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OpenOffice.org

Making sense of the new features in LibreOffice 4.1

As the LibreOffice project moves forward with the development on its 4.x branches we sometimes get the feedback that while new features are documented in detail as well as in a summarized fashion (on the wiki and on the website), it is not easy to understand what’s unique about the …

Growing the community – the case for a jumpstart

There are several projects that can boast a clear track record of attracting, building and growing a community. LibreOffice is one of them, and so was his parent, OpenOffice.org . I’m not specifically speaking about the developers’ community, but rather about the worldwide community of localizers, QA testers, documentation writers …

The meaning of the 4.0

The Document Foundation will be releasing LibreOffice 4.0 in the beginning of February. It is a big and important release for us, and a major symbolic milestone. We have received questions and comments, however, that were basically about our reasons to change the major number, from the 3.x to the …

Two Years

Two years ago, the OpenOffice.org community decided to break away from the domination of one vendor and instead create an independent foundation that would host the free and open source office suite “for the next decade”. I could not help but re-read a few of my posts then, you can …

Software Freedom & the status quo

Next Saturday, the 15th of September, we will all celebrate the Software Freedom Day 2012. As usual, it will be a worldwide event with lots of big and small conferences, parties and presentations happening all around the globe and driven by teams of volunteers. Such a day highlights the momentum …

On Software obsolescence

Recently the Mozilla Foundation announced a new orientation for their email client, Thunderbird. It caused quite a bit of discussion, and we, at the Document Foundation, received quite a lot of public and private feedback on this mostly in the form of: “Now that Mozilla is getting rid of Thunderbird, …

Thoughts on the certification

On the 7th of May 2012 The Document Foundation has announced its first certification program. This certification is aimed at professionals who are interested in having their skillset certified in order to provide professional services to their customers. The program is currently being rolled out, in fact the first official …

Brand Confusion

Matters of heritage can be tricky to solve. Every family out there has had and will have its share of feuds, issues and tears. People don’t always stick together. Should we expect any better from corporations and organisations such as Free & Open Source Software projects? Today I would like …

The significance of a Foundation

It was quite a month for the Document Foundation; the press rightly picked our three main announcements: the 3.5 release, the foundation’s incorporation and our partnership with Intel. I would like to go back to the foundation matter and show why the two other announcements are made more significant by …

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