Everyone loves having shiny new features in LibreOffice. But how do we get them? Many are developed by volunteers and people in the ecosystem.

But another great source of new features is the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a global, online program focused on bringing new contributors into open source software development. GSoC Contributors work with open source organisations on a 12+ week programming project under the guidance of mentors.

And we’re happy to announce that for 2025’s GSoC, LibreOffice is once again taking part!

Find out more here

The LibreOffice Conference 2024, held in Luxembourg, welcomed also many speakers that are involved in creating, supporting and promoting Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in several countries.

Extending our annual conference and opening it to intervention from international organisations and institutions was appreciated change, which provided our community with additional insights as well as creating more opportunities for cooperation between the many stakeholders involved with FOSS.

The following videos represent a selection from the several tracks dedicated to topics that are complementary to LibreOffice and the ecosystem of organisations and communities that use it and support it.

Use the icon in the top-right to navigate the playlist – or see the direct links to individual videos underneath.

Links to individual videos

• Progress and trends in the national open source policies and legal frameworks – Axel Thévenet – Policy Advisor at OpenForum Europe – European Commission’s Open Source Observatory (OSOR)

• New regulations are coming! Compliance creates new challenges for OSS communities – Enzo Ribagnac – Associate Director for European Policy at the Eclipse Foundation

• A gentle introduction to free/open source at the European Commission – Gijs Hillenius – IT project officer at the European Commission’s Open Source Programme Office (EC OSPO)

• Open source as tool of trust – Mika Lauhde – Head of Technology, Delegation for CyberSpace, International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC)

• Open source in EdTech – Thibaud Latour – Managing director at the Luxembourg Media & Digital Design Centre

• Keynote of Minister for Research, Higher Education and of Digitalisation – Stéphanie Obertin – Minister for Digitalisation and Minister for Research and Higher Education

• Ministry of the Economy announcing the first OSPO in Luxembourg – François Thill – Director Cybersecurity and Digital Technologies at the Ministry of the Economy

• openDesk on openCode – building sovereign software for the public sector – Alexander Smolianitski – Head of Products at ZenDiS / Leonhard Kugler – Head of Open Source Plattform – Open CoDE at ZenDiS

• Luxchat4Gov – Patrick Weber – Attaché – Ministry for Digitalisation

• How Passbolt found its market fit thanks to open source – Kevin Muller – CEO at Passbolt

• Open source in research – The SnT way – Jacek Plucinski – FOSS team at the Technology Transfer Office of SnT, University of Luxembourg

The Nepalese community mentored CS50 students in Nepal create their very first resume for securing internships!

Our Nepalese community writes…

LibreOffice is a powerful open source office suite for many users worldwide. One of the major components is the word processing software, LibreOffice Writer, which is a highly effective tool for all levels of users.

We in the Nepalese community recently conducted a CV writing session titled “LibreOffice Writer – Creating Reusable CVs”, delivered by our Liaison for the Nepalese community, Mr Suraj Bhattarai. This session was one of the guest sessions for the first and second year CS50 students at IOE Purwanchal Campus, who went through the CS50 AI course this time. The purpose of the session was to help them articulate their learning from the CS50x and CS50 AI timeline into a presentable resume, together with their other strengths, to get their very first internship into the tech industry.

Suraj shared key insights when writing resume/CVs; he mentioned that the fact that fancy CVs or Canva templates are not yet a trend among hiring managers who happen to be millennials. What sells for a peak career or a first internship is a standard resume template. Apart from online options that generate downloadable CVs after the user simply fills out major details, the offline space has no significant help rather than making one in friendly software like LibreOffice Writer.

Suraj additionally shared that professional CVs/resumes for the purpose of very first internships are always simple, includes no crazy pictures, do not summarise in two or more columns, and mainly focus on experience and education – that’s it! This is equally true at every other level of careers. And for the very specific Applicant Tracking System (ATS), friendly resumes are always the best choice to go with!

He concluded that LibreOffice Writer is a powerful word processing software program that ships with many offline resume/CV templates. Also, more variations and template options could be downloaded from the official extensions site or this third-party one – the best one that resembles your very CV/resume preference. With this powerful word processing program, you can even create your very own template and publish it for millions of other LibreOffice Writer users online or offline.

In the final minutes of the session, Suraj hosted a CV/resume building competition using LibreOffice Writer. The 10 minute-challenge was hands-on for the students to experience LibreOffice Writer and get comfortable with it. A total of 38 students showcased their resumes/CVs following tips from the session. Among them, based on the writing style, formatting, and tone of language, the top three were awarded LibreOffice T-shirts as a gesture.

With videos describing new features on YouTube and PeerTube

Berlin, 27 February 2025 – LibreOffice 25.2.1, the first minor release of the new LibreOffice 25.2 volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux is available for download from our website [1]. LibreOffice is the best office suite for users who want to retain control over their individual software and documents, thereby protecting their privacy and digital life from the commercial interference and the lock-in strategies of Big Tech.

LibreOffice is the only office suite designed to meet the actual needs of the user – not just their eyes. It offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes, optimising the space available to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away. It is also the only software for creating documents (that may contain personal or confidential information) that respects the user’s privacy, ensuring that the user can decide if and with whom to share the content they create, thanks to the standard and open format that is not used as a lock-in tool, forcing periodic software updates. All this with a feature set that is comparable to the leading software on the market and far superior to that of any competitor.

What makes LibreOffice unique is the LibreOffice Technology Platform, the only one on the market that allows the consistent development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – including those provided by companies in the ecosystem – capable of producing identical and fully interoperable documents based on the two available ISO standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX). The latter hides a huge number of artificial (and unnecessary) lock-in complexities that create problems for users convinced they are using a standard format. Products based on 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 strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a wide range of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs and backports of security patches for several years: www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

English manuals for LibreOffice 25.2 Writer and Impress can be downloaded from books.libreoffice.org/en/. End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org.

Videos describing the new features of the LibreOffice 25.2 family are available on PeerTube and YouTube.

Availability …

In one month, on March 26, we will celebrate Document Freedom Day 2025. For the first time in a while, the LibreOffice project will play a major role in organizing the event.

During the day, we will mainly talk about the ISO Open Document Format, which was approved in 2005 by OASIS and in 2006 by ISO. Due to the global scale of the LibreOffice project, our events will be online.

There will be three webinars at 10:30 CET, 15:30 CET and 20:30 CET, with a presentation on the history of ODF and the great importance of the standard document format for digital sovereignty.

In addition, we will be connected for question and answer sessions at 1 p.m. CET and 6 p.m. CET, to delve deeper into the topics of the webinar and to satisfy the curiosity of users, most of whom use a proprietary format without being aware of it, and are therefore victims of Microsoft’s lock-in strategies.

In addition to online events, there will also be physical events organized by local open source communities. All events should be registered on the Document Freedom Day web page.

If you are planning to organize one of these events, please contact us at media@documentfoundation.org. We can help you by sending you LibreOffice and Open Document Format leaflets/flyers and stickers.

Berlin, 20 February 2025 – LibreOffice 24.8.5, the fifth minor release of the LibreOffice 24.8 family of the free open source, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), MacOS (Apple and Intel) and Linux, is available on our download page.

LibreOffice is the only office suite that respects the privacy of the user, ensuring that the user is able to decide if and with whom to share the content they create. It even allows deleting user related info from documents. In addition, it has a feature set comparable to the leading product on the market.

Also, LibreOffice offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes by using all the space available on the desktop to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away.

The biggest advantage over competing products is the LibreOffice Technology engine, the single software platform on which desktop, mobile and cloud versions of LibreOffice – including those from ecosystem companies – are based.

This allows LibreOffice to produce identical and fully interoperable documents based on two ISO standards: the open and neutral Open Document Format (ODT, ODS, ODP) and the closed and fully proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX), which hides a large amount of artificial complexity, and can cause problems for users who are confident that they are using a true open standard.

End users looking for manuals can download the LibreOffice 24.8 guides from the following link: books.libreoffice.org/.

LibreOffice for Enterprise

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners, with three or five year backporting of security patches, other dedicated value-added features and Service Level Agreements: www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

Every line of code developed by ecosystem companies for enterprise customers is shared with the community on the master code repository and improves the LibreOffice Technology platform. Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud.

In fact, LibreOffice’s mature code base, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and LTS options make it the ideal solution for organisations looking to regain control of their data and break free from vendor lock-in.

LibreOffice 24.8.5 availability

LibreOffice 24.8.5 is available from www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 (no longer supported by Microsoft) and Apple MacOS 10.15. Products for Android and iOS are at www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/.

End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org. They can support the project by donating at www.libreoffice.org/donate.

Enterprise deploying LibreOffice can also donate, although the best solution for their needs would be to look for the enterprise optimized versions of the software (with Long Term Support …

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I live in Lagos, Nigeria, and I spend my time dabbling into user experience design with research, although these days, I’m diving deeper into research. I’m a big fan of books, especially well-written fiction. Music is also a huge part of my life. Let’s just say I love anything that sounds good and sing-alongs during work.

What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?

I am an Outreachy intern working on improving the LibreOffice Writer templates with guidance from my mentor, Heiko Tietze. I have spent the last month understanding the community’s pain points by carrying out a survey, analysing their responses and working to create functional templates that they need. Currently, I am iterating on priority templates like DIN 5008 Business Letter, resume and academic writing templates.

I am also doing some more research on template standards and reflecting on how to create templates that would help users. My top priority is to understand styling and implement it in the templates I am creating and also curate template contents that fits into prospective user preferences.

Why did you choose to join the project, and how was the experience?

During my Outreachy contribution phase, I had a list of open-source projects I could choose from, but at the time, I wanted to test the limits of my capacity. As a UX designer with no coding background, the first task for this project was to submit a patch on Gerrit.

Every other contributor left the task obviously because of the task complexity and I remember one of my mentors, Ilmari telling me that the competition had become less tense due to the number of contributors dropping the project. It was a challenge that pushed me out of my comfort zone as it was my first time interacting with code. That was it for me. Completing that task gave me a sense of achievement and made me even more excited to continue with the project.

Ah, it was challenging at first. I also dealt with anxiety because there was so much to do and I didn’t know where to start but later, the bits started coming together. Luckily for me, I have a mentor who has been supportive since I started the project back in December and who has made my experience seamless. Whenever I face a blocker, I know I have a mentor who is always ready to provide me with resources and connect me with other members of the community that have resources that would be useful for each project phases.

Anything else you plan to do in the future? What does LibreOffice really need?

I have decided to continue contributing to adding more templates to Writer and helping improve other aspects of user experience through user research and design after my internship ends. I like it here. Working on templates in Writer is challenging no doubt – but I think I like the way it stretches …

One week ago, we announced LibreOffice 25.2, our brand new major release. It’s packed with new features, and has many improvements to compatibility and performance too. So, what has happened in the week since then? Let’s check out some stats…

647,961 downloads

These are just stats for our official downloads page, of course – many Linux users will have acquired the new release via their distribution’s package repositories.

11,313 views, shares and likes on social media

Combining our Mastodon, Bluesky, X/Twitter and Facebook posts about the announcement, and all the likes, shares, views and comments, we get 11,313. Thanks to everyone who spread the word on social media!

528 upvotes on Reddit

On release day, we organised an “ask us anything” event on Reddit. Members of The Document Foundation and LibreOffice community joined in the discussions and answered questions from users and potential contributors.

Huge thanks to our worldwide community of volunteers, and certified developers, for all their work on this release!