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The Document Foundation announces the Document Liberation Project
Berlin, April 2, 2014 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the
birth of the Document Liberation Project
(http://www.documentliberation.org), a home for the growing community of
developers united to free users from vendor lock-in of contents.
Together, these hackers will offer a solution to the routine problem
faced by many computer users, who have their personal digital contents
stored in an old, outdated and unaccessible file format.
"Frequently, these old files cannot be opened by any application. In
fact, the users are locked out of their own content, and the most common
reason for this inability to access old data is the use of proprietary
file-formats that result in vendor lock-in", says Fridrich Strba, the
Document Liberation Project leader. "Even worse, when a public
administration stores documents using a proprietary or a non documented
format, it unintentionally restricts access to essential information to
citizens, administrations and businesses. Astonishingly enough, even
governments might be unable to open their own documents after an upgrade
of their operating system and office software".
The Document Liberation Project was created in the hope that it would
empower individuals, organizations, and governments to recover their
data from proprietary formats and provide a mechanism to transition that
data into open file formats, returning effective control over the
content from computer companies to the actual authors.
Since the birth of LibreOffice in 2010, several community members have
taken it upon themselves to improve format interoperability with
proprietary applications. Encouraged by community interest, even from
outside the LibreOffice project, the developers have so far provided
read support for proprietary file formats including MS Visio, CorelDraw,
MS Publisher, Apple Keynote, and a handful of different old Macintosh
formats. In addition to LibreOffice, import libraries for these file
formats are used by Abiword, Calligra, CorelDRAW File Viewer, Inkscape
and Scribus.
The Document Liberation Project aims to attract developers from all
corners of the open source world to join with the LibreOffice
developers, strengthening existing relationships and forging new ones
with all who have shared goals in the domain of file formats. The object
is to contribute to the growing open document eco-system by providing
powerful tools for the conversion of proprietary file formats to the
corresponding ODF ISO standard document format.
For additional information: http://www.documentliberation.org/contact/.
Support LibreOffice
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation with a donation at
http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to grow the
project both at global and local level.
About The Document Foundation (TDF)
The Document Foundation is an independent, self-governing and
meritocratic organization, based on Free Software ethos and incorporated
in Germany as a not for profit entity. TDF is focused on the development
of LibreOffice - the best free office suite ever - chosen by the global
community as the legitimate heir of OOo, and as such adopted by a
growing number of public administrations, enterprises and SMBs for
desktop productivity.
TDF is accessible to individuals and organizations who agree with its
core values and participate in its activities. At the end of January
2014, the foundation has over 190 members and over 3,000 volunteer
contributors worldwide.