International Day against DRM

253651703_5d9f260d28_oToday, May 3, is the International Day against DRM (Digital Restrictions Management).

Digital Restrictions Management is the practice of imposing technological restrictions that control what users can do with digital media. When a program is designed to prevent you from copying or sharing a song, reading an ebook on another device, or playing a single-player game without an Internet connection, you are being restricted by DRM.

In other words, DRM creates a damaged good. It prevents you from doing what would be possible without it. This concentrates control over production and distribution of media, giving DRM peddlers the power to carry out massive digital book burnings and conduct large scale surveillance over people’s media viewing habits.

If we want to avoid a future in which our devices serve as an apparatus to monitor and control our interaction with digital media, we must fight to retain control of our media and software.

The Month of LibreOffice starts here!

Every contribution to the LibreOffice project – whether it’s a large code patch or just a small bug report – makes the software better for everyone. Over the last few years we’ve had many thousands of contributions from all around the world, and in May 2016 we really want to highlight all the effort goes in to LibreOffice. So we’re running a new campaign to credit everyone who contributes to the project!

Barnstars

If you’re involved with LibreOffice development, design, documentation, translation or QA, and want to show your appreciation for someone’s efforts, award them a barnstar on our special wiki page. This is a bronze, silver or gold icon that shows your thanks for that person’s help or contribution, like so:

To award a barnstar, all you have to do is visit the wiki, log in, and copy and paste the template. Fill in the details for the person you want to credit and show your appreciation!

Badges

Meanwhile, LibreOffice contributors can earn badges throughout May by doing various jobs. These include: confirming a bug report, having a code patch committed to the LibreOffice source tree, translating a string in the interface, helping users, and more. They look like this:

Every time a contributor completes one of these jobs, we will add them to the list of badges on our wiki. Everyone who earns a badge can proudly show it off on their blog or social media accounts! At the end of the campaign we’ll make a high-score list for the contributors who earned the most badges.

How do I get a badge?

There are six badges covering many aspects of LibreOffice:

  • 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 5.1.2”. 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 award you a badge!
  • 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’ll get a shiny badge to add to your collection.
  • 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 we’ll award you with a badge.

Can you get all six badges? Good luck!

So let’s go

The campaigns run until the end of the month, so you have around four weeks to award barnstars (or earn them!) and pick up badges for your contributions. We’ll be posting regular updates on our Twitter account, and of course keep an eye on the wiki pages to see the progress. It’s going to be awesome!

LibreOffice Conference Registration is now open

noun_245010In 2016, the LibreOffice Conference will be hosted by the Faculty of Information Technology at Brno University of Technology, and organized by OpenAlt, from September 6 (community day, with meetings to discuss topics relevant to native language communities around the world) to September 9. 

In order to be able to plan for the event in the best way, and organize for logistics, food and t-shirts, we need to know how many people will be attending the conference on each day. Please register for the conference as soon as possible, by filling in the requested information on the form available on the website. Registration will be open until the end of August, but late comers will probably not be able to get the conference t-shirt.

Data will only be used for the conference registration, and will not be handled to 3rd parties.

If you have any questions about registration or problems filling out the form, please contact us at: conference@libreoffice.org

LibreOffice Conference 2017 Call for Locations

noun_245010The Call for Location for the 2017 Conference opens on May 1st, and will close on July 31, 2016. All details are available on the following wiki page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Events/2017/LibreOffice_Annual_Conference/Call_for_Location.

As for the past editions of the event, the idea is to get proposals in advance in order to have 2017 location set before 2016 Brno conference, to give the opportunity to the 2017 event organizers to attend 2016 conference to get familiar with all the details: location, schedule, collateral events, etc. Traditionally, the LibreOffice Conference takes place between September and November, with a preferred date of October.

Organizing the LibreOffice Conference is a time-consuming task, where several team members are needed. Shortly before the Conference, it tends to be a full-time job, so organizers should be able to invest the necessary amount of time. Also, dealing with finances and sponsors is one of the main responsibilities of the organizers, so they must be sure to collect enough funding before the Conference, and only spend the money that they have.

In the past, we have been receiving applications from several third parties, including casinos or professional event managers. Keep in mind that the LibreOffice Conference is a community event, by the community for the community. While we appreciate people with professional event management skills, proposals not supported and driven by community members (not only TDF members) will not be considered.

The proposal should cover the following topics (all details are on the wiki page): team, organizing entity, main venue, accommodation, reason why (you want to organize the LibreOffice Conference), and other relevant details that can support the application (such as collateral events). The proposal – in English – should be sent as plain text or HTML e-mail, or as Open Document File (ODT) to info@documentfoundation.org.

Coming up: the Month of LibreOffice

Month of LibreOffice header

There’s so much fantastic work going on in LibreOffice at the moment, in all areas of the project: development, translations, bug fixing, documentation, user support and much more. The community is doing stellar work to make the software better, faster, more reliable, easier to use, and available for everyone.

In May, we want to really highlight the efforts of everyone involved, so we’re going to run a special campaign: the Month of LibreOffice. This campaign will give contributors the opportunity to thank members of the community for their work, by awarding them barnstars like so:

Month of LibreOffice barnstar

But that’s just the start of it! We’ll also be awarding badges for contributions to LibreOffice. Every time someone has their code merged, confirms a bug, submits documentation updates, helps users on Ask LibreOffice or just spreads the good word on Twitter, we’ll award them a badge:

Month of LibreOffice badges

There are multiple badges to collect, and at the end of the campaign we’ll see who got the most. Maybe you can get them all!

The Month of LibreOffice will kick off on Monday 2nd May, so stay tuned to this blog for the full announcement and information on how to get involved…

LibreOffice Brno Conference Call for Paper

noun_245010The Document Foundation invites members and volunteers to submit proposals for papers. Whether you are a seasoned presenter or have never stood up in public before, if you have something interesting to share about LibreOffice, we want to hear from you!

Proposals should be filed by July 15th, 2016 in order to guarantee that they will be considered for inclusion in the conference program.

The conference program will be based on the following tracks:

a) Development, APIs, Extensions, Future Technology
b) Quality Assurance
c) Localization, Documentation and Native Language Projects
d) Appealing Libreoffice: Ease of Use, Design and Accessibility
e) Open Document Format, Document Liberation and Interoperability
f) Advocating LibreOffice

Business track:
– Enterprise Deployments and Migrations, Certifications and Best Practices, Building a successful business around LibreOffice
– Round table with company representatives
– Small local businesses, governments and non profit, to be conducted in Czech language

Presentations, case studies, workshops, and technical talks will discuss a subject in depth, and will last 30 minutes (including Q&A). Lightning talks will cover a specific topic and will last 20 minutes (including Q&A). Sessions will be streamed live and recorded for download.

Please send a short description/bio of yourself as well as your talk/workshop proposal to the program committee address: conference@libreoffice.org

If you do not agree to provide the data for the talk under the “Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License”, please explicitly state your terms. In order to make your presentation available on TDF YouTube channel, please do not submit talks containing copyrighted material (music, pictures, etc.).

If you want to give multiple talks, please send a separate email for each.