gmane.comp.documentfoundation.announce

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.0.4

Italo Vignoli — 2013-06-19T10:56:36

Berlin, June 19, 2013 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces
LibreOffice 4.0.4, for Windows, OS X and Linux, the fourth minor release
of LibreOffice 4.0 family and the last before the announcement of
LibreOffice 4.1 in late July.

LibreOffice 4.0.4 features many improvements in the area of
interoperability with proprietary document formats. This ongoing
activity has been instrumental for the choice of LibreOffice by all
major migration projects to free software since early 2012, including
several central and local governments in Europe and South America.

LibreOffice 4.0.4 also solves a number of bugs and regressions over the
previous release, thanks to the work of QA volunteers. On June 20, the
team is launching a 15 day Bug Triage Contest to prepare for the release
of LibreOffice 4.1. Details here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Projects/Bug_Triage_Contest. The
top 5 triagers - amongst the known ones - and the first 10 new
contributors will win a TDF/LibreOffice T-shirt.

LibreOffice 4.1 will introduce many new and exciting features, which are
listed here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.1
(including the long awaited font embedding in documents, which is
pushing forward the Open Document Format).

In addition, there is a massive amount of improvements less visible to
end users but equally important, as cumulatively they add up to a
code-base that is far easier to understand and contribute to:
http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2013-06-13-under-the-hood.html.

LibreOffice 4.0.4 is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Change logs are available at
the following links:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.4/RC1 (fixed in
4.0.4.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.4/RC2
(fixed in 4.0.4.2).

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-pp.

The Document Foundation welcomes France's MIMO in the Advisory Board

Italo Vignoli — 2013-06-17T11:17:59

MIMO (Inter-Ministry Mutualisation for an Open Productivity Suite)
represents several bodies of the French government, and fosters the
diversity of TDF Advisory Board by adding the voice of 500,000
professional users

Berlin, June 17, 2013 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces that
MIMO - the working group of the French government including several
ministries and administrations [1], for a total of 500,000 desktops - is
now an official member of the foundation's Advisory Board. MIMO primary
goal is to give CIOs and their staff a way to share experience on office
suites and operating systems, in order to speed up desktop modernisation.

MIMO is focused on the free desktop, and is one of a number of working
groups focusing each one on a specific area of the information system
under the guidance of the DISIC (French state CIO). Together, the
working groups are creating an official set of free software for the
ministries, with a specific application for each task.

MIMO has standardised on LibreOffice, developed by the Document
Foundation, and is contributing to the development of the office suite
through a commercial support agreement provided by certified developers.
The role of MIMO is to validate successive versions of LibreOffice and
make them compatible with the IT infrastructure and processes of member
ministries. A single, standard LibreOffice version is validated and
approved every year, according to the roadmap planned by MIMO members

To be approved, a version of LibreOffice is submitted to a qualification
process: the software is tested to verify its compatibility with other
business applications, and becomes a certified MIMO version only after
all QA tests have been passed. The Ministry of Interior - for example -
has a ten-step qualification process, with tests including compatibility
with business applications, macros and deployment tools. The decision is
taken by all the members representing the ministries.

MIMO is joining the current 8 members of TDF Advisory Board - Google,
Intel, Lanedo, Red Hat, SUSE, Freies Office Deutschland e.V., Software
in the Public Interest (SPI) and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) -
and will be represented by Laure Patas d'Illiers, of the Department of
Treasury and Finance of the French government.

[1] Ministries: Agriculture, Culture, Defense, Economy, Education,
Environment, Finance, Interior, Justice. Administrations: CAF (Family
Allocation Funds), DILA (Direction of Legal / Administrative
Information), ENA (National Administration School), National Assembly.

Short link to blog post: http://wp.me/p1byPE-pk.

About MIMO

The MIMO working group was created by the Agency for Digital Development
in Administration (ADAE) in 2005, under the governance of the Prime
Minister. Since 2011, MIMO has been controlled by DISIC (Direction
Interministérielle des Systèmes d'Information et de Communication),
whose mission is to coordinate IT policy in French administrations.
DISIC has launched working groups on cloud computing, the organisation
and planning of IT systems, and Open Source. MIMO and the Open Source
working group are managed by the CIO of the Ministry of Culture
(Ministère de la Culture).

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.0.3

Italo Vignoli — 2013-05-09T07:08:49

Berlin, May 9, 2013 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces
LibreOffice 4.0.3, for Windows, OS X and Linux, the third minor release
of LibreOffice 4.0 family. OS X Intel packages are now signed by The
Document Foundation, to pass OS X Gatekeeper security without user
intervention.

In the meantime, another large migration to LibreOffice has been
announced, as the government of Spain's autonomous region of Extremadura
has just begun the switch to free software of desktop PCs and expects
the majority of its 40,000 PCs to be migrated by the end of 2013.
Extremadura estimates that the move to open source - including
LibreOffice - will help save 30 million Euro per year.

Community is growing too. After the success of the LibreOffice Impress
Sprint in Germany, it is now the turn of the first LibreOffice Bay Area
Meetup. It will take place on May 11, 2013 starting at 2pm in the Hacker
Dojo in Mountain View, California. Bjoern Michaelsen will be there for
some good Q&A, and most importantly for some hands-on work on how to get
involved in the project, with Simon Phipps keynoting about "Foundations
and Empires".

The Document Foundation and LibreOffice are still growing at a steady
pace: +13% year over year according to data parsed by Ohloh, with an
average of over 100 active developers per month since February 2013.
These figures tops the cumulative number of over 650 new developers
attracted by the project since the announcement on September 28, 2010.

Developers are contributing not only to the code but also to the quality
of the software, as in the case of Markus Mohrhard's python script for
LibreOffice that automatically imports some 24,500 documents and tests
if the program crashes in the process
(http://mmohrhard.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/automated-import-crash-testing-in-libreoffice/),
or Florian Reisinger's LibreOffice Server Install GUI which performs a
parallel installation of LibreOffice without using the command line, for
QA purposes (http://flosmind.wordpress.com/libreoffice-server-install-gui/).

LibreOffice 4.0.3 is another important step in the process of improving
the quality and stability of the bleeding edge version of the suite, and
facilitating migrations to free software by governments and enterprises.

The new release is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Change logs are available at
the following links:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.3/RC1 (fixed in
4.0.3.1), https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.3/RC2 (fixed
in 4.0.3.2), and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.3/RC3
(fixed in 4.0.3.3).

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-p1

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.6

Italo Vignoli — 2013-04-11T13:02:46

Berlin, April 11, 2013 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces
LibreOffice 3.6.6, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, targeted to enterprises
and individual end users who prefer stability to more advanced features.
This new release is suited to the increasing number of organizations
migrating to LibreOffice, which is steadily growing worldwide.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation with a donation. There is a donation
page - with many options including PayPal and credit cards - at
http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the growth of the project in
areas such as infrastructure, marketing and development of native
language communities.

LibreOffice 3.6.6 is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice
are available from the following link:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

The change log - with over 50 bugs solved - is available at
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC1 (fixed in
3.6.6.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC2
(fixed in 3.6.6.2).

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-oo.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.0.2

Florian Effenberger — 2013-04-04T10:05:27

Berlin, April 4, 2013 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces 
LibreOffice 4.0.2, for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, the third release of 
the LibreOffice 4.0 family that fixes several small bugs and glitches.

This is another important milestone in the process of improving the 
quality and stability of the bleeding edge version of LibreOffice, and 
facilitating the migration process to free software. The Document 
Foundation has recently published a white paper to provide a reference 
roadmap for migrations to LibreOffice, which is available here: 
http://tinyurl.com/mwp-v1.

To foster the development of LibreOffice, The Document Foundation needs 
your support! There is a dedicated donation page at 
http://donate.libreoffice.org that lists various options to contribute 
to the budget of the charitable entity.

LibreOffice 4.0.2 is available for immediate download from the following 
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice 
are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org.

The change log is available at 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.2/RC1 (fixed in 
4.0.2.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.2/RC2 
(fixed in 4.0.2.2).

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-oi


About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, 
meritocratic organization, 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 November 30, 2012, 
TDF has over 150 members and over 2.000 volunteers and contributors 
worldwide.


Media Contacts

Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
Phone: +49 8341 99660880 - Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff< at >documentfoundation.org

Charles H. Schulz (based in Paris, France, UTC+1)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 - E-mail: charles.schulz< at >documentfoundation.org

Eliane Domingos de Sousa (based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UTC-3)
E-mail: elianedomingos< at >documentfoundation.org - Skype: elianedomingos

Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 - E-mail: italo.vignoli< at >documentfoundation.org - 
Skype: italovignoli - GTalk: italo.vignoli< at >gmail.com

TDF releases White Paper to help migrations to LibreOffice

Italo Vignoli — 2013-03-27T12:16:00

Berlin, March 27, 2013 - The Document Foundation releases a white paper 
to help organizations migrate to LibreOffice. Published on Document 
Freedom Day, the text explains how governments and enterprises can 
leverage Free Software to lower their IT expenditures and get rid of 
proprietary software lock-in.

Link to white paper: 
http://documentfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/tdf-migrationwhitepaper1.pdf.

According to the white paper, migrations to Free Software - and 
especially to LibreOffice - should follow a carefully crafted change 
management process, which needs to handle not only the technical 
aspects, which are actually the easiest ones to cope with, but also the 
barriers met when breaking long-term working habits.

LibreOffice liberates the users from proprietary document formats by 
adopting natively ODF (Open Document Format), which is the standard 
document format recognized by the largest number of organizations and 
supported by the largest number of desktop software (including Microsoft 
Office).

In addition, LibreOffice offers the largest set of import filters for 
proprietary document formats (including Microsoft Office, Publisher, 
Visio and Works, plus Corel Draw, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPro, Quattro Pro 
and WordPerfect), and thus protects user investments in legacy 
applications, while providing a migration path to ODF.

Last but not least, LibreOffice templates are using only free fonts 
available on every OS which can be installed independently from any 
software package and thus foster interoperability between GNU/Linux, 
MacOS and Windows users as documents maintain their original layout on 
every platform.

LibreOffice is immediately available for download from the following 
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice 
are available from the following link: 
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can 
support The Document Foundation with a donation at 
http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to maintain 
the infrastructure, and support events and marketing activities to 
increase the awareness of the project, both at a global and local level.

Short link to blog post: http://wp.me/p1byPE-n4.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.0.1

Italo Vignoli — 2013-03-06T11:58:59

Impress Remote for Android now available on every platform

Berlin, March 6, 2013 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces
LibreOffice 4.0.1, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, the first release after
the successful launch of LibreOffice 4.0 in early February, which has
yielded rates of entirely new client IP addresses requesting updates
each day over the 100,000 mark (they were just 25,000 one year ago).

LibreOffice Impress Remote is now available for all platforms - Linux,
MacOS and Windows - from Google Play
(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.libreoffice.impressremote&hl=en.
How to instructions are available on the wiki:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Impress/RemoteHowTo.

The new release is a step forward in the process of improving the
overall quality and stability of LibreOffice 4.0. For enterprise
adoptions, though, The Document Foundation suggests the more solid and
stable LibreOffice 3.6.5, backed by certified level 3 support engineers.

The Documentation team has also released the guide "Getting Started with
LibreOffice 4.0", which is available in PDF and ODF formats from the
website (http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/) and as a
printed book from Lulu
(http://www.lulu.com/shop/libreoffice-documentation-team/libreoffice-40-getting-started-guide/paperback/product-20725693.html).

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation - infrastructure, marketing, community
development - with a donation. There is a donation page - with many
options including PayPal and credit cards - at
http://donate.libreoffice.org.

LibreOffice 4.0.1 is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice
are available from the following link:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

The change logs are available from
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.1/RC1 (fixed in
4.0.1.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.1/RC2
(fixed in 4.0.1.2).

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-mS

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.0

Italo Vignoli — 2013-02-07T12:05:03

The free office suite the community has been dreaming of for twelve years

Berlin, February 7, 2013 - The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice
4.0, the free office suite the community has been dreaming of since
2001. LibreOffice 4.0 is the first release that reflects the objectives
set by the community at the time of the announcement, in September 2010:
a cleaner and leaner code base, an improved set of features, better
interoperability, and a more diverse and inclusive ecosystem.

LibreOffice 4.0: a community on fire

In less than 30 months, LibreOffice has grown dramatically to become the
largest independent free software project focused on end user desktop
productivity. TDF inclusive governance and the copyleft license have
been instrumental in attracting more than 500 developers - three
quarters of them being independent volunteers - capable of contributing
over 50,000 commits.

The resulting code base is rather different from the original one, as
several million lines of code have been added and removed, by adding new
features, solving bugs and regressions, adopting state of the art C++
constructs, replacing tools, getting rid of deprecated methods and
obsoleted libraries, and translating twenty five thousand lines of
comments from German to English. All of this makes the code easier to
understand and more rewarding to be involved with for the stream of new
members of our community.

"LibreOffice 4.0 is a milestone in interoperability and an excellent
foundation for our continued work to improve the User Interface,"
explains Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board of Directors. "Our
project is not only capable of attracting new developers on a regular
basis, but it also creates a transparent platform for cooperation based
on a strong Free Software ethos, where corporate sponsored and volunteer
developers work to attain the same objective."

LibreOffice 4.0: the new features

LibreOffice 4.0 offers a large number of new characteristics, which are
listed on this page:
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes.

- Integration with several content and document management systems -
including Alfresco, IBM FileNet P8, Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, Nuxeo,
OpenText, SAP NetWeaver Cloud Service and others - through the CMIS
standard.
- Better interoperability with DOCX and RTF documents, thanks to several
new features and improvements like the possibility of importing ink
annotations and attaching comments to text ranges.
- Possibility to import Microsoft Publisher documents, and further
improvement of Visio import filters with the addition of 2013 version
(just announced).
- Additional UI incremental improvements, including Unity integration
and support of Firefox Themes (Personas) to give LibreOffice a
personalized look.
- Introduction of the widget layout technique for dialog windows, which
makes it easier to translate, resize and hide UI elements, reduces code
complexity, and lays a foundation for a much improved user interface.
- Different header and footer on the first page of a Writer document,
without the need of a separate page style.
- Several performance improvements to Calc, plus new features such as
export of charts as images (JPG and PNG) and new spreadsheet functions
as defined in ODF OpenFormula.
- First release of Impress Remote Control App for Android, supported
only on some Linux distributions. (The second release, coming soon, will
be supported on all platforms: Windows, MacOS X and all Linux distros
and binaries.)
- Significant performance improvements when loading and saving many
types of documents, with particular improvements for large ODS and XLSX
spreadsheets and RTF files.
- Improved code contribution thanks to Gerrit: a web based code review
system, facilitating the task for projects using Git version control
system (although this is not specific of LibreOffice 4.0, it has entered
the production stage just before the 4.0 branch).

LibreOffice 4.0: under the hood

There are a number of fixes and improvements primarily of interest to
developers:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.0#API_Changes.

Overall excellent backwards compatibility is retained for legacy
extensions, but moving forward TDF is committed to a more pro-active
approach to evolving the UNO APIs, with more functionality to be
deprecated, and eventually dropped, in due time - according to the six
month release cycle - throughout the LibreOffice 4.x release series.

During the last seven months, since the branch of LibreOffice 3.6 and
during the entire development cycle of LibreOffice 4.0, developers have
made over 10,000 commits. On average, one commit every 30 minutes,
including weekends and the holiday season: a further testimonial of the
incredible vitality of the project.

How to get LibreOffice 4.0

LibreOffice 4.0 is immediately available for download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice
are available from the following link:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

Changelogs are available at
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.0/RC1 (solved in
4.0.0.1), https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.0/RC2 (solved
in 4.0.0.2) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.0/RC3
(solved in 4.0.0.3).

Support The Document Foundation

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation with a donation at
http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to grow the
infrastructure, and support marketing activities to increase the
awareness of the project, both at global and local level.

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-mG.

Re: The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.5

Rainer Bielefeld — 2013-02-04T07:19:39

Florian Effenberger schrieb:


Hi Joel,

we already have the 3.6.5 release since some days, please update 
Bugzilla and BSA, modify
"3.6.5.2 rc"   to   "3.6.5.2 release"

Best regards


Rainer

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.5

Florian Effenberger — 2013-01-30T12:09:14

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.5
Volunteers will present the progress in code development at FOSDEM

Berlin, January 30, 2013 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces 
LibreOffice 3.6.5, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, which is going to be 
the last of LibreOffice 3.6 family before LibreOffice 4.0, the next 
major release. This new release is another step forward in the process 
of improving the overall quality and stability of LibreOffice, and 
facilitating the migration process to free software.

LibreOffice 3.6.5 arrives a couple of days before FOSDEM 2013 (Brussels, 
Belgium, February 2/3), where TDF developer's community will gather for 
the third time since the birth of the project. LibreOffice will have a 
booth in building K and a DevRoom - with several talks about hacking the 
source code - in building H 
(https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/track/libreoffice/) on Sunday, 
February 3, from 9:30AM onwards (room H.2213).

In addition, on Sunday at 3PM Michael Meeks will speak about 
"LibreOffice: cleaning and re-factoring a giant code-base (or why 
re-writing it would be even worse)" 
(https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/challenges_libreoffice/), in 
Room Janson.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can 
support The Document Foundation with a donation. There is a donation 
page - with many options including PayPal and credit cards - at 
http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the infrastructure.

LibreOffice 3.6.5 is available for immediate download from the following 
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice 
are available from the following link: 
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

The change log is available at 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.5/RC2 (fixed in 3.6.5).


Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-mx


Media Contacts

Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
Phone: +49 8341 99660880 - Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff< at >documentfoundation.org
Charles H. Schulz (based in Paris, France, UTC+1)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 - E-mail: charles.schulz< at >documentfoundation.org
Eliane Domingos de Sousa (based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UTC-3)
E-mail: elianedomingos< at >documentfoundation.org - Skype: elianedomingos
Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 - E-mail: italo.vignoli< at >documentfoundation.org 
- Skype: italovignoli - GTalk: italo.vignoli< at >gmail.com


About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, 
meritocratic organization, 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 November 30, 2012, 
TDF has over 150 members and over 2.000 volunteers and contributors 
worldwide.

LibreOffice runs on the Raspberry Pi, with the right license

Italo Vignoli — 2012-12-20T11:13:25

The full fledged free office suite is available on the credit card sized
single-board computer developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation

Cambridge (UK) and Berlin (Germany), December 20, 2012 - The Raspberry
Pi Foundation (http://www.raspberrypi.org/) and The Document Foundation
(http://www.documentfoundation.org/) announce the availability of the
full fledged version of LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/) on the
Raspberry Pi, the credit-card sized computer created with the intention
of stimulating the teaching of basic computer science in schools. The
Raspberry Pi is a little PC which plugs into a TV and a keyboard and can
be used for many of the things that most desktop PC can do, like
spreadsheets, word-processing and games.

LibreOffice is the first comprehensive office suite to run on a 40
dollar credit card sized PC, without any compromise on features and
performances. LibreOffice has been ported to ARM by multiple
contributors from Canonical, Debian and RedHat, and was packaged for the
Raspberry Pi by Rene Engelhard as a part of his work as the Debian
maintainer for LibreOffice.

"The availability of LibreOffice, the best free office suite ever, on
the Raspberry Pi - the most affordable PC ever, targeted to hardware and
software enthusiasts, and schools - is extremely important for The
Document Foundation, because it will contribute to the growth of the
brand awareness in key market segments", comments Bjoern Michaelsen, a
Canonical developer and a deputy member of the Board of Directors of The
Document Foundation.

"I'm very impressed that the LibreOffice team didn't have to make any
changes to the code in order for it to compile and smoothly run on
Raspberry Pi", said Eben Upton from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. "It's
also great to have a comprehensive office suite available in the Pi
Store at launch, making people even more aware of the potential of this
device".

LibreOffice is available from the Raspberry Pi Store
(http://store.raspberrypi.com/projects/libreoffice), which is described
here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2768 (including instructions
on how to install it). Raspberry Pi Foundation announcement press
release is here: http://blog.indiecity.com/?page_id=2269.

UPDATE (December 20, 2012): The license blurb has been fixed, and it now
links to the LGPLv3 text.

About the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer, designed to fit in a pocket, and
cheap enough to be bought with pocket money. It was developed by the
not-for-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation in Cambridge to help children
engage with computer programming, and has won dozens of awards in its
first year of release. Additional information at http://www.raspberrypi.org.

LibreOffice 4.0 Test Marathon: December 14 to 19

Cor Nouws — 2012-12-07T20:33:48

  The Document Foundation announces a 6 day Test Marathon
  to help preparing the new 4.0 version of LibreOffice,
  the best free office suite ever


Berlin, December 7 2012,  The Document Foundation announces the 
LibreOffice 4.0 Test Marathon. During 6 days, from December 14 to 19, 
users and supporters around the world will be testing the first beta of 
the upcoming LibreOffice 4.0.

The final version of LibreOffice 4.0 will be released in February 2013. 
By organising this big Test Marathon early, the developers will be able 
to fix many bugs before the release candidates and the final version are 
made available.

The LibreOffice community has organised various bug hunt sessions 
before, with many people joining, bugs found and tests done. This has 
contributed considerably to the overall quality of the product.
Also participants were enthusiastic. Thanks to helping in the QA work, 
they learned a lot about powerful functions of LibreOffice and tricks 
how to use the office suite.

Participating is easy and fun. Since the event is lasting a week, 
everyone may choose the moments that suit them best.

Details are available on the wiki of The Document Foundation
   http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Test_Marathon_LibreOffice_4.0.
There's also an overview of LibreOffice 4.0 new and improved features 
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.0.

All participants need is a PC with Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, and a 
LibreOffice 4.0 test version (which will be available from 
http://www.libreoffice.org/pre-releases a few days before the Test 
Marathon), plus a lot of enthusiasm.

Filing bugs will be extremely easy, thanks to the help of experienced 
people who will be around those days to help users and supporters with 
tips, on the QA mailing list (libreoffice-qa< at >freedesktop.org) and on the 
IRC channel (irc://chat.freenode.net/libreoffice-qa).

LibreOffice 3.6.4 Download

Italo Vignoli — 2012-12-05T11:25:34

I apologize, but I have sent out the announcement one hour before it was
intended to be launched. The download page will be ready in less than
one hour, at 12UTC (or GMT).

Unfortunately when I have programmed the message and the blog post I
have used 12CET, which is my time zone (being based in Italy).

Please be patient, I am an old man...

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.4

Italo Vignoli — 2012-12-05T11:00:20

Berlin, December 5, 2012 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces
LibreOffice 3.6.4, for Windows, MacOS and Linux. This new release is
another step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and
stability for any kind of deployment, on personal desktops or inside
organizations and companies of any size.

LibreOffice 3.6.4 arrives a couple of weeks after the successful LiMux
HackFest, where more than 30 developers have gathered to hack
LibreOffice code and work on features and patches. One result is this
video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gIqOOajdYQ&hd=1 - by Peter
Baumgarten and Christian Lohmeier, showing how easy it is to build
LibreOffice on your own to get involved in the project.

Additional results can be found on the wiki:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfest/Munich2012#Achievements.

LibreOffice hacker community will gather again at FOSDEM 2013, in a
focused DevRoom -
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Events/Fosdem2013 -
dedicated to attracting new hackers around the code of the best free
office suite ever. Call for papers ends on December 23, 2012.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation with a donation. There is a donation
page - with many options including PayPal and credit cards - at
http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the fundraising campaign for 2013.

LibreOffice 3.6.4 is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice
are available from the following link:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

Change logs are available at
http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-6-4-release-3.6.4.1.log
(fixed in 3.6.4.1) and
http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-tag-libreoffice-3.6.4.3-release-3.6.4.3.log
(fixed in 3.6.4.3).

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-kR

The Document Foundation announces the first group of LibreOfficeCertified Developers

Italo Vignoli — 2012-11-07T12:56:32

Berlin & Barcelona, November 7, 2012 - The Document Foundation announces 
the first group of LibreOffice Certified Developers, who are recognized 
for their ability to hack LibreOffice code to develop new features or 
provide L3 support to enterprise users. They are: Bjoern Michaelsen 
(Canonical), Caolan McNamara (RedHat), Cedric Bosdonnat (SUSE), 
Christian Lohmaier (Volunteer), David Tardon (RedHat), Eike Rathke 
(RedHat), Eilidh McAdam (Lanedo), Fridrich Strba (SUSE), Jan Holesovsky 
(SUSE), Kohei Yoshida (SUSE), Lionel Elie Mamane (Volunteer), Lubos 
Lunak (SUSE), Markus Mohrhard (Volunteer), Michael Meeks (SUSE), Michael 
Stahl (RedHat), Petr Mladek (SUSE), Rene Engelhard (Volunteer), Stephan 
Bergmann (RedHat), Thorsten Behrens (SUSE), Timár András (SUSE) and Tor 
Lillqvist (SUSE).

Certification is a key milestone for building LibreOffice ecosystem, and 
increase the number of organizations capable of adding value around the 
best free office suite ever (and, hopefully, help to spread the adoption 
over proprietary and open source office suites). LibreOffice Certified 
Developers have been peer reviewed by the Engineering Steering 
Committee, which has appointed Bjoern Michaelsen, Jan Holesovsky and 
Stephan Bergmann to manage the certification process for developers.

Certified developers extend the reach of the community to the corporate 
world, and offer CIOs and IT managers a professional recognition in line 
with corporate requests for added value development and support 
services. TDF will soon extend certification to Migration Professionals 
and Training Professionals, starting from early 2013.

The LibreOffice Certification Program is outlined on the project website 
at the following address: 
http://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/. There is also a 
specific mailing list - certification< at >global.libreoffice.org - dedicated 
to the certification project, which is reaching all the members of the 
Certification Committee. Requests for information and applications 
should be addressed to this mailing list.

FOSDEM 2013 Call 4 Papers

Italo Vignoli — 2012-11-03T18:48:16

FOSDEM 2013, Brussels, February 2/3, 2013

FOSDEM has been the first public appearance of The Document Foundation,
after the release of LibreOffice 3.3 at the end of January 2011. The
conference has been instrumental, so far, for the extraordinary growth
of LibreOffice hackers community. FOSDEM 2013 should escalate what we
have been able to achieve in 2011 and 2012!

FOSDEM 2013 will be your next chance ever for a talk about LibreOffice
at the largest European gathering of free software developers and advocates.

Do you want to share your experience in starting to hack the code, or
tell about the tweaks in your build environment, or talk about the code
changes you have done or those that you have been preparing, or share
some insight on your QA work? Or maybe what you plan for translation or
infrastructure?

Please submit your speech proposal on the wiki
(http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Events/Fosdem2013), by
adding the information on a copy of the table. We really like you to
share in the way that fits you best, be it 5, 15 or up to 30 minutes.

We might have to choose between the various proposals, as time is
limited. So please give a clear description of your talk, including
goals and target audience.

The deadline is December 23, 2012. This will allow the DevRoom managers
to spend most of their holiday time by putting together the schedule,
which will be published in early January 2013 in order to allow early
booking of flights and accommodations.

FOSDEM is a free conference to attend, and we will try to seek
sponsorship. But funding is limited, so please only request it if you
cannot attend otherwise, and we will try to do our best to support you.

LibreOffice DevRoom

Come and hear about the growth and success of LibreOffice and how you
can get involved in this exciting project at the cutting edge of Free
Software. Hear from many of the core developers, work out how best to
get your most annoying problems fixed, and find how best to get plugged
into the team. Co-ordinate with your co-developers, get caught up with
the latest developments all over the project, meet friends you've hacked
with on-line, all this and more. If you're just a user and want to go
deeper, to help improve things we'll have something for you too.

When and where?

On Sunday, February 3rd, 2013, from 09:00 onwards. We have to leave the
room by 17:30 at the latest.

More Info

Wiki Page: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Events/Fosdem2013

Email for Questions: info< at >documentfoundation.org

Discussions with developers and code hackers take place on
libreoffice< at >lists.freedesktop.org

Discussions with marketers for the organization of the DevRoom take
place on marketing< at >global.libreoffice.org

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.3

Italo Vignoli — 2012-11-01T14:02:10

Berlin, November 1, 2012 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces
LibreOffice 3.6.3, for Windows, MacOS and Linux. This new release is
another step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and
stability for any kind of deployment, on personal desktops or inside
organizations and companies of any size.

LibreOffice has quickly become the de facto standard for migrations to
free office suites, thanks to the growing feature set and the improved
interoperability with proprietary software. Instrumental for the overall
progress is the growing developer base, which has just reached the
number of 550 since the launch of the project, making LibreOffice one of
the fastest growing free software projects of the decade.

After the City of Munich and the French Government, which are migrating
from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice, it is now the turn of several
provinces in Italy, including the largest one in term of inhabitants. In
addition, there are many private companies switching to LO, like the
largest furniture manufacturer and retailer in Romania, with 1,000
Windows and GNU/Linux desktops.

LibreOffice hackers community will gather in Munich for the second LiMux
HackFest (http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfest/Munich2012)
between November 23 and 25. As usual, there will be code, but also beer
and pasta, in the true spirit of a free software project.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support the efforts the development and the advocacy efforts of The
Document Foundation with a donation - with many options, including
PayPal and credit cards - at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

LibreOffice 3.6.3 is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions are available
from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

Change logs are available at
http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-6-3-release-3.6.3.1.log
(fixed in 3.6.3.1) and
http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-6-3-release-3.6.3.2.log
(fixed in 3.6.3.2).

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-kz

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5.7

Italo Vignoli — 2012-10-18T16:18:05

Berlin, October 18, 2012 - The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice
3.5.7, the seventh and possibly last version of the free office suite's
3.5 family, which solves additional bugs and regressions, and offers
stability improvements over LibreOffice 3.5.6.
The Document Foundation suggests all users to upgrade from previous
versions to LibreOffice 3.5.7.

LibreOffice 3.5.7 is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

Change logs are available at
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.7/RC1 and
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.7/RC2.

Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

When downloading the software, you might consider about donating some
money to The Document Foundation for the development of LibreOffice and
the growth of the community, by accessing our donation page at
http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-kn

LibreOffice Conference opens in Berlin

Italo Vignoli — 2012-10-17T07:43:56

LibreOffice Conference, Berlin, October 17, 2012 - Florian Effenberger,
Chairman of the Board of The Document Foundation, has officially opened
the 2nd LibreOffice Conference (http://conference.libreoffice.org)
addressing the authorities and the community members gathered in the
capital city of Germany from the five continents.

"As of today, LibreOffice is being used by close to 60 million people.
It is the standard free office suite on all major platforms, available
in over 100 languages. Large cities and organizations are deploying it
very successfully, more and more schools and universities are rolling it
out, and there's not a single month where it is not covered by major
media around the globe – because we always have good news to share. The
Document Foundation has become a member of leading organizations for
free software and open standards, and at the very same time, is widely
seen as a the leader in its area, built on strong reputation and
credibility. Last but not least, the ecosystem is growing rapidly, as
more and more enterprises discover the business benefit of truly free
software."

"We are now a family of thousands of contributors around the globe. I
not only have colleagues all over the world, but more important, true
friends, and I am honoured to be part of a large family. Everyone with
their very own story, their very own background, and their very own
skills. Different ages, cultures and languages, all united by one goal:
providing the best free office suite ever, and giving power to those who
contribute by passion. By living our values day by day, we make possible
what we never dared to dream of two years ago."

LibreOffice Conference 2012 is hosted by the Federal Ministry of the
Interior (http://www.bmi.bund.de) and the Federal Ministry of Economics
and Technology (http://www.bmwi.de) he Federal Republic of Germany, and
Freies Office Deutschland e.V. The event is sponsored by Canonical
(http://www.canonical.com), Google (http://www.google.com), SerNet
(http://www.sernet.de), bitbone (http://www.bitbone.de), Lanedo
(http://www.lanedo.com), Red Hat (http://www.redhat.com) and Univention
(http://www.univention.de).

The main conference sessions will be broadcasted online, while all
sessions will be recorded and made available on the conference website.
To access both real time and recorded video, the infrastructure team has
created a single webpage at http://conference.libreoffice.org/streams.

LibreOffice 3.6.2 is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice
are available from the following link:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center. When downloading the
software, you might consider about donating some money to The Document
Foundation for the development of LibreOffice and the growth of the
community, by accessing our donation page at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing,
meritocratic organization, 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 September 30, 2012,
TDF has over 150 members and over 3.000 volunteers and contributors
worldwide.

LibreOffice is booming

Italo Vignoli — 2012-10-17T07:45:52

Over 2 million downloads in September, over 540 developers,
a community of over 3,000 volunteers from the five continents,
over 100 languages (representing 95% of the world population)
LibreOffice Conference, Berlin, October 17, 2012 - The Document
Foundation announces that the German city of Munich is migrating to
LibreOffice, following a growing trend of migrations and adoptions
worldwide. "After a careful risk-assessment, Munich city council has
decided to migrate to LibreOffice. In favour of that decision, among
others, was the greater flexibility of the project regarding consumption
of open source licenses. In addition, Munich wants to rely on a large
and vibrant community for any Open Source product it employs," says
Kirsten Böge, head of public relations.

Just before the city of Munich, a similar announcement was made by the
French Prime Minister, who mentioned LibreOffice as a pillar in the
overall migration of free software of all government bodies. MimO, the
technology group taking care of the migration project, has already
certified LibreOffice as the free office suite of choice.

Several other large migrations to LibreOffice have happened or are
happening in Denmark (Hospitals of Copenhagen), Italy (Regione Umbria,
Provincia di Milano, City Councils of Provincia di Bolzano, and one of
the largest IT company in the banking sector), Spain (City of Las
Palmas), Ireland (City of Limerick), Greece (Municipality of Pilea
Hortiatis) and the US (City of Largo in Florida).

Chicago Public Library deploys LibreOffice on several PCs, as a service
for the people who need to create or edit documents, and provides
trainings to learn the free office suite.

LibreOffice is developed by a large and diverse hacker community, which
has grown from 20 to 550 members in two years. This group is backed by
an even larger number of active volunteers taking care of localizations,
quality assurance, community development and marketing at global and
local levels. Overall, the number of these people is over 3,000, if we
take as a measure those who have contributed to the project wiki.

LibreOffice has been downloaded over 20 million times - and over 2
million in September, following the announcement of version 3.6.2 - from
The Document Foundation mirror system (over 80% Windows + 10% MacOS),
with a large number of additional downloads from software and magazine
websites. In addition, LibreOffice is featured on a large number of
covermount CDs, which account for other installs. TDF estimates a grand
total of 60 million users, half of them being desktop Linux users who
get LibreOffice from their distribution repository.

"Looking at these figures, one can hardly believe that it all happened
in just two years," comments Italo Vignoli, Director of The Document
Foundation in charge of marketing communications. "During these months I
have traveled the world to speak at free software conferences about the
project, and I have met hundreds of people who recognize in LibreOffice
the legitimate heir of OpenOffice. Today, the numbers we are releasing
show that also governments and enterprises share this perception, and
support the idea that only a focused independent free software
foundation could provide a path forward for the OpenOffice code base."

LibreOffice 3.6.2 is available for immediate download from the following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice
are available from the following link:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center. When downloading the
software, you might consider about donating some money to The Document
Foundation for the development of LibreOffice and the growth of the
community, by accessing our donation page at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing,
meritocratic organization, 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 September 30, 2012,
TDF has over 150 members and over 3.000 volunteers and contributors
worldwide.

LibreOffice Conference: Streaming

Italo Vignoli — 2012-10-16T15:52:45

LibreOffice Conference live session streaming will be available from
http://conference.libreoffice.org/streams, starting from tomorrow at
10AM (CEST, or UTC+2).

There will be 3 live video streams of the talks and presentations:

Stream 1 from the Aula (Wednesday through Friday),

Stream 2 from the Eichensaal (Wednesday and Thursday) or the Hörsaal
(Friday), respectively,

Stream 3 from the Konferenzraum 2 (Wednesday through Friday).

In order to choose the sessions to follow, you can access the entire
conference program at http://conference.libreoffice.org/program.

Live streaming has been made possible by kind cooperation of Beuth
Hochschule für Technik Berlin - University of Applied Sciences, The
Document Foundation, and Freies Office Deutschland e.V.