LibreOffice is booming

announce
#1

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.