TDF Community Blog

Berlin, April 10, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.2.3, the third minor release of the LibreOffice 4.2 family. LibreOffice 4.2.3 “Fresh” is the most feature rich version of the software, and is suited for early adopters willing to leverage a larger number of innovations. For enterprise deployments and for more conservative users, The Document Foundation suggests the more mature LibreOffice 4.1.5 “Stable”.

People interested in technical details about this release can access change logs here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.3/RC1 (fixed in RC1), here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.3/RC2 (fixed in RC2) and here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.3/RC3 (fixed in RC3).

In addition, the released version of LibreOffice 4.2.3 adds a security fix for the Heartbleed Bug (CVE-2014-0160).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.2.3 and LibreOffice 4.1.5 are both available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions and templates to complement the installation of the software and add specific features are available here: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to grow the project both at global and local level.

The Document Foundation announces the Document Liberation Project

Berlin, April 2, 2014 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the birth of the Document Liberation Project (http://www.documentliberation.org), a home for the growing community of developers united to free users from vendor lock-in of contents. Together, these hackers will offer a solution to the routine problem faced by many computer users, who have their personal digital contents stored in an old, outdated and unaccessible file format.

“Frequently, these old files cannot be opened by any application. In fact, the users are locked out of their own content, and the most common reason for this inability to access old data is the use of proprietary file-formats that result in vendor lock-in”, says Fridrich Strba, the Document Liberation Project leader. “Even worse, when a public administration stores documents using a proprietary or a non documented format, it unintentionally restricts access to essential information to citizens, administrations and businesses. Astonishingly enough, even governments might be unable to open their own documents after an upgrade of their operating system and office software”.

The Document Liberation Project was created in the hope that it would empower individuals, organizations, and governments to recover their data from proprietary formats and provide a mechanism to transition that data into open file formats, returning effective control over the content from computer companies to the actual authors.

Since the birth of LibreOffice in 2010, several community members have taken it upon themselves to improve format interoperability with proprietary applications. Encouraged by community interest, even from outside the LibreOffice project, the developers have so far provided read support for proprietary file formats including MS Visio, CorelDraw, MS Publisher, Apple Keynote, and a handful of different old Macintosh formats. In addition to LibreOffice, import libraries for these file formats are used by Abiword, Calligra, CorelDRAW File Viewer, Inkscape and Scribus.

The Document Liberation Project aims to attract developers from all corners of the open source world to join with the LibreOffice developers, strengthening existing relationships and forging new ones with all who have shared goals in the domain of file formats. The object is to contribute to the growing open document eco-system by providing powerful tools for the conversion of proprietary file formats to the corresponding ODF ISO standard document format.

For additional information: http://www.documentliberation.org/contact/.

Support LibreOffice

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to grow the project both at global and local level.

Today is Document Freedom Day, a day for the global celebration of information accessibility and open standards. The community behind LibreOffice, the leading free office suite, joins the celebration around the globe by participating in events and informing about the importance of truly free standards.

“With tens of millions of users worldwide using LibreOffice, we are one of the largest free software projects adopting and fostering open standards”, says Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of the Board at The Document Foundation, the charitable and vendor-independent entity behind LibreOffice. “We are proud to enable more and more users each day to make use of the free OpenDocument format, freeing them from the ties of proprietary solutions, and giving them full control of their own work and creativity. Our enormous success is only possible thanks to all those fighting for and promoting open standards, whom we’d like to thank for all their work and efforts”, he adds.

LibreOffice is available for all major platforms in over 110 languages, driven by a worldwide community, and builds on the OpenDocument format as default file format, usable on desktop, mobile as well as web clients. It sees strong support from governments, enterprises and private users worldwide, and is available free of charge from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

LibreOffice recognized as the most innovative Open Source software

Berlin, March 13, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.2.2, the second minor release of the LibreOffice 4.2 family. Change log is available here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.2/RC1.

LibreOffice 4.2.2 “Fresh” is the most feature rich version of the software, and is suited for early adopters willing to leverage a larger number of innovations. For enterprise deployments, The Document Foundation suggests the more reliable LibreOffice 4.1.5 “Stable”.

LibreOffice has just received the InnovationsPreis-IT 2014 for the category Open Source, awarded by Initiative Mittelstand during CeBIT in Hannover. Under the motto “be a part of IT”, the prize is a recognition of outstanding innovations in IT and is a testimonial of the work done by the LibreOffice international community since September 2010.

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.2.2 “Fresh” and LibreOffice 4.1.5 “Stable” are both 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. Money collected will be used to grow the project both at global and local level.