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LibreOffice 5.0.1 released, to keep the momentum going

libreofficsplashBerlin, August 27, 2015 – The Document Foundation (TDF) releases LibreOffice 5.0.1, the first minor release of the LibreOffice 5.0 family, with a number of fixes over the major release announced on August 5. So far, LibreOffice 5.0 is the most popular LibreOffice ever, based on the feedback from the marketplace.

LibreOffice 5.0.1 is targeted to technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users. For more conservative users, and for enterprise deployments, TDF suggests the “still” version: LibreOffice 4.4.5. For enterprise deployments, The Document Foundation suggests the backing of professional support by certified people (a list is available at: http://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change log here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.0.1/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.0.1/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Register for the LibreOffice Conference

Registration for LibreOffice Conference 2015, which will be hosted by the Danish city of Aarhus from September 23 to September 25, is open at the following page: http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/registration/.

The LibreOffice community is growing, and the conference is the best opportunity to join the fun by meeting a large group of the people that have contributed to the project: developers, and volunteers who have localized the suite, chased the bugs, written the manuals, spoken at conferences, and advocated LibreOffice at global and local levels.

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.0.1 is immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Behind the scenes at TDF: Marketing and Communications

Italo VignoliThe months between April and the first half of August have been rather busy, as I have been working – together with the other members of TDF staff and several volunteers – at different projects: the first TDF Annual Report, the final development stage of LibreOffice 5.0, including two bug hunting sessions, the announcement of the publication of ODF 1.2 by ISO, and the launch of LibreOffice 5.0. In addition, I have worked at smaller tasks such a announcements of minor releases.

The bigger task, as everyone can imagine, has been the launch of LibreOffice 5.0, as we wanted to make a real impact with this new major release.

First of all, I started to update the mailing lists for the distribution of press releases, which are a fundamental tool for the success of the launch. Since January, TDF is using a dedicated open source tool – phpList – which is saving a lot of work, especially when keeping mailing lists updated. In fact, phpList keeps track of all bounces, which are stored in each record, making it easier to spot old or wrong email addresses.

Journalists move around quite frequently, and only a small percentage remembers to update their record. For all the others, you have to chase them using a combination of search engines and other tools such as LinkedIn and About.Me. It is a rather tedious activity, but is key to ensure the success of each press release.

Since TDF has a combined mailing list of over 13,000 journalists worldwide, I have had to review and update around 10% – or over 1,000 email addresses – between May and July. To avoid being burned by this task, I have done a few each evening, while watching TV.

In early July, I have started to work at the launch documents, by looking at new features and trying to identify those which were more important. I have also set the announcement date at August 5. In addition, together with Jan Holesovsky and Charles Schulz, and the graphic designer Barak Paz, we have worked at a new identity for LibreOffice 5.0, with a new splash screen and a new start center.

In mid July, I have started to “leak” some news to a selected number of journalists, to start getting coverage on the upcoming major release. I have sent short messages to all the editors who clicked on our previous announcements, showing some interest on our press releases. I have also invited these editors to pre-release conference calls on August 3, or to 1to1 interviews on August 3 or August 4.

In late July, I distributed the final draft of the press pack, which was based on a press release, a feature backgrounder, and a “road to LibreOffice 5.0” document highlighting the major features of all the previous LibreOffice releases since January 2011. I also developed a timeline infographics, to explain the three stages of LibreOffice development: 3.x for code cleaning, 4.x for code refactoring, and 5.x for UI and feature innovations. This document was published on TDF blog as a teaser release on July 29.

I also prepared a short slide show to introduce LibreOffice 5.0 to journalists, with some visuals which were supposed to be used also to embellish the articles.

On August 3, I hosted pre-announcement conference calls for journalists based in Europe and in the US, for a total of 8 journalists (Extension Media, Genbeta, Golem, IDG News, ITWeb, PC World, The Inquirer and V3). I also sent the Press Kit under embargo to Betanews, ECT News, Liliputing, IT World and Network World.

On August 4, together with Michael Meeks, I hosted the pre-announcement 1to1 interview with InfoWorld. In addition, I have provided some quick answers to questions raised by journalists who received the press kit.

On August 5, I published the announcement message and the blog post, and distributed the press release to over 4,000 journalists worldwide. Over 30% viewed the announcement and clicked on the link, and half of them – around 600 journalists – published an article. As a consequence, we had a spike of visits to the blog and a spike of donations (which are proportional to downloads). All in all, a very successful announcement, thanks to the work of our developer community who has been able to put together a fantastic product, and of the other volunteers who have contributed with ideas and comments to make LibreOffice 5.0 stand out from the office suite crowd.

LibreOffice Conference 2015 will open in a month

03b_schmidt hammer lassen architects_small 03c_schmidt hammer lassen architects-smallBerlin, August 24, 2015 – LibreOffice Conference 2015 will open in a month from now, on September 23, at the Dokk1 in Aarhus, Denmark. The Dokk1 is the brand new Mediaspace of the city, featuring the Main Library and Citizens’ Services

LibreOffice Conference 2015 will be hosted in the Auditorium and in the Meeting Area of the beautiful building, designed by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and part of the conversion of Aarhus inner harbour to city space.

Pictures by Adam Mørk, courtesy of the City of Aarhus.

Registration is open at http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/registration/, while the program will be announced in late August.

The conference will be hosted by the City of Aarhus, and will be jointly organized by the Danish LibreOffice community together with local F/OSS groups and the Aarhus municipality. Logistics are managed by the not-for-profit organisation “Foreningen Dansk LibreOffice Konference 2015”.

LibreOffice Conference 2015 will be sponsored by:

Main: Canonical, CIB, Collabora.
Large: Google, Magenta, Prosa.
Medium: RedHat.

Local Contacts:
Carsten Agger (Open Space Aarhus)
Line Dybdahl (Aarhus Municipality)
Leif Lodahl (LibreOffice Denmark)
René Lagoni Neukirch (LibreOffice Denmark)

Email: conference@libreoffice.org
IRC: @libocon on FreeNode
hashtag: #libocon

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice in Guarani, to offer the free office suite in yet another native language

Berlin, August 19, 2015 – Following the announcement of LibreOffice 5.0, The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the availability of LibreOffice in Guarani, the language spoken by 80% of the population in Paraguay, and the official second language of the country.

Map-Most_Widely_Spoken_Native_Languages_in_Latin_America
Guarani is spoken in the area in yellow

Guarani is spoken in parts of northeastern Argentina (Corrientes, Formosa,Misiones, eastern parts of the Province of Chaco, and at isolated points of Entre Rios), is the second official language of the Argentine province of Corrientes since 2004, is the co-official language of Bolivia, and is spoken in several cities of the eastern state of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil. Guarani is also one of the official languages of Mercosur (source: Wikipedia).

LibreOffice in Guarani has been be presented on August 13 at OEI (Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos) facilities in Asunción, Paraguay, to a selected audience. TDF and LibreOffice have also been presented in the Centro Nacional de Computación of UNA (Universidad Nacional de Asunción) in San Lorenzo Campus.

The localization to Guarani was carried by a single volunteer: Giovanni Caligaris. LibreOffice in Guarani is immediately available for download from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

“Back in 2011, I started discussing with the CIO of a Paraguayan corporation at the LibreOffice Conference in Paris, and we envisioned how to get the office suite in Guarani”, said Olivier Hallot, a founding member of TDF, and a LibreOffice advocate. “Unfortunately, the project stalled, until Giovanni Caligaris picked up the task, and managed to localize LibreOffice in Guarani in a rather short timeframe”.

“With the availability of LibreOffice in Guarani, Paraguay positions itself at the same level of more developed countries, and represents an incentive for countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia to conduct a localization project for their native languages”, said Giovanni Caligaris. “The next task is to increase the LibreOffice awareness in Paraguay, with the help of the LibreOffice community”.

With the addition of Guarani, LibreOffice gets closer to the vision of the founding members of the project, to bring the free office suite in their native language to 100% of the world population, to reduce the digital divide based on the familiarity with one of the languages spoken in the richest countries. Today, close to 90% of the world population can use LibreOffice in their native language.

LibreOffice 5.0, one week later

LibreOffice 5.0 has been announced on August 5. So far, results have been astounding!

150,000 donations, and counting

Following the announcement, donations have doubled in comparison to the previous weeks. As a consequence, we have reached the threshold of 150,000 donations since May 2013, when we started keeping track of the numbers. A huge thanks to all donors! With their money, they make LibreOffice sustainable, supporting the costs of the entire organization.

35,000 unique IPs visited the blog

blog-fromaug4toaug11In one week, the blog has got 46,068 pageviews from 34,935 unique IPs, four times as many as the previous week (clicking on the thumbnail, you can view a higher resolution image).

Over 1,000 articles

LibreOffice 5.0 has been covered by all major IT publications worldwide (only PC Magazine has ignored the announcement so far). Over 1,000 articles have mentioned LibreOffice 5.0, with over 500 covering the subject in depth based on the press kit, a conference call or an interview. If you are interested in the list of in depth articles, you can download a PDF file with all the relevant links.

LibreOffice 5.0 stands out from the office suite crowd

Windows 10 compatibility and superior interoperability features
Immediately available for Linux, MacOS X and Windows
libreofficsplash
Berlin, August 5, 2015 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.0, the tenth major release since the launch of the project and the first of the third development cycle. LibreOffice is a full feature open source office suite which compares head to head with every product in the same category, while it stands out for superior interoperability features.

LibreOffice 5.0 builds on the success of the 4.x family, which has been deployed by over 80 million users (source: TDF estimate, based on users pinging for updates), including large organizations in Europe and South America.

LibreOffice 5.0 sports a significantly improved user interface, with a better management of the screen space and a cleaner look. In addition, it offers better interoperability with office suites such as Microsoft Office and Apple iWork, thanks to new and improved filters to handle non standard formats. Other improvements have been added to every module of the suite, and Windows 64bit builds (Vista and later) have been added.

LibreOffice 5.0 Highlights
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A new version for new endeavours: LibreOffice 5.0 is the cornerstone of the mobile clients on Android and Ubuntu Touch, as well as the upcoming cloud version. As such, LibreOffice 5.0 serves as the foundation of current developments and is a great platform to extend, innovate and collaborate!

A beautiful office suite designed by a fantastic community: With new icons and major improvements to menus and sidebar, LibreOffice looks nicer and helps users in being creative and getting things done the right way. In addition, style management is now more intuitive thanks to the visual preview of styles right in the interface.

Spreadsheets that rock: LibreOffice 5.0 ships with an impressive number of new and enhanced spreadsheet features: complex formulae, new functions, conditional formatting, image cropping, table addressing and much more. Calc’s blend of performance and features makes it an enterprise-ready, heavy duty spreadsheet capable of handling all kinds of workload for an impressive range of use cases.

Better filters for better documents: LibreOffice 5 ships with many improvements to document import and export filters, for an enhanced document conversion fidelity all around. In addition, it is now possible to timestamp PDF files generated with LibreOffice.

A complete list of the most significant new features is available on the accompanying press release, and has also been published on the website at the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/new-features/.

LibreOffice 5.0 has also been improved “under the hood,” thanks to the precious work of hundreds of volunteers. According to Coverity Scan, the number of defects for 1,000 lines of code is now consistently below 0,001. This translates into an open source office suite which is not only easier to develop but it’s also easier to maintain and debug. In fact, the amount of solved bugs is now over 25,000, and is increasing rapidly.

Last, but not least, LibreOffice 5.0 has been improved in terms of quality and stability thanks to a large number of tests performed on new builds by going through thousands of documents to spot crashers, bugs and regressions.

“In 2010, we inherited a rather old source code, which had to be made cleaner, leaner and smarter before we could reasonably develop the office suite we were envisioning for the long term,” says Michael Meeks, a Director at TDF and a leading LibreOffice developer. “Since 2010, we have gone through three different development cycles: the 3.x family, to clean the code from legacy stuff; the 4.x family, to make the suite more responsive; and the 5.x family, to make it smarter, also in terms of user interface.”

A summary of what has happened “under the hood” of LibreOffice 5.0 is available here: http://users.freedesktop.org/~michael/under-the-hood-5-0.html.

“LibreOffice 5.0 is such a good product that people used to legacy open source office suites feel overwhelmed by the amount of new features and improvements,” adds Thorsten Behrens, TDF Chairman and leading LibreOffice developer. “Switching from any OOo derivative to LibreOffice is a giant leap into the future of free office suites.”

Availability and enterprise deployments
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LibreOffice 5.0 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, and as such is targeted to technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users.

For enterprise class deployments in organizations of any size, TDF maintains the more mature 4.4.x branch (now at 4.4.5). In any case, TDF suggests to deploy or migrate to LibreOffice only if the project is backed by certified professionals providing Level 3 support, migration consultancy or training courses according to recognized best practices (http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

LibreOffice 5.0 is immediately available from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. LibreOffice users, free software advocates and all community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Press Releases

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.3

Berlin, 13 November 2025 - LibreOffice 25.8.3, the third minor release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity…

Open Document Format

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I decided to start the current campaign, with one blog post per week focusing on the different aspects of Open…