This FOSDEM we had a popular LibreOffice Dev-Room, with many interesting talks focused on a technical audience. Starting from Italo’s overview of where we’re at as of now, and moving into how to how to write filters, the code structure of our major components, how to get involved with easy hacks, and more.
If you missed some of that, the slides are now available (where there were slides) in our wiki, please do check them out.
Today, The Document Foundation proudly announces Berlin, Germany as the host for this year’s LibreOffice Conference.
The Document Foundation members jointly decided on the location for their conference in a public poll that closed last week. Its final results are now fixed.
The Board of Directors congratulates Berlin for having won this year’s LibreOffice conference bid. We sincerely hope to meet many of you later this year, when in autumn 2012, the LibreOffice conference opens up in Berlin!
Intel becomes a Member of TDF Advisory Board
Berlin, February 23rd, 2012 – The Document Foundation (TDF) today announced LibreOffice for Windows from SUSE is now available in the Intel AppUpSM Center, an online repository designed for Intel® processor-based devices. Intel is also becoming a member of TDF Advisory Board, a body that provides advice and funding for the LibreOffice project.
LibreOffice for Windows from SUSE is available in Intel AppUpSM Center as a special, five-language version featuring English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. As a validated Intel AppUpSM Center app, LibreOffice for Windows from SUSE features a new, smooth, silent installation flow and improved uninstallation cleanup.
“I have been using LibreOffice from day one for presentations at conferences and for data analysis,” said Dawn Foster, open source community lead, Intel. “Our engineers have worked with the LibreOffice codebase to optimise it for Intel hardware. Adding it to the AppUpSM Center is an obvious extension, and will provide an exciting feature for all Ultrabook users.”
“We welcome Intel to The Document Foundation, and look forward to working with them,” said Dr. Gerald Pfeifer, senior director of product management, SUSE. “It’s great to see Intel providing LibreOffice through an exciting new channel so that more and more users can experience LibreOffice on Windows, with access to our world class support, that can make organizations more productive while saving costs.”
“We are thrilled to add Intel to our existing roster of supporters”, said Florian Effenberger, volunteer and TDF board member, “TDF is first and foremost a vendor neutral project committed to excellence in the office suite space, but we greatly value the support and advice we gain from organisations such as SUSE, Red Hat, Google, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Software in the Public Interest (SPI).”
About the Intel AppUpSM Center
Downloaded by more than one million consumers to date, the Intel AppUpSM Center is a key initiative to provide rich, compelling digital content and experiences, specifically designed for Intel® processor- based devices. Through its ever growing network of partner stores, the Intel AppUpSM Center is an open application distribution model which works across multiple platforms and operating systems. The Intel AppUpSM Center software can be downloaded at http://www.appup.com.
About The Document Foundation (TDF)
The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, meritocratic organization, incorporated in Berlin as a German Stiftung, 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 February, 2012, TDF has 146 members and over a thousand volunteers and contributors worldwide.
Media Contacts
TDF
Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
Phone: +49 8341 99660880 – Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org – Skype: floeff
Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
SIP Phone: +39 02 320621813 – Mobile: +39 348 5653829
E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org – Skype: italovignoli
SUSE
Amie Johnson (based in Provo, Utah, UTC-6)
Phone: +1 801 8612893 – E-mail: amie@suse.com
New entity has been legally created on February 17th, 2012
German Stiftung to provide strong and enduring rights for the LibreOffice community
Berlin, February 20th, 2012. The Document Foundation today announces that it has been officially incorporated in the state of Berlin, Germany. The legal form of the entity is a German “rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts”, a form based on the governance model the LibreOffice community has chosen. On Friday afternoon, February 17th, the incorporation certificate, signed by the state secretary, has been handed over by the authorities. With this legal act, the entity officially came to life and is legally recognized.
The legally binding German version of the statutes are available at http://www.documentfoundation.org/satzung.pdf
For convenience, an English translation of the statutes, which is not legally binding, is available at http://www.documentfoundation.org/statutes.pdf
“We are proud of having achieved this major milestone. During the last months, we have been working extensively to incorporate the bylaws into legally binding statutes, to provide a stable and safe basis for our future” said Thorsten Behrens, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the new Foundation. He adds: “Our primary focus was on the membership element. Those who are approved members have inalienable, strong rights, embedded into the statutes. Since we have been aiming to be a German Stiftung, those rights are guaranteed by law, and enforced by the authorities. The Document Foundation is the legal affirmation of the community spirit – an entity by the community, for the community, and an entity independent from any single vendor.”
Michael (Mike) Schinagl, a Berlin-based lawyer who has been working on the incorporation process, explained: “The creation of such a Foundation is unique in the history of free software. There are not many, if any, entities that guarantee such strong rights to active contributors. Embedding those into legal language was a tremendous task, but one that was very worthwile. The Foundation and its statutes provide the ideal grounds for a free office ecosystem, including users, developers, marketeers, adopters, service providers and many, many more, and they can serve as an example for other communities with similar goals.”
The donor is the German nonprofit association Freies Office Deutschland e.V., formerly OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V., which acted as interim legal entity from the very beginning. Thomas Krumbein, its Chairman, is grateful: “Our sincere thanks goes out to the Berlin authorities for their helpful cooperation in the past months, and for their flexibility and enormous support in achieving the community’s goals. Berlin has definitely made a landmark decision by approving The Document Foundation. Freies Office Deutschland e.V. is proud to be the donor of this important entity, and we look forward to working together with the new Foundation to the benefit of all users and contributors.”
André Schnabel, Chairman of the Membership Committee, stated the Foundation’s openness: “I am sure we will see the community prospering and growing even more, now that the legal entity has been created. Finally, after nearly 12 years, the community has created a Foundation that ideally fits to its needs, that is vendor-neutral, that provides safety, builds trust, and that sends out a strong sign of stability to all stakeholders. I would like to repeat our honest invitation to everyone interested in the future of free office suites, to join The Document Foundation, no matter if you are an individual volunteer, employee of a software vendor or support our activities with help from local non-profit organizations.”
The home of The Document Foundation is at http://www.documentfoundation.org
LibreOffice, the free office suite, has its home at http://www.libreoffice.org
Note to editors: A “Stiftung” is a German Foundation established with an endowment and supported by state authorities. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_%28non-profit%29#Germany for more details. In addition, “bürgerlichen Rechts” indicates it is a fully independent Foundation with long-term intent and independent finances.
Media Contacts for The Document Foundation
Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
Phone: +49 8341 99660880
Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org
Skype: floeff
Olivier Hallot (based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UTC-3)
Mobile: +55 21 88228812
E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org
Charles H. Schulz (based in Paris, France, UTC+1)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424
E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
Phone: +39 02 320621813
Mobile: +39 348 5653829
E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
Skype: italovignoli
Google Talk: italo.vignoli@gmail.com
Media Contact for Freies Office Deutschland e.V.
Thomas Krumbein (based in Wiesbaden, Germany, UTC+1)
Phone: +49 611 1885339
E-mail: t.krumbein@frodev.org
Web: http://www.frodev.org
Have you seen the new Ask LibreOffice support page already? http://ask.libreoffice.org
Berlin, February 14, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5, the third major release of “the best free office suite ever”, which shows to end users the improvements derived from the development strategy adopted since September 2010. LibreOffice 3.5 derives from the combined effort of full time hackers – the largest group of experienced OOo code developers – and volunteer hackers, coordinated by the Engineering Steering Committee.
During 16 months, an average of 80 developers each month have provided a total of over thirty thousand code commits, introducing new and interesting features:
Writer
Impress / Draw
Calc
Base
In addition, for the first time in the history of LibreOffice, we will be enabling the online update checker, which informs users when a new version of the suite is available.
“We inherited a 15 years old code base, where features were not implemented and bugs were not solved in order to avoid creating problems, and this – with time – was the origin of a large technical debt,” says Caolán McNamara, a senior RedHat developer who is one of the founders and directors of TDF. “We had two options: a conservative strategy, which would immediately please all users, leaving the code basically unchanged, and our more aggressive feature development and code renovation path, which has created some stability problems in the short term but is rapidly leading to a completely new and substantially improved free office suite: LibreOffice 3.5, the best free office suite ever.”
“In sixteen months, we have achieved incredible results – comments Michael Meeks, a SUSE Distinguished Engineer, who is also a founder and director at TDF – with nearly three hundred entirely new developers to the project, attracted by the copyleft license, the lack of copyright assignment and a welcoming environment. In addition to the visible features, they’ve translated tens of thousands of German comments, removed thousands of unused or obsolete methods – sometimes whole libraries – and grown a suite of automated tests. Although we still have a long way to go, users – who have sometimes complained for the stability of the software, as they were not aware of the technical debt we were fighting with – can now benefit from a substantially cleaner, leaner and more feature rich LibreOffice 3.5.”
LibreOffice 3.5 is the first release where the contribution of local communities and associations, such as ALTA in Brazil, has been acknowledged. In addition, TDF tried to recognize those volunteers – where we could easily identify them – who put so much into the 3.5 release, with a “hacking” or “bug hunting” hero badge presented the same day of the announcement. TDF is encouraging the development of a global, open and diverse ecosystem where companies, associations, local communities and volunteers share the common objective of developing the best free office suite ever.
The Document Foundation invites power users to install LibreOffice 3.5, and more conservative users to stick with LibreOffice 3.4 branch. Corporate users are strongly advised to deploy LibreOffice with the backing of professional support, from a company able to assist with migration, end user training, support and maintenance. The Document Foundation will soon provide a list of certified organizations providing these professional services.
LibreOffice 3.5 is available from: http://www.libreoffice.org/download. The new features and the improvements are described in the infographic which can be downloaded from: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/116590/lo35-infofinal.pdf.
