At the recent Open Source Conference 2025 in Luxembourg there were two talks about LibreOffice. The first was Lessons learned from 13 years at The Document Foundation and LibreOffice, where Florian Effenberger, Executive Director of the foundation, talks about the legal setup of The Document Foundation and how its statutes enshrine values and ideals like openness, transparency and meritocracy. Then there was Open Innovation and Open Source in Schleswig-Holstein – Practice for Europe, where Sven Thomsen, CIO of the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein (which is moving to LibreOffice), outlined the state’s pioneering path toward digital sovereignty through Open Source and Open Innovation. The talk highlighted the risks of dependency on proprietary software—including lack of transparency, inflated costs, and reduced security.
This new version of the native LibreOffice document format standard marks the 20th anniversary of the only open document format for office applications Berlin, December 3, 2025 – The Document Foundation announces that OASIS Open (www.oasis-open.org), the global open-source and standards organisation, has approved the Open Document Format (ODF) for office applications v1.4 as an OASIS standard, which is the organisation’s highest level of ratification. The release of ODF v1.4 coincides with the 20th anniversary of ODF’s adoption as an OASIS Standard. Since 2005, ODF has served users as a vendor-neutral, royalty-free format for office documents, ensuring that files remain readable, editable and interoperable across platforms. Several governments and international organisations, including NATO, the European Commission and countries across multiple continents, have mandated ODF for their operations worldwide. ODF v1.4 maintains full backward compatibility and improves developer documentation, adds better support for assistive technologies for accessibility, improves professional document formatting and visual design capabilities, and expands features for data analysis and technical documentation. These updates reinforce the Open Document Format’s position as a comprehensive solution for office productivity and document creation. “ODF provides a vendor-neutral foundation for office productivity and collaboration. With v1.4, the standard continues to evolve, supporting cloud
Reliable data flows, verifiable signatures and predictable structures are essential for digital identity systems, which touch every aspect of modern digital life. They authorise transactions, confirm requests and guarantee security policies. In this context, the Open Document Format (ODF) offers a transparent, computer-readable foundation for verifying the authenticity of documents and ensuring their long-term integrity. Each ODF file is a structured ZIP container with a consistent internal layout. It contains a set of XML files that are always located in the same position. These files include meta.xml for metadata, manifest.xml for the list of files and relationships, content.xml for document data and styles.xml for presentation rules. The files are either ODT (text), ODS (spreadsheets), ODP (presentations) or ODG (drawings). Because everything is in XML format and in the same location, identity systems can analyse the content without searching for it as they would with OOXML files, which vary greatly depending on the application used to create them. Identity systems can therefore focus on specific parts of a file rather than scanning raw binary blocks, which are present in OOXML files. This is important for signing, integrity validation, metadata extraction and policy enforcement. When documents move from one identity platform to
Berlin, 13 November 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.3, the third minor release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity in office environments, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, is now available at www.libreoffice.org/download. The new version fixes 70 issues compared to the previous release, which came out in October [1]. LibreOffice 25.8.3 is based on the LibreOffice Technology, which enables the development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – either from TDF or from the ecosystem – that fully supports the two document format standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP), and the closed and proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX). Products based on the LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud. For enterprise-class deployments, TDF recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise optimized versions from ecosystem companies, with dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs and security patch backports for three to five years (www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/). English manuals for the LibreOffice 25.8 family are available for download at https://books.libreoffice.org/en/. End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on user mailing lists and Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org. Downloading LibreOffice
Berlin, 30 October 2025 – The Document Foundation announces the release of LibreOffice 25.2.7, the final maintenance release of the LibreOffice 25.2 family, available for download at www.libreoffice.org/download [1]. Users of LibreOffice 25.2.x should update to LibreOffice 25.8.x, as LibreOffice 25.2.x is approaching the end of its support period. LibreOffice 25.2.7 is based on the LibreOffice Technology, which enables the development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – either from TDF or from the ecosystem – that fully supports the two document format standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP), and the closed and proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX). Products based on the LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud. For enterprise-class deployments, TDF recommends a LibreOffice Enterprise optimized version from one of the ecosystem companies, with dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs and security patch backports for three to five years (www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/). English manuals for the LibreOffice 25.2 family are available for download at books.libreoffice.org/en/. End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice
Today, Microsoft is ending official support for Windows 10. This leaves users who want to continue using the operating system with few alternatives — especially if they have an old PC that is not compatible with Windows 11’s demanding hardware requirements — other than buying a new PC. If you’re tired of struggling with your operating system instead of getting work done, it might be time to reconsider your setup. Linux isn’t just for servers and developers; it’s also a viable alternative to Windows for desktop use. Whether you’re looking for better performance, greater privacy, or a more intuitive user experience, Linux is the answer. Here are 10 reasons why switching to Linux is a good idea: No Forced Updates. Windows often interrupts your work with updates and sometimes restarts your system without permission. With Linux, you have full control over when and how you update. No surprises. No more restarts during a Zoom call! It’s Really Free. Linux costs zero in any currency. Most distributions are open source, meaning you can download, install and use them for free forever, with no licence fees or activation keys. There are also no “Pro” versions that hide features which are only available
