Celebrating “I Love Free Software Day” 2017

LibreOffice is free software. This means that it’s totally free of charge to download and use – a benefit that many people appreciate. But free software is about much more than just saving money; it’s about having freedom to control our own computers and devices. Free software is incredibly important for digital freedoms, security, privacy and civil rights. All together, free software is a movement. So what defines free software, compared to proprietary software? The Free Software Foundation outlines four key freedoms that we should have as users of the software. Here’s a summary: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose The freedom to study how the program works, and change its source code The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your friends and colleagues The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others, so that they can benefit Fundamental to this is the license under which the software is made available. LibreOffice is released under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0, a free and open source license that lets everyone share the program – and gives everyone the right to study how it works and modify it. You can get

Advent Resource #4: ODF Guidance by UK Cabinet Office (2)

Information on the ODF standard and how to move your organization to ODF-compliant document solutions The document has been forked in a textual format (Pandoc’s Markdown) by Paolo Dongilli, to keep track of versions and changes, correct typos, add new content and easily fork it for localization purposes. It is available on GitHub: https://github.com/paolodongilli/ODF-Guidance. This guidance gives general information on the standard, as well as more detailed information for chief technology officers and government procurement officers. Table of Contents: Introduction to Open Document Format (ODF) Procure ODF solutions Base ODF solutions on user needs Validators and compliance testing Platforms and devices Accessibility Privacy and security Avoid macros in documents Integrate ODF with enterprise tools Extensions, plugins and custom solutions Collaborate on documents Change tracking in ODF Embed fonts in ODF documents Corporate styles and templates ODF spreadsheets and formulas Support and training Overview of productivity software Costs and benefits of ODF

Tender for a Infrastructure and System Administrator (#201606-01)

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks a Infrastructure and System Administrator to start work as soon as possible. The role is scheduled for 40 hours a week. The work time is flexible and work happens from the applicant’s home office, which can be located anywhere in the world. Our infrastructure is based on 4 large hypervisors with about 50 virtual machines running on them. In addition there are several bare-metal machines, additional backup servers, externally hosted virtual machines and services, split across three data centers and connected via dynamic routing. Key technology used is Debian 8, some legacy Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 machines eventually to be migrated SaltStack for deployment KVM as virtualization technology GlusterFS for distributed storage Icinga-based TKmon for monitoring MikroTik routers and switches IPMI-based Supermicro and ASUS bare metal hardware documentation in RST text files Git repositories Sphinx as documentation generator Tools we make use of Nginx and Apache Postfix, Dovecot, SpamAssassin, amavisd, ClamAV Gitlab and Gitlab CI MirrorBrain PostgreSQL and MySQL Gerrit, Bugzilla, Jenkins AskBot, ownCloud, MediaWiki, Etherpad, Piwik Silverstripe, WordPress Plone Redmine gitolite Kibana-based statistics dashboard Pootle, MozTrap rsnapshot, BackupPC OpenVPN LDAP Graylog Asterisk/Freeswitch WebDAV

#ilovefs

We love Free Software, and we definitely want to show our love on February 14: Valentine’s Day. Show your appreciation publicly using social networks or your blog to demonstrate the world how many people love Free Software, and motivate others to do the same. Just use the hashtag #ilovefs on social media platforms. You can also download one of the images shared by Free Software Foundation Europe to share with you friends, or to add to your blog or one of your tweets. Free Software drives a huge number of devices in our everyday life. It ensures our freedom, our security, civil rights, and privacy. It enables everyone to participate in a fair society. But as with people, everybody has different reasons to love Free Software. Let’s show this variety to the world! As the traditional day to show one’s appreciation to people, Valentine’s Day is the perfect opportunity to say thank you to the contributors of the various Free Software you love: developers, translators, designers, testers, or documentation writers, of huge softwares or smaller projects. All of them work on the Free Software ecosystem which we can enjoy every day. #ilovefs and you?

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.0.3 “fresh” and LibreOffice 4.4.6 “still”

Berlin, November 3, 2015 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.0.3 “fresh”, the 4th release of the LibreOffice 5.0 family, and LibreOffice 4.4.6, the 7th release of the LibreOffice 4.4 family. So far, the LibreOffice 5.0 family is the most popular LibreOffice ever, based on feedback from journalists and end users. LibreOffice 5.0.3 is more feature-rich, and as such is targeted to tech enthusiasts and power users, and LibreOffice 4.4.6 is targeted to more conservative users and enterprise deployments as it has been in widespread use for a longer time, and as such offers a better experience for document production. All LibreOffice users should update their software at least to LibreOffice 4.4.6, for security reasons. The Document Foundation strongly suggests to deploy LibreOffice in enterprises and large organizations with the backing of professional support by a certified individual (http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). Both software packages include many fixes introduced since the previous version, which are listed on change logs for people interested in technical details: For 5.0.3: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.0.3/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.0.3/RC2 (fixed in RC2). For 4.4.6: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.4.6/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.4.6/RC3 (fixed in RC3). Download LibreOffice LibreOffice 5.0.3 and LibreOffice 4.4.6 are available for download from the following webpages: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/

The Document Foundation welcomes RusBITech in the project Advisory Board

The Document Foundation (TDF) announces that RusBITech, a large Russian software development company focusing on open source software, has joined the Advisory Board. RusBITech is a Research and Production Association (RPA) which develops and supports the Astra Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux, targeted to the Russian public administration. LibreOffice is included in Astra Linux, and is one of the main applications for the users of the operating system. Astra Linux, which is licensed according to the principles of the GPL license, has been officially certified by the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control and the Federal Security Service. By joining TDF Advisory Board, RusBITech wants to leverage the LibreOffice ecosystem to provide a better productivity experience to the user of Astra Linux. The desktop operating system supports a tablet computer mode, and most users are interested in running LibreOffice on a tablet. RusBITech is also planning to provide a support service for LibreOffice in Russia, to complement the Astra Linux Special Edition (commercial), which is used in many Russian state-related organizations.