Recent Posts

LibreOffice Podcast, Episode #6 – Language support

The Future of Open Standards and the Importance of ODF

Updated Conflict of Interest Policy for TDF’s Board of Directors

LibreOffice project and community recap: December 2025

The importance of ODF during the festive season

LibreOffice Viewer now available on Meta Quest VR headsets

LibreOffice contributor interview: Franklin Weng

It’s been over a month since our last contributor interview, as we’ve been busy with the release of LibreOffice 5.2, but now we’re back – and this time we’re talking to Franklin Weng, who is active within the marketing and migration teams.

Franklin Weng, LibreOffice contributor

What is your IRC nickname / nationality / location / family status?

  • Nickname (not only on IRC): Franklin / Goodhorse
  • Nationality: Taiwan (ROC)
  • Location: Taiwan
  • Family details: Married and have have two sons

Do you work for a LibreOffice-related company or just contribute in your spare time?

Two years ago I contributed in my spare time. Now I own a company providing consultancy, training and solutions with free and open source software (FOSS).

How did you get involved with LibreOffice?

Daily use of the software, and I had contributed some translations for the application and wiki as well. Then get I got more deeply involved when the government of Yi-Lan county and our National Development Council decided to migrate to the Open Document Format and LibreOffice starting in 2015.

What areas of the project do you normally work on?

Promotion, migration and training. I also cooperate with the localization (L10N) community in Taiwan.

What was your initial experience of contributing to LibreOffice like?

Well, I’ve been involved in free and open source software for more than 20 years, so it’s quite normal to me 🙂 Still, I’m quite happy to see the migration to LibreOffice in Yi-Lan succeed, and some departments in our central government and several county or city governments starting to go with us too.

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

I edit plain text and write code with Vim (no, I don’t use an IDE). The reason? It should be because I’ve been been in love with Vim for more than 20 years. For office text files, LibreOffice Writer is my first choice of course. Sometimes I use LyX or LaTeX too.

What do you do when you’re not working on LibreOffice? Any other hobbies you have?

I work on other open source projects. Okay, and I also spend quite some time with my family and my boys. And I like baseball too.

Thanks Franklin! Your efforts are very much appreciated. And to other potential contributors reading this: there are many ways to get involved with LibreOffice, from documentation and programming to translations and marketing. Join our community, gain valuable experience, and help to spread FOSS and open standards!

The Document Foundation and the FSFE strengthen their relationship

logoBerlin, 17 August 2016 – The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE, https://fsfe.org) is joining the Advisory Board of The Document Foundation. At the same time, The Document Foundation is becoming an associated organisation of the FSFE (https://fsfe.org/associates/associates.en.html).

The Free Software Foundation Europe’s aim is to help people control technology instead of the other way around. However, this is a goal which no single organisation can achieve on its own. Associated organizations are entities that share the FSFE’s vision and support the foundation and Free Software in general by encouraging people to use and develop Free Software, by helping organisations understand how Free Software contributes to freedom, transparency and self-determination, and by removing barriers to Free Software adoption.

With this mutual expression of support, both organisations strengthen each other in their effort to keep the general public in the technological driver seat. While the FSFE embodies the principles of the community movement working in pro of the adoption of Free Software in companies, public administrations and for private citizens, The Document Foundation turns principles and ethics into actual products, putting a first class, full-featured, but completely free productivity suite in the hands of users.

fsfe-summit-logo“We are happy to welcome the Free Software Foundation Europe as a member of our Advisory Board. Together, we will be able to further develop the adoption of Free Software in Europe, amongst public administrations and enterprises”, said Eike Rathke, a Director of The Document Foundation and a long time Free Software advocate and hacker.

“We believe it is important to join forces with all the organisations active in Free Software around Europe,” said Matthias Kirschner, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe, “and work together to reach our common goals. With our associated organisations we want to show that we are a strong and cohesive movement, and we work to achieve common objectives. To do this, we exchange ideas, coordinate efforts, motivate each other, and find opportunities to work together on specific projects. This is the case with The Document Foundation, steward of one of the most successful Free Software projects: LibreOffice”.

Several members of The Document Foundation will join FSFE Summit 2016 in Berlin, from September 2 to September 4, to celebrate FSFE 15th anniversary (https://fsfe.org/community/events/2016/summit/frontpage.en.html).

Getting Started with LibreOffice 5.1, a new book from the community addresses the demand for updated documentation on the software

GS51-GettingStartedLOThe new manual supports the large number of organizations and individuals deploying LibreOffice “Still” 5.1 to get superior quality and stability

Berlin, August 16, 2016 – Volunteers active in LibreOffice Documentation Project within The Document Foundation announce the availability of the Getting Started Guide for LibreOffice 5.1. The book updates the traditional introductory text with the new features provided by the “still” version of the software, targeted to enterprise deployments and to individual users looking for superior quality and stability.

Updated by members of the community, the book is an effort to fill the gap in official documentation for LibreOffice. The Document Foundation is working hard to reduce the delay between the release of the software and its companion documentation, for a better user experience and a stronger competitive offering.

“Many communities consider the Getting Started Guide as a source for translation into their native language, to create localized textbooks for teaching LibreOffice in all environments, from academia to the enterprise,” says Olivier Hallot, documentation coordinator at TDF. “A timely release of these books will send a strong message about the commitment of the community for professional collaterals.”

“In addition to the free downloads of the book in PDF and ODT (editable) forms, users can buy printed copies,” says Jean Hollis Weber, volunteer writer, editor, and publisher of the official LibreOffice guides. “I’ve been working with a great group of other documentation volunteers, but we always need more people.”

To download or buy copies (from Friends of OpenDocument Inc., an Australia-based volunteer organization with members around the world, which supports the LibreOffice project), visit https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation.

Annual Report 2015

Annual_Report_2016-08-07-page001The Document Foundation (TDF) is proud to announce its 2015 Annual Report, which can be downloaded from the following link: http://tdf.io/report2015 (3.6 MB PDF). The version with HD images can be downloaded from http://tdf.io/report2015hq (22.1 MB PDF).

TDF Annual Report starts with a Review of 2015, with highlights about TDF and LibreOffice, and a summary of financials and budget.

Community, Projects & Events covers the LibreOffice Conference 2015 in Aahrus, Certification, Website and QA, Hackfests in Brussels, Gran Canaria, Cambridge, Hamburg, Terni and Madrid, Native-Language Projects, Infrastructure, Documentation, Marketing and Design.

Software, Development & Code reports about the activities of the Engineering Steering Committee, LibreOffice Development, Google Summer of Code, and the Document Liberation Project.

The last section focuses on People, starting with Top Contributors, followed by TDF Staff, the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee, the Board of Trustees, or the body of TDF Members, and the Advisory Board.

To allow the widest distribution of the document, this is released with a CC BY 3.0 DE License, unless otherwise noted, to TDF Members and free software advocates worldwide.

LibreOffice 5.2: A week in stats

One week ago we announced LibreOffice 5.2, a new major release with enterprise-level features and user interface improvements. So what has happened in the meantime?

Here’s a selection of statistics from the last seven days showing activity in and around the LibreOffice project:

  • 310,491 – downloads of LibreOffice 5.2

And note: those are just downloads from our servers and mirrors, and the number doesn’t include downloads from other sources (such as Linux distribution repositories).

  • 213,697 – unique visitors to our website

Here’s a breakdown of the visitors. Microsoft Windows is dominant in terms of operating systems, but GNU/Linux flavours make up a healthy chunk as well. On the browser side, Chrome and Firefox are up in front – and we even had a couple of visits from people using the Links text-mode browser!

 

  • 37,252 – views of our LibreOffice 5.2 New Features videos

As with the previous release, for LibreOffice 5.2 we created a playlist of short videos highlighting the new features and changes in this version. We’ve embedded them into the LibreOffice website, and have also added subtitles in Russian, Chinese (Taiwan), Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese thanks to translations from our worldwide community.

  • 24,936 – people reached by the announcement on Facebook

Social media is invaluable for spreading the word about LibreOffice, free software and open standards, and we had some good activity on Facebook. The announcement was liked by 640 people and shared 172 times, while over on Google+ the post had 115 likes and 25 shares.

Activity ramped up quickly on Twitter as well, with 229 retweets of our announcement and many more from subsequent tweets throughout the following days.

  • 632 – upvotes for links to the LibreOffice 5.2 announcement on Reddit

Many different subreddits such as /r/linux and /r/technology discussed the release. Comments and feedback are often very helpful to developers too. Speaking of Reddit, if you’re a regular visitor to that site, join /r/libreoffice to discuss new features and help other users!

Meanwhile, this Heise Online article (in German) received 181 comments. Other news outlets covering the release include PCWorld, InfoWorld and The Inquirer.

So, that’s just the first week since the release of LibreOffice 5.2. Keep an eye on this blog for more updates, especially as we head towards our yearly conference in September…

Press Releases

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.4

Berlin, 18 December 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.4, the fourth minor update to the free office suite developed by volunteers for…

Open Document Format

The Future of Open Standards and the Importance of ODF

Open standards don't make headlines. Instead, they work quietly behind the scenes to define how information is created, shared and…