OW2con 2019 is the annual open source event bringing together the OW2 community, technology experts, software architects, IT project managers and decision-makers from around the world. The conference will be hosted by the Orange Gardens Innovation Center, Paris-Châtillon, on June 12-13, 2019.

The central theme of OW2con 2019 is: “Open Source Toward Industry Maturity”. Indeed, with open source becoming mainstream, IT developers, vendors, users and even open source organisations such as OW2 have to adapt. Today, open source projects are becoming increasingly competitive and all IT developers, vendors and users must have an open source strategy.

During OW2con 2019, The Document Foundation and LibreOffice Online will be presented during two different talks:

1. Breakout Session – Adding LibreOffice To Your Online Solution, managed by Michael Meeks (Collabora), Philippe Hemmel (Arawa) and Thorsten Behrens (CIB), on Wednesday June 12, from 1:45pm to 3:45pm.
   LibreOffice Online can be integrated into cloud solutions, as in the case of Nextcloud, ownCloud, Pydio and Seafile. The software is 100% open source and can be the perfect solution for GDPR issues in organizations. During the session it will be possible to get an overview of the application, and ask both technical and business-related questions.
2. Talk – Introducing The Document Foundation, by Simon Phipps (TDF/OSI), on Thursday June 13, from 9:45am to 10:00am.
   The Document Foundation is one of OW2’s newest Affiliate organisations, and is a global charity based in Germany that works to promote open source productivity tools. Its flagship project, LibreOffice, is available across major desktop platforms and continues the fourth decade of impact from the code that started life as Star Writer on CP/M.

More information about OW2con 2019 are available on the event website: https://www.ow2con.org/view/2019/.

Learn C++ features with the help of LibreOffice developers! We’re running regular workshops which focus on a specific topic, and are accompanied by a real-time IRC meeting. For the next one, the topic is Binary Search Trees. Start by watching this presentation:

And check out the suggested EasyHacks.

Then join us for a discussion via our #libreoffice-dev IRC channel on Freenode. You can ask experienced LibreOffice developers questions, and learn more about the language. We look forward to meeting you!

It’s the Month of LibreOffice, and we’re awarding sticker packs – and the chance to win cool mugs – to all contributors in the project! On this page we’re maintaining a list of names/usernames for people who’re helping out, and everyone there can claim a sticker pack at the end! We’ll also choose 10 people at random to get one of the mugs. So, how many packs have been awarded so far?

But there are still two weeks to go, so if your name isn’t there, check below to see how you can get involved! Many tasks only take 10 or 20 minutes, but make a big difference to the project. (And if you have already contributed this month, but your name isn’t there, email us with details and we’ll look into it.)

How to take part

There are many ways you can help out – and you don’t need to be a developer. For instance, you can be a…

• Handy Helper, answering questions from users: over on Ask LibreOffice there are many users looking for help with the office suite. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.

• First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 6.2.3”. (Make sure you’re using the latest version of LibreOffice!)

• Drum Beater, spreading the word: tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter or Mastodon! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim a sticker. (We have a maximum of 100 stickers for this category, in case the whole internet starts tweeting/tooting!)

• Globetrotter, translating the user interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.

• Code Cruncher, contributing source code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started. Once you’ve submitted a patch, if it gets merged we’ll send you a sticker!

• Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Another way to earn a badge is to help the LibreOffice documentation team. Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.

So dive in, get involved and help make LibreOffice better for millions of people around the world – and enjoy your sticker as thanks from us. We’ll be posting regular updates on this blog and our Mastodon and Twitter accounts over the next four weeks!

Every year, The Document Foundation produces an Annual Report, detailing its activities in the projects and community. We’ll be posting parts of it here on the blog, while we prepare a final printed version…

Election of TDF Chairperson and Deputy

In February, the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation – during its first meeting of the new term – confirmed Marina Latini in the role of Chairwoman, and appointed Björn Michaelsen to the role of Deputy Chairman.

Marina said: “Our project is growing fast with contributors from several countries, and we need to focus much more on lowering the barriers to being a really welcoming community. I would like our community to become as inclusive as possible, and never leave out those who, just in appearance, look different to us. Openness is a state of mind.”

Björn, who had previously served as a Deputy on the Board, added: “I am encouraged to see strong contributors to the project as new candidates in this election, and hope to share the duty of serving with them, together providing a strong and reasonable voice of independent and unaffiliated input in the Board. Ultimately, I hope after this one last term I can confidently leave TDF’s Board with many new diverse and independent voices in all parts of the project and foundation, and retire back to spending my contributions more on – for instance – the source code again.”

New Advisory Board member

In May, TDF announced that BPM-Conseil, a company focused on open source business intelligence and based in Lyon (France), had joined the project’s Advisory Board. BPM-Conseil will develop the integration of LibreOffice with its business intelligence solutions Aklabox and Vanilla, and also create business intelligence-related extensions for LibreOffice.

BPM-Conseil is focused both on development of open source business intelligence solutions and on the related consultancy and integration activities. The company has a large roster of clients in France, such as the Ministries of Environment, Energy and Sea, Lyon Metropole, Nimes Metropole and City, La Rochelle Agglomeration, Haute and Basse Normandie, the Aveyron Department, and the University of Corsica.

Tenders

In 2017, TDF launched four tenders aimed at sharing knowledge about improving LibreOffice in several strategic areas, where the tasks are beyond the capabilities of independent volunteer developers. In 2018, companies selected to implement two of the tenders reported back on their work.

Firstly, Collabora was selected for the tender “improve image handling in LibreOffice (#201705-01)”. A new image life-cycle was developed, with simpler memory management for handling images and new swapping strategy. The results were incorporated into the LibreOffice 6.1 release – and a more detailed technical description of the work is on the blog, in order to share knowledge and experience from this project with the developer community and the general public.

The second tender, “implement HSQLDB binary format import in LibreOffice (#201705-03)”, was also assigned to Collabora and implemented by Tamás Bunth. He developed a mechanism to import database files with high fidelity from the HSQLDB …

You are one of the people who have been around from the beginning of The Document Foundation, and one of the oldest members of the community (including the years of OpenOffice.Org). How were you involved in the project?

I was using StarOffice 5.2 and was contributing support on the French speaking users list. When Sun Microsystems was about to open source the code and create the OpenOffice.org project, they invited me to join and support the community. From there, I’ve been involved in various tasks like localization, quality assurance or documentation.

We are getting close to the 10th anniversary of the LibreOffice project, and the 20th anniversary of the FLOSS office suite. Which are the milestones of this long history?

I may not remember all of them, but I guess the creation of the Native Language projects with the French speaking one as a Proof of Concept in 2001. Then the many community supported projects such as marketing, documentation, etc.

And then of course, the birth of the LibreOffice project. Since then I’ve the impression that each year is a milestone ;-)

There have been so many exciting things to do in each corner of the project. The community is pushing a lot of good ideas and energy. Considering the work done on QA, UX/Design and marketing for the product or the community, the new help system and the size of our infra, we have achieved more than we could even imagine ten years ago!

You have been involved in the localization of the software since the very first version, and now you are coordinating the activity of native language projects. Can you talk about the localization activity?

Localization is a complicated task, and sometime tedious. LibreOffice is a big software with thousands of different strings. Localization happens at the end of the software making process, so the workload depends on development, UX/Design and marketing projects.

Recently, there have been changes on the strings format for almost the entire interface of each module, on the help system and more and more marketing activities. Each localization member should be very proud of his/her work.

We want to cover more languages because localization is a way to preserve those languages, preserve the local culture and give all users the opportunity to express themselves in their own language. This is where my activities lie: understand the needs of localizers, voice their concerns, update the workflow and try to make them happy to translate the different projects.

You have been a member of the team for almost six years, with a number of different responsibilities. From your point of view, how well did the project during this time?

Happy to say: fairly well :-) The task was not easy but I believe we are doing right. Some people would like to see more things happening, or the project going faster or further. But we are a diverse community with different cultures, different business or occupations and different time …