LibreOffice 3.4 RC2 available

Dear Community,

The Document Foundation is happy to announce the second release
candidate of LibreOffice 3.4. The upcoming 3.4 will be the second
major release of the LibreOffice project, and comes with many exciting
new features. Please be aware that LibreOffice 3.4 RC2 is not yet
ready for production use, you should continue to use LibreOffice 3.3.2
for that.

The release is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X from our QA
builds download page at

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/

A list of new features specific to LibreOffice is to be found here:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.4

Should you find bugs, please report them to the FreeDesktop Bugzilla:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org

For other ways to get involved with this exciting project - you can
e.g. contribute code:

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/developers/

translate LibreOffice to your language:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Translation_for_3.4

or help with funding our foundation:

http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/

A list of known issues with 3.4 RC2 is available from our wiki:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.4/RC2

Please find the list of changes against LibreOffice 3.4 RC1 here:

http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-0-release-3.4.0.2.log

Let us close again with a BIG Thank You! to all of you having
contributed to the LibreOffice project - this release would not have
been possible without your help.

Yours,

The Steering Committee of The Document Foundation

Feng Office - formerly opengoo - AGPL cloud office suite

Pretty in tone with my thoughts about dismanteling the code of OOo to generate a new app. Well honestly I think this was more later than soon but someone else step up to the game delivering a full web-cloud office suite based on the cloud.

http://www.fengoffice.com/web/community/downloads.php

This suite is now builted in PHP5 which is a better understood language with an A-GPL licence and a sourceforge project where you can contribute directly.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengoo/

LibreOffice: conversation between Louis Suarez-Potts and Cor Nouws

Louis Suarez-Potts, ex OOo community manager dưới thời Sun,
sau đó được Oracle bầu là OOo community manager sau khi Oracle mua Sun.
Điều đánh bình luận là, mặc dù Louis là đại điện của CỘNG ĐỒNG nhưng Sun
bầu ông ta là đại diện của cộng đồng không hề có bầu cử.

Vào thời điểm hiện tại Louis đã rút khỏi vị trí trên.

Dưới đây là email mà Louis cố gắng "giải trình" và PR về họat động của LibO.
http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@marketing.openoffice.org/msg11963.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@marketing.openoffice.org/msg11957.html

Và đây là email của Cor Nouws, nhẹ nhàng nhắc nhở rằng Louis chưa
hoàn thành tốt công việc của mình - một trong những lý do làm cộng đồng
OOo tan vỡ và LibO được fork sau đó.
http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@marketing.openoffice.org/msg11972.html

Trao đổi rất thú vị và là một kinh nghiệm về xây dựng cộng đồng và phát triển
phần mềm mã nguồn mở.

Bernhard Dippold vs. Louis

Hi Louis, all,

it is great, that you still feel responsible for the OOo community -
even if the way you perform this responsibility causes some thoughts...

You have been Sun's OpenOffice.org Community Manager
and later on Oracle's Community Manager until you left Oracle
some months ago.

As far as I know this post has never been open for election by the
community, it has been given to you by your former
employer and I don't know about it's validity after you left Oracle.

But I want to address you as OpenOffice org community member - a community I myself feel affiliated for more than six years.

Louis Suarez-Potts wrote:

Hi,

On 2011-05-13, at 04:39 , Ian Lynch wrote:

I know this might be a bit of an emotive topic for some, but
wouldn't it be an idea to open up dialogue with the LibreOffice
people? A split community was never an ideal situation from a
simple logical point of view.


A split had to be accepted when the foundation had been set up, but TDF
has always been open to any contributor and invited not only Oracle but
all the people hesitant to join a broader basis with less influence by
single companies.

Ok, there are emotional wounds to heal but talking about
possibilities without any commitment on either side can't do any
harm.


I fully support any discussion between OOo and TDF community members.
In my opinion our split community can be reunited quite easily, if
everybody looks for the goals she/he has with our office suite and how
we can achieve them.

Maybe this is already happening?


In an open community (or if you prefer: among two open communities) this
should done on the mailing lists, so thank you for this question.

Actually I hope that there will be more friendly discussion among TDF and OOo community members, leading to the perception of positive interaction and common goals.


Actually, Florian and I are discussing that exactly. The days of
stiff difference are over with; were over with when Oracle renounced
OOo as a revenue source. And in their lieu, discussions of
reconciliation.


Sorry, not being a native speaker, I can't really understand what you're
talking about - and Google translator doesn't help very much either.

So you mean that the time where Florian was "persona non grata" for
OpenOffice.org is over, because Oracle dropped commercial support for
the community?

And does reconciliation mean that you start to imagine, that the TDF
founders might have been right in working on the ten year old vision of
an independent foundation *before* Oracle might drop any support for the
community?

We still don't know if dropping commercial support means to close the
entire infrastructure and sell the trademark to somebody else (I still
hope they don't, but it is a monetary issue, and Oracle is said to be
aware of costs and money).

Without the Document Foundation our community's situation would be even
more problematic.

It took several months to create a working infrastructure - of course
there are tasks not finished by now, but the infrastructure is able to provide the product for download and support the community in their work.

To be sure, there are still personal differences. These are, to me,
not irrelevant but ought not to stop the development of the code by
the larger community.


Every now and then during the last 10 years there have been personal differences, but they have always been considered less relevant than the work we did and still do for our community.

Code development is done by the larger community.

While the gap created by the uncertainties after the Oracle announcement
seems to get broader and broader with no visible release activities
after beta1 for OOo3.4.0 (two days before this announcement), the
community developers working on LibreOffice removed bugs (even quite
visible bugs) on their version, so the development is going on.


What counts, what makes up, what comprises that larger community is
of some debate. We need a lot of money to develop the code.


Right. We need corporate contributors. Some of the already contribute to
LibreOffice, overcoming the hindrances of one main contributor with
nearly unlimited control.

We need, that is, far more than LibreOffice or TDF or any single
company can probably provide.


LibreOffice and TDF are no company, they just do, what we should have
done earlier in the past: Provide a basis where contributors can do
their work, where companies and corporations can share their interest,
but know that none of them will have the force to define any rules or
modify the foundations mission.

Based on this ideas, TDF raised 50.000 Euro (mainly by small donations -
probably users and small companies) in only 8 days.

Imagine large corporations start to support the community, because they
don't have to fear the influence of any single main sponsor - provide
money, code contributors, helping out the community with other issues...

Figure more than 10M USD/annum. That's to develop the code, test it,
distribute it, and move ahead into areas that go beyond the limits of
legacy.


It's a challenge - but based on the efforts the community already did by
creating TDF it is much more likely to be achieved than if the few
people staying here try to raise such an amount on their own.


Unfortunately, for something like OOo, a "community effort," still
needs huge buckets of money. It's not about corporations, per se.
It's about needing to get dedicated developers, one way or another,
working on the code, so that it can be reliably produced, and
satisfy the most demanding expectations.


Right - that's what is done with LibreOffice.


Meanwhile, I continue to drive ODF interest, and continue to
represent OOo at ODF events; and continue to represent, as much as I
can, as energetically as I can, to the world.


You drive what?

You still try to make the world believe that LibreOffice is nothing but
Novell's contribution to Microsoft's universe because there is a very
small area of code development based on a contract among them.

You don't do ODF and the entire FOSS ecosystem a favor if you declare,
that there would be no reliable alternative to MS Office anymore for
people fearing that the lack of activity in the OOo project might cause
their adoption to fail.

I have no animus toward LibreOffice, though I do have my share of
doubts;


What you tell us here and in your blog, is much more than animus -
please see below.

but my spirit is stamped with OOo, its community, its goal, of
providing reliable and reliably, the best productivity tools there
are to the most people.


My goals have not changed during the last years, and I'm not alone -
there is a large number of community members having spent hundreds or
thousands of hours in their spare time for this community and its goals.

But we don't insist on the name - it's the community's spirit that lives on.

Create and maintain the best open source office productivity suite.

Be part of the community that stands behind this suite and have
influence by real merit: Every community member contributing for more
than just a short period is able to elect the Board of Directors and be
elected to it.


-louis



[...]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:21 PM, Louis Suarez-Potts
wrote:

[...]

It is not even the case that other projects using OOo technology
have that much greater insight. They do not.


This clearly addresses LibreOffice and TDF.

They may have more activity, but absent the energy of
production, there is no production of energy.


And you tell the world that there would not be productive work over there?

Together with the accusations against the Novell employees, ignorance of
the large number of other developers, and repeatedly mentioning your
"doubts" about LibreOffice you create an image that doesn't describes
you as possible contact for reconciliation and re-unification of our
large community.

If Oracle wants to drop support for the infrastructure and code
development (and I can't understand the cessation of the release cycle
and the mailing list migration differently), this will be the only way
to survive as the open source alternative to MS Office:

Coordinate and integrate the community's work in both parts of the
community back to the open and integrative community I love to work for
during the last 6 years.

But you are not the person I want to be represented by.
I want to work together with the entire community in order to overcome
this very dangerous situation not only for OpenOffice.org, but for the
broader FOSS community and their acceptance in public too.

Your comments, blogs and interviews don't show any integrative ideas,
but try to damage LibreOffice and TDF on different levels instead of
using the unique chance to re-unite our community leading to the highest
strength and best position for our office suite in the current tangled
situation.

Best regards

Bernhard

PS: You probably know that I neither have any formal role in the OOo community nor in TDF. This mail is just my personal opinion as community member trying to further our office suite in any way I can.

LibreOffice 3.4 RC1 available

The Document Foundation is happy to announce the first release
candidate of LibreOffice 3.4. The upcoming 3.4 will be the second
major release of the LibreOffice project, and comes with many exciting
new features. Please be aware that LibreOffice 3.4 RC1 is not yet
ready for production use, you should continue to use LibreOffice 3.3.2
for that.

The release is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X from our QA
builds download page at

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/

A list of new features specific to LibreOffice is to be found here:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.4

Should you find bugs, please report them to the FreeDesktop Bugzilla:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org

For other ways to get involved with this exciting project - you can
e.g. contribute code:

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/developers/

translate LibreOffice to your language:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Translation_for_3.4

or help with funding our foundation:

http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/

A list of known issues with 3.4 RC1 is available from our wiki:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.4/RC1

Please find the list of changes against LibreOffice 3.4 Beta5 here:

http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-release-3.4.0.1.log

Let us close again with a BIG Thank You! to all of you having
contributed to the LibreOffice project - this release would not have
been possible without your help.

Yours,

The Steering Committee of The Document Foundation

OpenOffice.org. ping-pong (again)

@louis: I told you, OpenOffice.org was dead. Don't hold you breath.

On 2011-05-13, at 04:39 , Ian Lynch wrote:

> I know this might be a bit of an emotive topic for some, but wouldn't it be an idea to open up dialogue with the LibreOffice people? A split community was never an ideal situation from a simple logical point of view. Ok, there are emotional wounds to heal but talking about possibilities without any commitment on either side can't do any harm. Maybe this is already happening?

Actually, Florian and I are discussing that exactly. The days of stiff difference are over with; were over with when Oracle renounced OOo as a revenue source. And in their lieu, discussions of reconciliation.

To be sure, there are still personal differences. These are, to me, not irrelevant but ought not to stop the development of the code by the larger community.

What counts, what makes up, what comprises that larger community is of some debate. We need a lot of money to develop the code. We need, that is, far more than LibreOffice or TDF or any single company can probably provide. Figure more than 10M USD/annum. That's to develop the code, test it, distribute it, and move ahead into areas that go beyond the limits of legacy.

Unfortunately, for something like OOo, a "community effort," still needs huge buckets of money. It's not about corporations, per se. It's about needing to get dedicated developers, one way or another, working on the code, so that it can be reliably produced, and satisfy the most demanding expectations.

Meanwhile, I continue to drive ODF interest, and continue to represent OOo at ODF events; and continue to represent, as much as I can, as energetically as I can, to the world. I have no animus toward LibreOffice, though I do have my share of doubts; but my spirit is stamped with OOo, its community, its goal, of providing reliable and reliably, the best productivity tools there are to the most people.

-louis

:-)

I am.

My strategies are, obviously, to invoke the established stakeholders—IBM, Red Hat, to name but two, but also Google—in the gambit. But the issue is even more interesting than money alone. Much of the secret of OOo's sauce lies not in the recipe, which is open, but in the makers, who are like chefs the world round, only more so. And with Oracle's renunciation, they are obviously affected. How, it's not clear. But if I were in the team, I'd be no doubt updating my résumé—and be fending off hot solicitations.

In short, time is of the essence.

LibreOffice, TDF, do not have the full resources to continue, let alone advance OOo. They can differentiate it, which is to be lauded, but they have their own uncertainties. They do not appeal, too, to enterprises; we do. Enterprises can be public sector or private. They have the same concerns: reliability, predictability, stability, and super-good QA.

That all takes money not just in the present but in the future. So, these are not trivial points.

I've been working sub rosa because that's the way this is done. And even so, I've been pretty much shut out of a lot of discourse. Oracle has been absolutely mum about OOo's copyright and development future, though I've asked. They are surely in talks with the usual suspects, at least, I hope so. But the discussions are hardly including the OOo community—not me, at least, and not really any I know involved with OOo.

What I'll do is what I promised earlier: write an open letter to Edward Screven, the Oracle VP who issued the announcement 15 April.

And I also would very much appreciate it, and I think the entire OOo community would, too, if IBM and other stakeholders, such as Google and Red Hat execcs-I'll spare names—would engage the community representatives, in the plural or even singular, to proceed. What counts here is not my presence or participation per se, that's irrelevant and immaterial, but the continuation of OOo as that set of tools enterprises and users the world round expect to be there, as a community thing is.

So, we are doing things. And I just wish I could speak more, or write more on this. I also wish I had more to speak, write, say. But you see the issues. They are not secret, they are not hard to comprehend, they are not hard to digest. We need not just the funds but the chefs, and we need not jus to continue status quo—that did not work, obviously—but to re-do things, re-set things, improve: no one liked the old logistics of power, all wanted change. This is our opportunity, and let's begin with the reconciliation, with the stakeholders, so that we can continue working on this.

And one more point: OOo makes money. It makes money not just for the ecosystem stakeholders, like Ian, Jean, and many many others, including me, now—but for the stakeholders, in much the same way that an Eclipse like platform or Apache does. By providing the source technology that creates new markets.

-louis

Install LibreOffice 3.4 beta 5 on Linux

1015 tar xzf LibO-URE_3.4beta5_Linux_x86_install-rpm_en-US.tar.gz
1016 tar xzf LibO_3.4.0beta5_Linux_x86_helppack-rpm_vi.tar.gz
1017 tar xzf LibO_3.4.0beta5_Linux_x86_install-rpm_en-US.tar.gz
1018 tar xzf LibO_3.4.0beta5_Linux_x86_langpack-rpm_vi.tar.gz

1021 sudo rpm -Uvh LibO_3.4.0beta5_Linux_x86_install-rpm_en-US/RPMS/*rpm
1023 sudo rpm -Uvh LibO_3.4.0beta5_Linux_x86_langpack-rpm_vi/RPMS/*rpm
1024 sudo rpm -Uvh LibO_3.4.0beta5_Linux_x86_helppack-rpm_vi/RPMS/libobasis3.4-vi-help-3.4.0-5.i586.rpm

1028 sudo rpm -Uvh LibO-URE_3.4beta5_Linux_x86_install-rpm_en-US/RPMS/libreoffice3.4-ure-3.4.0-5.i586.rpm
-> error, because I already installed libreoffice3.4-ure-3.4.0-5.i586.rpm

OpenOffice.org ping pong

Omg,

I think OpenOffice.org is dead because. It wil be dead if Oracle does not make it real open source.

----

I would love for there to be clarity. I am not alone. The burden of providing that clarification, however, does not rest with us who have no knowledge but on those who do.

The areas where some clarity would be useful (to put it mildly) include: license, ownership of copyright, developer resources, and so on and so forth.

It is not even the case that other projects using OOo technology have that much greater insight. They do not. They may have more activity, but absent the energy of production, there is no production of energy.

Louis


On 2011-05-12, at 22:17 , Peter Junge wrote:

> On 12.05.2011 10:01, Andy Brown wrote:
>> Peter Junge wrote:
>>> pong
>>>
>>> On 05/11/2011 09:02 PM, Alexandro Colorado wrote:
>>>> ping
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> *Alexandro Colorado*
>>>> *OpenOffice.org* Español
>>>> http://es.openoffice.org
>>
>>
>> Is this what we have been reduced to?
>>
>
> Maybe that's one of the sad conclusion. A bit more clarity about the
> future could certainly help ...
>
> Peter

LibreOffice 3.4 Beta 5 available

The Document Foundation is happy to announce the fifth beta release
of LibreOffice 3.4. The upcoming 3.4 will be the second major release
of the LibreOffice project, and comes with many exciting new
features. Please be aware that LibreOffice 3.4 Beta5 is not yet ready
for production use, you should continue to use LibreOffice 3.3.2 for
that.

The beta release is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X from our
QA builds download page at

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/

A list of new features specific to LibreOffice is to be found here:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.4

Should you find bugs, please report them to the FreeDesktop Bugzilla:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org

For other ways to get involved with this exciting project - you can
e.g. contribute code:

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/developers/

translate LibreOffice to your language:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Translation_for_3.4

or help with funding our foundation:

http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/

A list of known issues with 3.4 Beta5 is available from our wiki:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.4/beta5

Please find the list of changes against LibreOffice 3.4 Beta4 here:

http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-release-3.3.99.5.log

Let us close again with a BIG Thank You! to all of you having
contributed to the LibreOffice project - this release would not have
been possible without your help.

Yours,

The Steering Committee of The Document Foundation

[tdf-announce] Giving our Community a Voice

The Community around LibreOffice provides several ways of getting in touch. Besides mailing lists, IRC channels and social networks, we regularly hold public phone conferences, where everyone is invited to join -- and speak.

Following our open, transparent and meritocratic approach, the Steering Committee holds its phone conference once a week:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Steering_Committee_Meetings

Teams like marketing or website hold their meetings on a monthly basis:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/ConfCalls

Everyone is invited to join, either actively as participant or as interested listener. The calls are for long-term members as well as for new supporters, with a broad range of interesting topics.

They are planned on the respective mailing lists (like steering-discuss@ or marketing@), where everyone can vote on their favorite date and time, and agenda items are collected in the wiki. Thanks to our sponsor talkyoo, a landline dial-in is available in a rapidly growing number of countries, and connecting via Skype is also supported.

For those who miss a call, we provide a written transcript as well as an audio recording.

If you're keen to join now, the next marketing conference call will be held on Tuesday, May 10th, at 1600 UTC, and a poll on the next steering committee call has just been opened at http://www.doodle.com/rgt57aqwzemhetry

We look forward to hearing from you!

The Steering Committee of The Document Foundation

[tdf-announce] LibreOffice 3.4 Beta 4 available

Dear Community,

The Document Foundation is happy to announce the fourth beta release
of LibreOffice 3.4. The upcoming 3.4 will be the second major release
of the LibreOffice project, and comes with many exciting new
features. Please be aware that LibreOffice 3.4 Beta4 is not yet ready
for production use, you should continue to use LibreOffice 3.3.2 for
that.

The beta release is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X from our
QA builds download page at

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/

A list of new features specific to LibreOffice is to be found here:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.4

Should you find bugs, please report them to the FreeDesktop Bugzilla:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org

For other ways to get involved with this exciting project - you can
e.g. contribute code:

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/developers/

translate LibreOffice to your language:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Translation_for_3.4

or help with funding our foundation:

http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/

A list of known issues with 3.4 Beta4 is available from our wiki:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.4/beta4

Please find the list of changes against LibreOffice 3.4 Beta3 here:

http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-release-3.3.99.4.log

Let us close again with a BIG Thank You! to all of you having
contributed to the LibreOffice project - this release would not have
been possible without your help.

Yours,

The Steering Committee of The Document Foundation

[tdf-announce] LibreOffice 3.4 Beta 3 available

Dear Community,

The Document Foundation is happy to announce the third beta release
of LibreOffice 3.4. The upcoming 3.4 will be the second major release
of the LibreOffice project, and comes with many exciting new
features. Please be aware that LibreOffice 3.4 Beta3 is not yet ready
for production use, you should continue to use LibreOffice 3.3.2 for
that.

The beta release is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X from our
QA builds download page at

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/

Should you find bugs, please report them to the FreeDesktop Bugzilla:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org

For other ways to get involved with this exciting project - you can
e.g. contribute code:

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/developers/

translate LibreOffice to your language:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Translation_for_3.4

or help with funding our foundation:

http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/

A list of known issues with 3.4 Beta3 is available from our wiki:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.4/beta3

Please find the list of changes against LibreOffice 3.4 Beta2 here:

http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-release-3.3.99.3.log

Let us close again with a BIG Thank You! to all of you having
contributed to the LibreOffice project - this release would not have
been possible without your help.

Yours,

The Steering Committee of The Document Foundation