LibreOffice: Improving the Project Sustainability
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 of the project, as development can be slowed down. We have therefore changed the 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.
Author(s) Bio
Italo Vignoli is a founding member of The Document Foundation, the Chairman Emeritus of Associazione LibreItalia, an Open Source Initiative (OSI) board member, and co-chair of the ODF Advocacy OASIS Open Project. He co-leads LibreOffice marketing, PR and media relations, co-chairs the certification program, and is a spokesman for the project. He has contributed to large migration projects to LibreOffice in Italy, and is a LibreOffice certified migrator and trainer.
Q&A
1. With the core being stable and the majority of more complex features being used for business purposes, wouldn't this cause the disconnect/ higher barrier for entry to new casual contributors? (and declining community contributions over time)
We will have a Development Mentor starting soon, in addition to the current Development Marketing activity. We also update regularly Easy Hacks, which allow newcomers to get familiar with the source code.
2. Is it expected that LibreOffice will ever have a development environment like Microsoft Office has with VBA for Excel, for instance?
(@CarlosOliveira)
LibreOffice has StarBasic, but to avoid old unstable and vulnerable languages (Basic has 67 years, and has never been really updated), it supports Python, which is more modern, secure and portable.
3. Is Apache v2 used by google fonts having the same vendor lock-in issue as Microsoft's approach? What would be foss friendly license in this context?
No, font license - if FOSS - is irrelevant, LibreOffice can bundle any FOSS licensed font. Of course, if the font designer allows modifications, the font design cal also be tweaked. Microsoft is not only releasing only proprietary fonts, but is also connecting the fonts with the OS or the software, which means that you are legally allowed to use a font only if you own a license of the OS or the software.
4. Do we have libreoffice.biz (shorter than libreoffice.business)? (Neal Gompa)
Unfortunately, this was already registered by someone else, and we are trying to get it back.