Happy Birthday, LibreOffice!
Today is LibreOffice’s birthday, Yes, it’s exactly one year ago today that the project first broke away from Oracle’s leadership.
When the community around OpenOffice.org forked into an independent, community-driven project, I was excited and wanted to see it be a success. The best way to ensure that was to actively get involved.
For many people, the most important pieces of software that you use after your operating system are your word processor, spreadsheet program, etc. LibreOffice gives you a free, high-quality office suite that runs on most operating systems, and can read and write the file formats of many free and commercial programs. And the fact that it’s a community project means you can have a hand in directing its future. You want something changed or need a new feature? Get involved and make it happen.
The LibreOffice project is indeed a live, thriving and active project. But if you care about the existence of free, open-source software in the future, you need to consider giving a little time and work to help maintain it and develop it further. There is a vast number of open-source projects out there, of which LibreOffice is just one - albeit a major one.
Choose one that’s close to your interests, and join the project. There are lots of ways to contribute work, apart from coding. You can help work on documentation, you can take part in giving technical support and advice to other users, and do lots of other things. If you have a skill, there’s often a way it can be useful in a FOSS project.
Free software that is independent of outside control doesn’t grow on trees, it is built and preserved by ordinary people. It contributes to the protection of your civic rights and freedom of speech, and gives free high-quality tools to anyone and everyone that needs them. Make sure it continues to exist in the future. Join a Free Open-Source Software project today.