TDF now certified by CAcert
Thanks to our friends from CAcert, The Document Foundation has officially passed the organization validation. More details are available in CAcert’s own blog post.
The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5.2
Berlin, April 5, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5.2, the third version of the 3.5 family, targeting private individuals and enterprises. LibreOffice 3.5.2 fixes an additional large number of the bugs identified by TDF QA experts and LibreOffice users worldwide.
LibreOffice has recently been selected as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. Students are invited to look at the GSoC Ideas Wiki Page at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Gsoc/Ideas to get inspired for their next task. One of 2011 GSoC projects, the MS Visio Import Filter, has been integrated in LibreOffice 3.5 (and the author, Eilidh McAdam, has already found a LibreOffice development related employer: Lanedo).
“The Document Foundation continues to grow month after month, with a constant flow of new hackers and volunteers taking care of development, quality assurance and localization”, says Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board. “The updated LibreOffice infographic represents some of the numbers, with the growth of pure code hackers – who are now 429 (376 if we do not include the former Sun/Oracle employees) – being the most impressive achievement”.
LibreOffice 3.5.2 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.
Change logs are available at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.2/RC1 and http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.2/RC2.
LibreOffice @ Google Summer of Code
So, it is here again! The wonderful time of spring. Projects that were lucky enough to be selected by Google look for talented students. And students that care enough about open source try to find a matching project. LibreOffice was selected as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code again this year. And today, it is the first day when students can submit their applications. We would like you to convince you that LibreOffice is indeed the best choice for you if you are a student looking to impact the open source scene in a permanent way.
LibreOffice empowers you!
LibreOffice is a project of many volunteers and paid developers. Whether you are employee of one of the many companies that contribute to LibreOffice, or volunteer representing yourself only, you are handled in the same way and only your capacities dictate what you can and cannot do. It is not unusual to find a volunteer contributor being part of decisions about technical directions of the project.
The code you will produce during the summer will be going directly to the LibreOffice git repository. We always do our best in order to see student’s work integrated in the next big release.
Participation in Google Summer of Code with LibreOffice is good for your career!
Some of you might remember that last year we had several extremely successful Google Summer of Code projects. Two of our successful students are currently employed working on free and opensource software as a direct consequence of their participation in the program. Eilidh McAdam implemented a Visio import filter that is one of the flagship features of LibreOffice 3.5. Eilidh has been employed by Lanedo before she even was able to complete her PhD degree. Miklos Vajna worked in 2010 on RTF export filter and in 2011 on RTF import. As soon as he finished his studies, he was hired by SUSE to work on LibreOffice.
This is not always the case of course, but they were neither the first nor last to find paid opportunities in the project.
Wide choice of projects and mentors
Our GSoC Ideas wiki page is containing more then 40 different proposals in each and every corner of LibreOffice code-base. From import filter for Microsoft Publisher file-format to support of sqlite in LibreOffice Base, from hacking on collaborative feature to performance improvements in Calc, everybody can find the shoe for her feet.
LibreOffice project is full of dedicated mentors that know how to work with people that don’t share with them the room next door or even the same timezone. The community is friendly and welcoming.
How to apply
Convinced? We hope so. So, here is how to proceed.
- Present yourself. Since we don’t know you we want to know some bits like your name, education, email, nickname on the LibreOffice IRC channel.
- Prove that you want to get involved into LibreOffice. In order to check this we require students to complete one of the Easy programming tasks on the Easy_Hacks page (or part of one if that EasyHack is a selection of separate tasks), though the dead-line for this isn’t hard but needs to be somewhere before the end of the selection process. This means that each student who wants to have chances to be picked for a LibreOffice project will need to build the whole application, fix a bug and submit the patch to the development mailing list. See the Development page for more infos on this.
- Explain what you want to achieve. Provide detailed informations on the project you want to work on and the use cases. The better you described it the better it is for us. It is best to base your project on one of our Ideas that come complete with friendly mentors to help you.
- How do you plan to achieve it?Provide us the following:
- An estimated schedule for the summer (including any potential conflicts you could have like courses, exams…)
- Technical details on how you want to implement it. The more sensible details you provide the easier it will be for us to check that you understood the problem and difficulty.
- Why should we choose you? Give us all the reasons for choosing you. Any past open source hacking is interesting us as well as your hacking and socializing skills.
LibreOffice community is looking forward to an enjoyable and productive summer with you.
Errata about The Register
It looks like the communication between myself and Iain did not work in the proper way yesterday evening (European time), because a couple of significant inaccuracies have crept in the text of the article:
- The Document Foundation will probably announce a ROADMAP for LibreOffice OnLine sometimes in late April or early May. A ROADMAP and not a PRODUCT, and this should be absolutely clear. At the moment, there is no reason to expect a change in the previously announced release timeframe: “sometimes in 2013”.
- The Android port is under way, but is the PORTING of the code to be around 80% (and not the CODING, which is still below 50%). The Android port is not a simple endeavor, and it will ask for a lot of CODING efforts once the PORTING has been completed. One of these efforts is a new touch interface, which is – by itself – a huge development effort. This is the reason why TDF will not be in the position of making ANY announcement about LibreOffice on Pads – including a roadmap – before 2013.
I hope this clarifies the issue.
TDF announces LibreOffice 3.4.6
Berlin, March 22, 2012 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.4.6, solving a potential security problem and a number of bugs of the program.
LibreOffice 3.4.6 is the last planned release in the 3.4 series. Since early 2012, the focus of the LibreOffice development team has been on the 3.5 series. LibreOffice 3.4.6 is released for the convenience of users, for them to plan a migration to the 3.5 series without being forced in time.
LibreOffice 3.4.6 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/?version=3.4.6
Change logs are available at http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-6-release-3.4.6.1.log (fixed in 3.4.6.1) and http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-6-release-3.4.6.2.log (fixed in 3.4.6.2).
Informations on the potential security problem are available on the advisory page:Â CVE-2012-0037.
LibreOffice 3.5.1 provides additional security and stability
Berlin, March 15, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5.1, the second version of the 3.5 family, targeting private individuals and enterprises. LibreOffice 3.5.1 fixes the majority of the most-important bugs identified by users and is expected to be appealing for most enterprises.
TDF encourages large organizations to deploy LibreOffice in conjunction with a support partner, who can assess specific requirements, help manage migration and provide bespoke fixes for identified issues. Purchasing LibreOffice support from a TDF partner provides enterprises with an indirect means to contribute financially to the project, to fund software development, to improve the stability and accelerate the growth.
“During the last month, the number of TDF hackers has overtaken the threshold of 400 code developers, with a large majority of independent volunteers and several companies paying full time hackers. In any case, the project is independent, as none of these companies employs more than 7% of the developers”, affirms Italo Vignoli, member of the Board of Directors. “Since September 2010, a monthly average of 20 new hackers has joined the project, attracted by the copyleft license, the lack of copyright assignment and a welcoming environment”.
LibreOffice 3.5.1 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.
Change logs are available at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.1/RC1 and http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.1/RC2.
About The Document Foundation (TDF)
The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, meritocratic organization, which builds on ten years of dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org Community. TDF was created in the belief that the culture born of an independent foundation brings out the best in corporate and volunteer contributors, and will deliver the best free office suite. TDF is open to any individual who agrees with its core values and contributes to its activities, and warmly welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community. As of March 15, 2012, TDF has over 140 members and well over a thousand volunteers and contributors worldwide.
Media Contacts
Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org – Skype: floeff
Charles H. Schulz (based in Paris, France, UTC+1)
E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Eliane Domingos de Sousa (based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UTC-3)
E-mail: elianedomingos@documentfoundation.org – Skype: elianedomingos
Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org – Skype: italovignoli
GTalk: italo.vignoli@gmail.com
Full contact details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/contact/.