with LibreOffice guide, its PDF and ODT version can be downloaded or read online by navigating to the page http://documentation.libreoffice.org. The online version of the guide can be accessed through http://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/getting-started-guide/read-online-5-2/

About the Documentation team

The Documentation team is in charge to develop, modernize, update and enhance all form of documentation related to LibreOffice in all languages supported by LibreOffice. It includes the authoring of LibreOffice guides for all modules, the Help system modernization and contents update, and to offer ways and means for the community to contribute to the LibreOffice project. Communities interested in contributing or translating contents can get it touch with the team by sending an e-mail to documentation at libreoffice dot org

February 2017: a record month for donations

February 2017 has been a record month for donations to The Document Foundation, with 8,556 people supporting the project from every geography. The record has been sparked by the announcement of LibreOffice 5.3 at the very end of January 2017. The new release has been covered in online and print media with an unprecedented number of articles, which have focused on the exciting new features.