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[Sheflug] LibreOffice is Booming



Might be of some interest to people out there..


Italo Vignoli Wrote:

Over 2 million downloads in September, over 540 developers,
a community of over 3,000 volunteers from the five continents,
over 100 languages (representing 95% of the world population)
LibreOffice Conference, Berlin, October 17, 2012 - The Document
Foundation announces that the German city of Munich is migrating to
LibreOffice, following a growing trend of migrations and adoptions
worldwide. "After a careful risk-assessment, Munich city council has
decided to migrate to LibreOffice. In favour of that decision, among
others, was the greater flexibility of the project regarding 
consumption of open source licenses. In addition, Munich wants to rely 
on a large and vibrant community for any Open Source product it 
employs," says Kirsten Böge, head of public relations.

Just before the city of Munich, a similar announcement was made by the
French Prime Minister, who mentioned LibreOffice as a pillar in the
overall migration of free software of all government bodies. MimO, the
technology group taking care of the migration project, has already
certified LibreOffice as the free office suite of choice.

Several other large migrations to LibreOffice have happened or are
happening in Denmark (Hospitals of Copenhagen), Italy (Regione Umbria,
Provincia di Milano, City Councils of Provincia di Bolzano, and one of
the largest IT company in the banking sector), Spain (City of Las
Palmas), Ireland (City of Limerick), Greece (Municipality of Pilea
Hortiatis) and the US (City of Largo in Florida).

Chicago Public Library deploys LibreOffice on several PCs, as a 
service for the people who need to create or edit documents, and 
provides trainings to learn the free office suite.

LibreOffice is developed by a large and diverse hacker community, 
which has grown from 20 to 550 members in two years. This group is 
backed by an even larger number of active volunteers taking care of 
localizations, quality assurance, community development and marketing 
at global and local levels. Overall, the number of these people is 
over 3,000, if we take as a measure those who have contributed to the 
project wiki.

LibreOffice has been downloaded over 20 million times - and over 2
million in September, following the announcement of version 3.6.2 - 
from The Document Foundation mirror system (over 80% Windows + 10% 
MacOS), with a large number of additional downloads from software and 
magazine websites. In addition, LibreOffice is featured on a large 
number of covermount CDs, which account for other installs. TDF 
estimates a grand total of 60 million users, half of them being 
desktop Linux users who get LibreOffice from their distribution 
repository.

"Looking at these figures, one can hardly believe that it all happened
in just two years," comments Italo Vignoli, Director of The Document
Foundation in charge of marketing communications. "During these months 
I have traveled the world to speak at free software conferences about 
the project, and I have met hundreds of people who recognize in 
LibreOffice the legitimate heir of OpenOffice. Today, the numbers we 
are releasing show that also governments and enterprises share this 
perception, and support the idea that only a focused independent free 
software foundation could provide a path forward for the OpenOffice 
code base."

LibreOffice 3.6.2 is available for immediate download from the 
following
link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice
are available from the following link:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center. When downloading 
the software, you might consider about donating some money to The 
Document Foundation for the development of LibreOffice and the growth 
of the community, by accessing our donation page at 
http://donate.libreoffice.org.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing,
meritocratic organization, which builds on ten years of dedicated work
by the OpenOffice.org Community. TDF was created in the belief that 
the culture born of an independent foundation brings out the best in
corporate and volunteer contributors, and will deliver the best free
office suite. TDF is open to any individual who agrees with its core
values and contributes to its activities, and warmly welcomes 
corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as 
equals alongside other contributors in the community. As of September 
30, 2012, TDF has over 150 members and over 3.000 volunteers and 
contributors worldwide.

-- 
Italo Vignoli - Director
phone +39.348.5653829 - skype italovignoli
email italo.vignoli@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Document Foundation
Zimmerstraße 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
-- 
Richard
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Sheffield Linux User's Group
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