MIMO (Inter-Ministry Mutualisation for an Open Productivity Suite) represents several bodies of the French government, and fosters the diversity of TDF Advisory Board by adding the voice of 500,000 professional users

Berlin, June 17, 2013 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces that MIMO – the working group of the French government including several ministries and administrations [1], for a total of 500,000 desktops – is now an official member of the foundation’s Advisory Board. MIMO primary goal is to give CIOs and their staff a way to share experience on office suites and operating systems, in order to speed up desktop modernisation.

MIMO is focused on the free desktop, and is one of a number of working groups focusing each one on a specific area of the information system under the guidance of the DISIC (French state CIO). Together, the working groups are creating an official set of free software for the ministries, with a specific application for each task.

MIMO has standardised on LibreOffice, developed by the Document Foundation, and is contributing to the development of the office suite through a commercial support agreement provided by certified developers. The role of MIMO is to validate successive versions of LibreOffice and make them compatible with the IT infrastructure and processes of member ministries. A single, standard LibreOffice version is validated and approved every year, according to the roadmap planned by MIMO members

To be approved, a version of LibreOffice is submitted to a qualification process: the software is tested to verify its compatibility with other business applications, and becomes a certified MIMO version only after all QA tests have been passed. The Ministry of Interior – for example – has a ten-step qualification process, with tests including compatibility with business applications, macros and deployment tools. The decision is taken by all the members representing the ministries.

MIMO is joining the current 8 members of TDF Advisory Board – Google, Intel, Lanedo, Red Hat, SUSE, Freies Office Deutschland e.V., Software in the Public Interest (SPI) and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) – and will be represented by Laure Patas d’Illiers, of the Department of Treasury and Finance of the French government.

[1] Ministries: Agriculture, Culture, Defense, Economy, Education, Environment, Finance, Interior, Justice. Administrations: CAF (Family Allocation Funds), DILA (Direction of Legal / Administrative Information), ENA (National Administration School), National Assembly.

About MIMO

The MIMO working group was created by the Agency for Digital Development in Administration (ADAE) in 2005, under the governance of the Prime Minister. Since 2011, MIMO has been controlled by DISIC (Direction Interministérielle des Systèmes d’Information et de Communication), whose mission is to coordinate IT policy in French administrations. DISIC has launched working groups on cloud computing, the organisation and planning of IT systems, and Open Source. MIMO and the Open Source working group are managed by the CIO of the Ministry of Culture (Ministère de la Culture).

Just spotted on Rob Weir’s blog:

May 13th, 2013: The Power of Brand and the Power of Product, Part 2 (prepared with another apparently “neutral” post: The Power of Brand and the Power of Product, Part 1)

This is the last post of a long story, going back to June 2011 and reiterated since then:

June 1st, 2011: An Invitation to Apache OpenOffice (comments)

June 3rd, 2011: Apache OpenOffice: How to Get Involved (comments)

June 13, 2011: OpenOffice, LibreOffice and the Scarcity Fallacy (also comments)

April 1st, 2012: Gorilla Free Software Marketing, Chapter 8: Community Metrics (also comments)

October 31st, 2012: LibreOffice’s Dubious Claims: Part I, Download Counts (also comments)

November 3rd, 2012: LibreOffice’s Dubious Claims: Part 2, Community Size (also comments)

November 4th, 2012: LibreOffice’s Dubious Claims: Part 3, Developers (also comments)

There are other random traces of the same statements in comments to several LWN articles (user rweir) and several Slashdot articles (user palestrina).

I think that no one would object that these posts are a coordinated attack against The Document Foundation and LibreOffice, repeated over time. Some of the statements are echoed in several emails and comments by other AOO advocates, in several places, including AOO mailing lists and OpenOffice forums.

Rob Weir is employed by IBM, and is the most vocal “enemy” of The Document Foundation and LibreOffice. Juergen Schmidt is also employed by IBM, and is one of the strongest supporters of Rob Weir’s statements.

The attacks have been reiterated for over two years now, and IBM (the employer of the gentleman attacking The Document Foundation and LibreOffice on a regular basis since June 2011) has done nothing visible to stop the reiterated attacks to a free software foundation and a free software project which have committed one single sin: they are the most successful OpenOffice.org fork.

I have been a US corporation employee for several years in my life, and I know that US based corporations are not keen about personal statements – although on personal blogs or on independent mailing lists – if they are even slightly different from the corporation’s policy.

I think that everyone can draw his own conclusions after having read all Rob Weir’s posts and comments, and digged AOO mailing lists.

Some, food for thoughts, indeed.

Berlin, April 11, 2013 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.6.6, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, targeted to enterprises and individual end users who prefer stability to more advanced features. This new release is suited to the increasing number of organizations migrating to LibreOffice, which is steadily growing worldwide.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation. There is a donation page – with many options including PayPal and credit cards – at http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the growth of the project in areas such as infrastructure, marketing and development of native language communities.

LibreOffice 3.6.6 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.

The change log – with over 50 bugs solved – is available at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC1 (fixed in 3.6.6.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC2 (fixed in 3.6.6.2).

Berlin, April 11, 2013 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.6.6, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, targeted to enterprises and individual end users who prefer stability to more advanced features. This new release is suited to the increasing number of organizations migrating to LibreOffice, which is steadily growing worldwide.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation. There is a donation page – with many options including PayPal and credit cards – at http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the growth of the project in areas such as infrastructure, marketing and development of native language communities.

LibreOffice 3.6.6 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.

The change log – with over 50 bugs solved – is available at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC1 (fixed in 3.6.6.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC2 (fixed in 3.6.6.2).

Berlin, April 11, 2013 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.6.6, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, targeted to enterprises and individual end users who prefer stability to more advanced features. This new release is suited to the increasing number of organizations migrating to LibreOffice, which is steadily growing worldwide.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation. There is a donation page – with many options including PayPal and credit cards – at http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the growth of the project in areas such as infrastructure, marketing and development of native language communities.

LibreOffice 3.6.6 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.

The change log – with over 50 bugs solved – is available at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC1 (fixed in 3.6.6.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC2 (fixed in 3.6.6.2).

Impress Remote for Android is one of the coolest features introduced by LibreOffice 4.0. With version 4.0.1, it is available on every platform – Linux, MacOS and Windows – and works like a charm.

In order to install and operate the Impress Remote you must follow a simple procedure, which is described in this wiki page and also in this video:

<iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/hM5H4fUxq4M” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

If you like the IMpress Remote for Android, please remember that The Document Foundation is a not for profit entity which lives thanks to the work of many volunteers, but also thanks to donations, which support infrastructure, marketing and community development.

I don’t think that the screenshots need additional comments: LibreOffice is THE free office suite of reference for the Linux environment, surpassing every other software by a factor of six, and LibreOffice Writer is THE best single office program (sharing the spot with OOo Writer, hopefully for the last time, as LibreOffice is the de facto standard for all Linux distributions since 2011).

Best Office Suite

Best Single Office Product

Independence, democracy and meritocracy pay off (could anyone have doubts about this, after 10 years under the corporate umbrella?).

I am on the high speed train between Bologna and Milano and I have just assisted to a product demonstration of Windows 8, from a Microsoft promoter.

Apart from the considerations about the size of the budget for such a granular promotion, is it a sign of weak sales?

This is an official call for sessions for a “Community Development and
Marketing” devroom, hosted at FOSDEM 2013 on Saturday, February 2nd, 2013.

In this devroom, developers with different profiles and backgrounds
are invited to brainstorm about aspects related to software projects
which are beyond the code itself, but nevertheless crucial for keeping
the project alive, such as marketing strategies useful for attracting
users and contributors, processes for managing the dynamics of the
community, and open source solutions for project lifecycle management.

While Marketing and FLOSS have long been considered incompatible
concepts, recent history has shown that marketing strategies properly
tailored for the FLOSS world can be of real help for open source
projects without tainting their ideology. Good marketing can be an
essential instrument for reaching out and expanding the community of
users and contributors. You are invited to showcase best practices and
successful collaborations between marketers and developers, to discuss
marketing in a typical hacker environment, and to participate in
establishing a link between communities and in creating opportunities
for collaboration.

Furthermore, you are invited to exchange ideas about what works for
keeping a community in shape: how to encourage contributions from new
members, how to keep people motivated, how to work across time zones
and cultures, how to handle conflicts, what are the processes for
naming new committers or for accepting patches. Presenters can talk
about their favorite combination of tools for version control, code
review, continuous integration, issue tracking, documentation, as well
as full infrastructure setup scenarios. It will be a great environment
for learning from individual success stories about new ways of working
better inside an open source community.

If you are interested in holding a session, please submit your talk
proposal no later than 23-12-2012 (UTC) by sending an email message to
cdm-devroom@lists.fosdem.org, and providing the following information:

About the speaker:
- Name
- Affiliation (if any)
- Short bio

About the proposed session:
- Title
- Abstract (no more than 300 words)
- Preferred duration (5, 15 or 30 minutes) and time slot (optional)

You can also subscribe to the mailing list to discuss the devroom
topics with the two organizers, by sending an empty email message to
cdm-devroom-subscribe@lists.fosdem.org.

Looking forward to your contributions,

Italo Vignoli (italo@italovignoli.com)
Sergiu Dumitriu (sergiu@xwiki.org)