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The Document Foundation officially incorporated in Berlin, Germany

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

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5: “the best free office suite ever”

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

  • a new built-in Grammar checker for English and several other languages
  • improved typographical features, for professional looking documents
  • an interactive word count window, which updates in real time
  • a new header, footer and page break user interface

Impress / Draw

  • an improved importer of custom shapes and Smart Art from PPT/PPTX
  • a feature for embedding multimedia/colour palettes into ODF documents
  • a new display switch for the presenter’s console
  • new line ends for improved diagrams
  • Microsoft Visio import filter

Calc

  • support for up to 10,000 sheets
  • a new multi-line input area
  • new Calc functions conforming to the ODF OpenFormula specifications
  • better performances when importing files from other office suites
  • multiple selections in autofilter
  • unlimited number of rules for conditional formatting

Base

  • a new integrated PostgreSQL native driver

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.

Lo35 infofinal

Another Award for LibreOffice

Linuxquestions badge

Linuxquestions

LinuxQuestions members have awarded LibreOffice the title of Office Suite of the Year 2011, with over 80% of the 537 votes. LibreOffice is the winner with the highest percentage of votes, and Office Suites is one of the categories with most voters.

Looking at the poll, you can discover why LibreOffice is so popular amongst LinuxQuestions members, and why some of them still prefer to use other office suites.

POST UPDATED on February 11 at noon UTC.

FOSDEM Preview

The Document Foundation was announced on September 28, 2010. So far, it has been an umbelievable ride, especially under the development point of view. Our core development team has managed to attract close to 400 new developers, and has achieved a large number of the ambitious goals set on that date. We still have quite a long way to go, but LibreOffice 3.5 – due next week – will be the very first release showing TDF “development directions” not only to geeks but also to end users: a leaner and cleaner office suite, packed with new features. If you happen to be in Brussels for FOSDEM, you are warmly invited to join our DevRoom in Building H or walk by our booth on the first level of Building K.

You can download a PDF or a JPG of the infographic, for printing or publishing on your website or blog. From now on, we will update it on a monthly basis, adding more numbers as soon as they will be available.

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