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There is no digital sovereignty without ODF

Why a digital document is a piece of software, and what that means for your freedom

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 25.8.7

Projects selected for LibreOffice in the Google Summer of Code 2026

Twenty Years On, ODF Is Still the Only Open Standard for Office Documents, and the Only One Governments Can Trust

Tender to deprecate LibreOffice’s SVG filter in favour of SVGIO (#201705-02)

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks for companies or individuals to

deprecate the SVG filter used by LibreOffice in favor of SVGIO

to start work as soon as possible. TDF is looking for an individual or company to, as a turnkey project, implement the following:

  • Remove the old SVG import filter code (used for importing documents)
  • Switch all SVG handling to the SVGIO filter (used when inserting images into a file)
  • As a consequence, simplify the codebase and save around 2-3,000 lines of code

Required skills

  • Extensive knowledge of C++
  • Experience working on the LibreOffice source code
  • Knowledge of the SVG image format

We exclusively use free, libre and open source (FLOSS) software for development wherever possible, and the resulting work must be licensed under the Mozilla Public License v2.0.

Some further references on the discussion can be found at http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Two-svg-import-filters-tt4165248.html and http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Libreoffice-qa-minutes-of-ESC-call-tc4171063.html.

Other Skills

  • English (Conversationally fluent in order to coordinate and plan with members of TDF)

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.

The task offered is a project-based one-off, with no immediate plans to a mid- or long-term contractual relationship. It is offered on a freelance, project basis. Individuals and companies applying can be located anywhere in the world.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, your financial expectations (name the final price for the turnkey project), and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than June 2, 2017. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

Applicants who have not received feedback by July 3, 2017, should consider that their application, after careful review, was not accepted.

Video interview: Michael Meeks, LibreOffice developer

Michael Meeks is a veteran LibreOffice (and OpenOffice.org) developer. We talk to him about how the project has progressed over the years, and the technology behind LibreOffice Online, the cloud version of the suite.

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Tender to improve image handling in LibreOffice (#201705-01)

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks for companies or individuals to

improve and fix issues with image handling in LibreOffice

to start work as soon as possible. TDF is looking for an individual or company to, as a turnkey project, implement the following:

  • Use a robust and hard lifecycle mechanism (eg smart reference count) for every reference to an image
  • Propagate this lifecycle mechanism through filters and UNO APIs
  • Copy all (compressed) image streams out of document storages into an on-disk cache – to avoid data loss on file movement
  • Improve image detail reading and storage, to avoid reading a whole JPEG or PNG just to work out its pixel size and discard/swap-out the result
  • Reduce excessive swap-in and out thrash
  • ideally – but non-essentially cleanup the “graphics cache size” and manage caching of images in a more intelligent way

Required skills

  • Extensive knowledge of C++
  • Experience working on the LibreOffice source code

We exclusively use free, libre and open source (FLOSS) software for development wherever possible, and the resulting work must be licensed under the the Mozilla Public License v2.0.

Other Skills

  • English (Conversationally fluent in order to coordinate and plan with members of TDF)

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.

The task offered is a project-based one-off, with no immediate plans to a mid- or long-term contractual relationship. It is offered on a freelance, project basis. Individuals and companies applying can be located anywhere in the world.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, your financial expectations (name the final price for the turnkey project), and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than June 2, 2017. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

Applicants who have not received feedback by July 3, 2017 should consider that their application, after careful review, was not accepted.

The May 2017 Month of LibreOffice begins!

Yes, a new Month of LibreOffice begins today, crediting contributions all across the project. This time we’re giving away real printed stickers for your laptop, desktop PC or other kit! If you help the LibreOffice community in various ways, we’ll add your name to a wiki page and then, at the end of the month, you’ll be able to claim your sticker. It’ll look like this:

How to get a sticker

There are many ways you can help the LibreOffice project and claim a sticker:

  • Help to confirm bugs: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 5.3.2”. (Make sure you’re using the latest version of LibreOffice.)
  • Contribute code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started. Once you’ve submitted a patch, if it gets merged we’ll send you a sticker!
  • Translate the interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.
  • Write documentation: Another way to earn a badge is to help the LibreOffice documentation team. Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.
  • Answer questions from users: Over on Ask LibreOffice there are many users looking for help with the suite. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim a shiny sticker.
  • Spread the word: Tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim a sticker. (We have a maximum of 100 stickers for this category, in case the whole internet starts tweeting!)

So, good luck – we’ll be posting regular updates on this blog and our Twitter account. Get involved, help to make LibreOffice even better, and enjoy your awesome sticker as thanks!

Help keep the Calc guide up to date

The Documentation Team Meeting will

take place in May 10th at 17:00 CET

The Calc module of LibreOffice is one of its most complex and extensive applications and one of the most in-demand for documentation, as our measurements of the documentation website clearly show.

Documentation website daily visits over time, since January 1st, 2017.

The latest published Calc Guide is connected to LibreOffice release 4.1. The gap between this guide and the most recent Calc developments has widen and the current publication is outdated. (more…)

News about the migration to ODF in Taiwan

Plan of National Chi-Nan University to Stop Purchasing Microsoft Office from 2018 Raises Heated Discussions in Taiwan

April 23, 2017, Taiwan – The migration of ODF keeps going in many different fields in Taiwan. Since 2016 the Ministry of Education in Taiwan entrusts the Information Service Association of Chinese Colleges (ISAC) and Software Liberty Association Taiwan (SLAT) with the task of promoting and migrating ODF/LibreOffice in universities in Taiwan. Among all the university, National Chi-Nan University (NCNU) is the earliest one, which started migrating LibreOffice since 2014 and has been working on it for three years.

Then on April 20, 2017, a student from NCNU posted an article on Dcard forum saying that, according to her teacher, NCNU “Will not use Microsoft Office anymore due to the budget issue. LibreOffice will be used to replace Microsoft Office.” The student strongly questioned, “LibreOffice is totally unknown to everyone. I don’t know what the administrative staffs of our school are thinking about. Microsoft’s software is a very basic skill for enterprises to recruit people. This decision will make students lost their core competitiveness.”

This article raised heated discussion on the Internet. Some people questioned the NCNU about the usage of the budget, saying that such a big national university may never lack the budget to buy Microsoft licenses. Also, there were still a number of people questioning about the interoperability between LibreOffice and OOXML. However, more people disagreed with the student’s thoughts about “Microsoft equals core competitiveness.”

Ben Jai, a famous entrepreneur and public opinion leader in Taiwan, said on his Facebook page: “For a student, it should be more important to actively explore new things rather than waiting for someone to teach him. If he just waits for teachers to teach him how to use a tool and plans to use the tool all his life, he will be very easily eliminated.”

Matthew Lien – a.k.a. BlueT in open source communities in Taiwan – who was one of the main promoters of LibreOffice in NCNU, explained the policy on Facebook: “The budget is just one of the reasons but not all. The budget of schools should invest on students and education, but the Microsoft’s license fee is going higher and higher and starts to supplant budgets of other items. Therefore, we’ve worked on promoting ODF and LibreOffice for three years. It’s not an impulsive decision. BTW, we won’t forbid anyone to use Microsoft Office, just that NCNU won’t purchase Microsoft Office anymore.”

Another article on The Inside Media discussed this topic and gave a conclusion by asking this question: “Maybe Microsoft Office has been the basic skill of many enterprises. However, why our education only teaches our students a single tool, instead of training our students to learn and adopt new skills actively?”

Press Releases

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 25.8.7

Berlin, 12 May 2026 - The Document Foundation announces the release of LibreOffice 25.8.7, the final maintenance release of the…

Open Document Format

There is no digital sovereignty without ODF

Any other choice is a choice of dependence on a single vendor Digital sovereignty begins with the document format. Everything…