Italo Vignoli

A summary of LibreOffice 7.3 Community new features, with a specific focus on interoperability with Microsoft Office documents

Today, the LibreOffice Technology platform is based on the same software engine for all modules, based on a clean and refactored source code, with a focus on code quality and consistency, and supported by easy and extensive APIs. LibreOffice consistency represents a strong advantage over the "siloed" approach of all other office suites, where there is a different software engine for each application and each platform. The result is a lack of consistency for files, which are also different by platform. LibreOffice Technology is the best open source platform for personal productivity, and is tightly integrated on desktop, mobile and cloud.

During the pandemic we have experienced a sudden growth of remote activities, with people working and studying from home. Most proprietary solutions were not suited for the task, as they were not compliant with GDPR, as they were profiling users beyond the provided service, and in many cases could not guarantee that end user data were maintained within Europe acconrding to EU legislations. Unfortunately, EU governments ignored the situation and signed contracts with big techs for remote work and remote teaching, exposing the personal information of million of EU citizens - the majority of them being students - to unauthorized practices. OSS could be the answer, but was ignored because there wasn't enough time to deploy appropriate solutions. The talk tries to provide a different perspective.

Open Document Format (ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML) are both ISO/IEC open document standards, but while the first is loyal to standard definitions the second is an unfortunate attempt to propagate proprietary formats in a pseudo-standard format to lock-in users to Microsoft Office for the foreseeable future. The presentation explains why ODF is a better standard than OOXML.

LibreOffice was announced in 2010. After 10 years, it was necessary to review and update the strategy based on the evolution of the office suite market, to improve the sustainability model. Enterprises are not supporting the project as much as individual users. Over time, this can represent a threat for the sustainability of the project. We have changed our strategy to educate enterprises about the right approach to FOSS, by giving back to ensure the long term sustainability of the LibreOffice project.

LibreOffice was announced in 2010 to relaunch innovation of the already stagnant OpenOffice project. After 10 years of growth, it was necessary to review and update the strategy based on the evolution of the office suite market, to improve the sustainability model. In fact, enterprises - although deploying LibreOffice to save money over proprietary solutions - are not supporting the project as much as individual users. Over time, this can represent a threat for the sustainability, as development can be slowed down. We have therefore changed our strategy to educate enterprises about the right approach to FOSS, by giving back in one of the many available ways: purchase the LTS version from the ecosystem, fund the development of a specific feature, pay for the solution of a bug or a regression, and so on. The right approach from enterprises would ensure the long term sustainability of the LibreOffice project, and the evolution of the Open Document Format (ODF) ISO standard file format for true interoperability.

LibreOffice was announced in 2010. After 10 years, it was necessary to review and update the strategy based on the evolution of the office suite market, to improve the sustainability model. Enterprises are not supporting the project as much as individual users. Over time, this can represent a threat for the sustainability of the project. We have changed our strategy to educate enterprises about the right approach to FOSS, by giving back to ensure the long term sustainability of the LibreOffice project.

ODF, LibreOffice native document format, is the only standard file format which allows full interoperability. ODF is robust, predictable, resilient, well documented, and based on existing standards. It is the perfect answer for digital content sharing.

LibreOffice was launched as a free office suite for Windows, macOS and Linux in 2010, by a large majority of OpenOffice community members. Over the years, the project has made a significant code cleaning and refactoring effort, and created a robust development infrastructure entirely based on open source software. Today, LibreOffice is available for the cloud and mobile platforms, in different flavours, optimized for community and enterprise users.

LibreOffice was announced in 2010 and will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2020. During these 10 years, the global community has grown from a small group of volunteers – mostly based in Europe – to a large and diverse group of free software advocates active in most countries. The presentation will discuss the challenges faced by the community during its incredible growth over the past 10 years.

How can we give users standing in free/open software/hardware? How can we motivate end users to care about FOSS if they can't express their preference? What tools do we have beyond the "court of public opinion"? Can we invent a NEW legal hack?

LibreOffice was announced in September 2010 as a fork of OOo, by a group of active members of the OOo community who were worried by Oracle acquiring Sun. They decided to create an organization capable of growing the LibreOffice project based on five founding principles: copyleft license, no contributor agreement, meritocracy, independence from vendor(s), and community governance. The talk will cover the history and governance peculiarities of The Document Foundation.

The Document Foundation (TDF), based in Germany, is the not for profit home of LibreOffice and the Document Liberation projects. Although is a German foundation, it has members who are at the same time the owners of the foundation and those who decide the governance, as they elect the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee from a list of candidates who have to be TDF members. TDF is based on five founding principles: copyleft license, no contributor agreement, meritocracy, independence from vendor(s), and community governance. Governance and statutes are hevily influenced by the previous experience at OOo, i.e. there isn't any community manager, there aren't any formal roles, and there isn't any formal mechanism for involving people (which makes people involvement a challenge). On the other hand, the community is growing nicely even without these people being appointed and a specific mechanism, but of course there are some issues like in any other community. The talk will briefly summarize the challenges we had to face in term of governance, and hopefully foster a discussion on the topic.

In 2019, we will relaunch the old ODF Adoption TC at OASIS as ODF Adoption Open Project, to allow a wider participation from ODF stakeholders. The program is to announce the new project in March, and convene for the first online meeting before Easter. An update about the program status at FOSDEM.

The Open Source label was born in February 1998 as a new way to popularise free software for business adoption. OSI will celebrate its 20th Anniversary on February 3, 2018, during the opening day of FOSDEM 2018. The presentation will summarize the evolution of open source licences and the Open Source Definition (OSD) across two decades, explain why the concept of free open source software has grown in both relevance and popularity and explore trends for the third decade of open source.

Open source software is now ubiquitous, recognized across industries as a fundamental component to infrastructure, as well as a critical factor for driving innovation. Over the past twenty years, the OSI has worked to promote and protect open source software, development, and communities, championing software freedom in society through education, collaboration, and infrastructure, stewarding the Open Source Definition (OSD), and preventing abuse of the ideals and ethos inherent to the open source movement. The “open source” label was created at a strategy session held at the start of February 1998 in Mountain View, California. That same month, now almost twenty years ago, the OSI was founded as a general educational and advocacy organization to raise awareness and adoption for the application of free software in an open development process. Some of the largest forces in business today — consumer-facing companies like Google and Facebook, business-facing companies like Salesforce and SUSE, companies outside the tech industry such as BMW, Capital One, and Zalando, even first-gen tech corporations like Microsoft and IBM — all increasingly depend on open source software. Governments too, including the European Union, France, India, the United Kingdom, the United States, and many others have discovered the benefits of open source software and development models. Successful collaborative development of software and infrastructure used by these organizations is enabled by the safe space created when they use their IP in new ways... to ensure an environment for co-creation where the four essential freedoms of software are guaranteed. As open source adoption has expanded, we have seen changes in the assumptions surrounding licensing, governance and development of open source projects. We will document that evolution and look ahead to see what trends and pressures face the global free and open source software movement as it expands beyond ICT to wireless, distributed devices and beyond.

Starting from LibreOffice 5.3, LibreOffice user interface will be improved with the addition of a notebook bar which integrates with the existing layout. A background on the rationale.

The Italian defense organization - Army, Navy and Air Force - is migrating to LibreOffice and ODF, in one single large project coordinated by a mixed group of soldiers and community members. The odd relationship between an extremely structured organization and a loosely tied community, which have learned to trust each other and to work together to reach a single objective.

The Italian defense organization - Army, Navy and Air Force - is migrating 150,000 desktops from various flavors of MS Office to LibreOffice and ODF, in one single large project coordinated by a mixed group of soldiers and community members. The first shift will migrate 55,000 desktops in 2016, while the remaining 95,000 will be migrated during the following four years. So far, the combined project team has trained a group of 32 trainers and support professionals, and the trainers have done the first short training to Rome based division IT managers. The presentation will tell about the odd relationship between an extremely structured organization and a loosely tied community, which have learned to trust each other and to work together to reach a single objective. Also, it will explain the technical activity for the integration of LibreOffice with the three different document management systems.

Wrap Up

Welcome and introduction to the open document editors devroom.

LibreOffice 4.0 is going to be a major announcement for The Document Foundation. The session will introduce the new version of the software using visuals, intended to help the entire community - starting from developers - to position the program in the right way, and present the new features.

Storytelling is a very effective communication tool, increasingly used in advertising today in order to build customer loyalty, and echoes the need of all humans to be entertained. Storytelling is a perfect tool for FLOSS projects, because it creates a sense of ownership for members of the project - even for those less involved - and therefore helps in growing the community. The presentation will offer an overview of basic storytelling techniques, and their application to FLOSS projects.