Video interview: Xisco Fauli, QA engineer for LibreOffice

Xisco Fauli works for The Document Foundation as a quality assurance engineer, helping the QA community handle bug reports, triaging and bibisecting. We talked to him about projects he’s working on, and how everyone can get involved:

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The Document Foundation releases LibreOffice 5.3.2

Berlin, April 6, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) releases LibreOffice 5.3.2, the 2nd minor release of the LibreOffice 5.3 family, focused on bleeding edge features, and as such targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters, and power users. LibreOffice 5.3.2 integrates over 50 patches, with a large number of fixes related to RTF and DOCX documents.

For all other users and enterprise deployments, TDF suggests LibreOffice 5.2.6, with the backing of professional support by certified professionals (updated list available at http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change log with a detailed list of all patches here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.3.2/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.3.2/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.3.2 is immediately available for download from the following link: https://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.

Visit of the Univention Summit 2017

The Document Foundation has enabled us to visit the Univention Summit in Bremen, so here is our report

Univention’s primary product is the Univention Corporate Server  (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univention_Corporate_Server#App_Center). UCS combines various free software applications into a comprehensive server platform based on Debian GNU/Linux.

The goal of the summit was networking in the field of open source software and, of course, to popularize UCS. This package is used by companies, administrations, and schools – and we (coming from the south of Germany) noticed that the new version of the paedML, the educational sample solution at the schools of Baden-Württemberg, runs on the basis of UCS. Accordingly, pedagogy was a focus of this meeting, in addition to a technology track and a series of app programming. There were also lectures on this central question: how should school IT structure look now and in the future? Several members of the host company and media representatives from schools, municipalities and federal states, including the Senator for Children and Education in Bremen, who played a major role at the beginning of the development of UCS between 2002 and 2004, spoke about this question.

LibreOffice played a role in many lectures and discussions – because it is open and free, but also because the resistances are often (still) great. The entire program and the presentations can be found at https://www.univention-summit.de/programm/ or via http://en.slideshare.net/Univention. There were more than the originally announced 250 visitors present, and this high number (in addition to the plans of the federal government for a €5 billion nationwide support program for IT in schools) shows the importance of this conference.

Besuch des Univention-Summits 2017

Die TDF hat uns den Besuch des Univention-Summit in Bremen ermöglicht, deshalb hier unser Bericht

Das Hauptprodukt von Univention ist der Univention Corporate Server (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univention_Corporate_Server#App_Center). UCS vereint verschiedene freie Softwarepakete in einem umfassenden Server-Betriebssystem auf Basis von Debian GNU/Linux.

Ziel des Summits war das Netzwerken im Bereich der Open Software und natürlich die Bekanntmachung von UCS. Dieses Paket wird von Unternehmen, Verwaltungen und Schulen eingesetzt – besonders fiel uns auf, dass die neue Version der paedML, der pädagogischen Musterlösung an den Schulen Baden-Württembergs, auf der Basis von UCS läuft. Entsprechend war ein Schwerpunkt dieser Tagung (neben einem Technik-Track und einer Reihe über App-Programmierung) ein Pädagogik-Track mit Vorträgen z.B. der Senatorin für Kinder und Bildung in Bremen, deren Amt schon am Beginn der Entwicklung von UCS zwischen 2002 und 2004 eine wichtige Rolle spielte. Zentrale Frage: Wie muss die schulische IT-Struktur jetzt und in Zukunft aussehen? Zu dieser Frage äußerten sich einige Mitglieder der gastgebenden Firma und Medienbeauftragte von Schulen, Kommunen und Bundesländern.

LibreOffice spielte in vielen Vorträgen und Diskussionsbeiträgen eine Rolle – weil es offen und gratis ist, aber auch, weil oft die Widerstände dagegen (noch) groß sind. Das gesamte Programm und die Vorträge finden sich unter https://www.univention-summit.de/programm/ oder alternativ über http://de.slideshare.net/Univention. Es waren mehr als die angekündigten 250 Besucher anwesend und diese hohe Zahl zeigt (neben den Plänen der Bundesregierung für ein 5 Milliarden schweres bundesweites Unterstützungsprogramm für die IT an Schulen) die Bedeutung dieser Tagung.

Ellen und Walter Pape

Celebrating Document Freedom Day 2017

Document Freedom Day 2017

Open standards, especially open document formats, are essential tools for bridging digital divides and giving content creators control over their work. We would like to see governments, organisations and companies around the world switch to fully open and standardised file formats, freeing them from vendor lock-in and improving compatibility across multiple platforms and operating systems.

So, today we celebrate Document Freedom Day, an international day for spreading awareness about open standards and open document formats. You can help to spread the word by getting involved, using social media, and talking to public bodies about how the benefits of open standards. You can even help to prepare next year’s Document Freedom Day by organising events and giving presentations! See this page on the site for full details.

Video interview: Heiko Tietze, LibreOffice UX mentor

At FOSDEM this year, we made video interviews with members of the LibreOffice community and staff at The Document Foundation. We’ll be editing and uploading them regularly to the blog, so stay tuned! We start with Heiko Tietze, who is The Document Foundation’s UX (user experience) mentor and works with the design community:

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LibreOffice Conference 2018: Call for location

LibreOffice Conference 2016

We’re currently organising the LibreOffice Conference 2017, which will be held in Rome from September 27 – 29. But we like to plan even further ahead, so today we’re putting out a Call for Location for 2018’s conference.

Why are we doing this so early? Well, we want to give the 2018 conference organiser a chance to attend this year’s conference to see how it works. So if you’re a member of the LibreOffice community and are interested in organising 2018’s conference in your town or city, you can write up a proposal. All the details are on the wiki, including what you need to know in advance, and what your proposal should contain.

The deadline for proposals is June 30 2017. We’ve already had great conferences in Paris, Berlin, Milan, Bern, Aarhus and Brno – and we look forward to hearing your ideas!