Thanks to everyone who contributed to LibreOffice in 2023! 😊
We at The Document Foundation would like to say a huge thank you to everyone in the LibreOffice community who helped out in 2023. Whether you contributed to our projects, made a donation to support us, or spread the word to bring in new users: thank you so much! You helped to make 2023 a great year for our community and software.
Recap of LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023 in Nepal
Suraj Bhattarai, our Liaison for the LibreOffice Nepali Community, sent us this report:
In October 2023, the LibreOffice Nepali Community organized an online localization event. They called it the “LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023” with a tagline “Unlock Native: LibreOffice Speaks Nepali”. The localization sprint was mentored by localization expert Saroj Dhakal, our liaison in Nepal (me – Suraj Bhattarai) and Kathmandu University engineering student Aadarsha Dhakal.
In order to build excitement around the event, they invited key open source community and student clubs from different locations in Nepal. The invitation was generously accepted by AskBuddie, Kathmandu University Open Source Community (KUOSC), Birendra Open Source Club (BOSC), and Nepal Open Source Klub (NOSK) – and they all joined the collaboration. Following the immediate announcement, many volunteers came forward and expressed their willingness to join in and contribute to the LibreOffice project.
LibreOffice’s Nepali Community started their sprint on 11th of October. 42 people appeared on the first day orientation. Since many of the involved people were absolutely new to localization, expert Saroj Dhakal begin with an introduction to LibreOffice and The Document Foundation’s Weblate instance. Later, the mentors made participants familiar with the localization process in our tools, with a quick demonstration on how to proceed with strings, checks, and different glossary terms.
The webinar was hosted by Satya Raj Awasthi from NOSK and facilitated by Saroj, Suraj, Adarsha from KUOSC, Abhishkar Aryal from AskBuddie, and Kushal Pathak from BOSC. The sprint was initially considered for a span of two weeks – but the participants showed strong interest, and carried it on for the full month.
The localization sprint had a hard choice with clashing timelines, due to two of the approaching major festivities affecting the consistency of the sprint. Indeed, the sprint had to take a break for 10 days, so effectively the sprint only took place for 19 days. Still, some very committed participants still utilized some of their time in between.
Each day, the participants met online in a video call, querying mentors about difficult translations. Those who were inexperienced with localization were suggested only to proceed for one hour a day while in the group call with mentors. But other, more experienced people were free to utilize any appropriate time of the day based on their flexibility.
Most students thanked the LibreOffice Nepali Community for organizing the localization on such an open scale. At the same time, they admitted that they could effectively utilize their vacation time in learning new things, all thanks to the sprint. The event finished on the10th of November. So the effective hours each participant contributed to the project was around 19. With this, the LibreOffice localization Sprint 2023 officially counts as the third longest LibreOffice localization sprint organized by the Nepali Community.
Summary
- Name: LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023
- Event Duration: 11th October- 10th November
- Active Participation: 16 (until the end date)
- Involved from the community: 4
First half
- Winners: 7
- Prize: LibreOffice printed 750ml Aluminum Water Bottle
- Strings localized: 6,817+
Breakdown
- Translated: 4025
- New strings suggested: 2792
- Checks corrected: 12
Second half
- Winners: 3
- Prize: LibreOffice printed 750ml Aluminum Water Bottle
- Strings localized: 4,118+
Breakdown
- Translated: 2316
- New strings suggested: 1802
- Checks corrected: 6
Leaderboard winners
- Winners: 6
- Prize: Event logo printed T-Shirt
In total
- Winners: 16
- Prize: Event logo printed T-Shirt
- Strings localized: 10,935+
Breakdown
- Translated: 6341
- New strings suggested: 4594
- Checks corrected: 18
The participation and appreciation certificate for the involved communities were issued on 18th of November. The prizes to all the winners were shipped by Dec 4th. The individual communities invited winners and participants in their own campus space and celebrated in-person handover and closing of the sprint, promising members to introduce more LibreOffice activities in their space.
TDF says: huge thanks to everyone involved! What a fantastic effort, with great results 😊
Community Member Monday: Dominique Prieur
Today we’re talking to Dominique Prieur, who recently became a member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice…
Hi! Tell us a bit about yourself…
I’m French (and my English is too poor and too bad). I live in Orléans, 120 km south of Paris. I was in the army for 18 months and then a civil servant for 44 years. I’m now retired. I read a lot, listen to music, play with Python and look at the sky and the stars 🙂 Oh yes, I take a lot of photographs.
What are you doing with LibreOffice right now?
I used to work for the Direction générale des finances publiques (French Treasury). We used LibreOffice exclusively. I managed the finances of large hospitals and had lots of very large CSV files to reprocess. Today, I only do basic office automation. Occasionally, I give free courses on LibreOffice, particularly on styles and regular expressions. I’m working with the Orléans prison to develop office automation workshops with prisoners.
Why did you choose to join the LibreOffice project?
I wanted to join the project to find out how it works “from the inside”. I don’t have much experience of it yet…
What does LibreOffice need for the future?
LibreOffice needs to listen to its users again and again. It must remain open source.
Many thanks to Dominique for the support in our community! And LibreOffice will always be free and open source software, so no worries about that 😊
LibreOffice Security Backgrounder
Today we are announcing the first release of a very important document that describes – in language accessible to everyone, including non-security specialists – the impressive work done by developers and quality assurance specialists in the area of LibreOffice security.
From now on, the LibreOffice Security Backgrounder will be updated on the occasion of each major release of LibreOffice, i.e. in February and August each year (as things stand). For this reason, the full name of this document is LibreOffice Security Backgrounder 2023.12.
It is important to stress that the purpose of this document is purely informational, to clarify aspects and steps in the development process that have not been sufficiently documented in the past. Software security is a fundamental aspect, but not a competitive advantage.
The security of LibreOffice and the documents it generates is very important to all of us, and especially to the users of the suite, which is why there are dozens of people with advanced computer security skills who dedicate their time to protecting and improving it.
We hope that this document, which has been produced with the help of a number of companies and individuals, some of whom are mentioned in the document itself, will help to improve knowledge of the security processes involved in the development of free and open source software.
tdf-libreofficesecurityDownload LibreOffice Security Backgrounder 2023.12
LibreOffice 7.6.4 and LibreOffice 7.5.9 available for download
Berlin, December 7, 2023 – LibreOffice 7.6.4 Community and LibreOffice 7.5.9 Community are immediately available from www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows (Intel/AMD/ARM processors), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel processors), and Linux [1].
LibreOffice 7.6.4 Community is the most advanced version of the office suite, and offers the best in terms of productivity functions and interoperability with Microsoft Office proprietary formats.
LibreOffice 7.5.9 Community is the most thoroughly tested version of the suite, for productivity applications in the enterprise environment, but has now reached the end of its life, so users are invited to plan the upgrade to LibreOffice 7.6.4 Community, which has also been tested and sought after enough for production environments.
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a large number of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLA (Service Level Agreements): www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.
Availability of LibreOffice 7.6.4 and LibreOffice 7.5.9
LibreOffice 7.6.4 Community and LibreOffice 7.5.9 Community are available from www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.14. LibreOffice Technology-based products for Android and iOS are listed here: www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/
The Document Foundation does not provide technical support for users, although they can be helped by volunteers on user mailing lists and on the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at www.libreoffice.org/donate
[1] Change log pages: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/7.6.4/RC1 and wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/7.5.9/RC1