Lessons learned from 13 years at The Document Foundation and LibreOffice

LibreOffice is developed, tested, documented, translated and marketed by countless contributors from around the world and used by millions of users around the globe. This community of creators and users is backed by a non-profit foundation which not only publishes the software, but also acts as a trustee: It gives the community its legal personality, is the guardian of trademarks and domains, and also manages donations as well as assets. The community makes the software what it is today: the leading free and open source office suite, available free of charge to personal, business and governmental users. True to the motto “by the community, for the community” the foundation was made possible by numerous donors from all over the world who raised the necessary capital in just eight days as part of a public fundraising campaign. In this talk Florian not only explains the legal setup of The Document Foundation and how its statutes enshrine values and ideals like openness, transparency and meritocracy. He also explains how it was designed to combine the conservative elements of a foundation with the modern approach of an open source project and shares a “lessons learned“ from the past 13 years to explain the challenges a growing FLOSS project can face.

By Florian Effenberger