The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation (TDF) is a non-profit organization that supports the development of LibreOffice, a free and open-source office suite. Established in 2010 by members of the OpenOffice.org community, TDF aims to provide a vendor-neutral platform for office software development, with a focus on the OpenDocument format. It is incorporated as a ''Stiftung'' (foundation) under German law.

TDF was created amid concerns that Oracle Corporation—which had acquired Sun Microsystems, the original sponsor of OpenOffice.org—might discontinue or limit its development, similar to the fate of OpenSolaris.

Organization

The Document Foundation has several governing bodies that oversee its operations:
* the Board of Directors, which represents the foundation and manages its day-to-day business
* the Membership Committee, which organizes elections and approves new trustees
* the Board of Trustees, who elect both the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee
This structure reflects the foundation's commitment to meritocracy. Membership in the Board of Trustees is only open to those who have been determined to have made meaningful contributions over a period of at least three months, and who commits to continued active participation for at least six more months. Admission is by application and approval by the Membership Committee. , there are 139 members on the Board of Trustees.

Board of directors and team

The Board of Directors has seven members and is elected every two years. Additionally, up to three substitute members, the runners up in the election are named substitute members, who will replace resigning members of the Board. After the last election in May 2024, the Board of Directors are:
* Eliane Domingos (Chair)
* Simon Phipps (Deputy Chair)
* Sophie Gautier
* László Németh
* Italo Vignoli
* Björn Michaelsen
* Eike Rathke
* Osvaldo Gervasi (substitute)
* Mike Saunders (substitute)
* Paolo Vecchi (substitute)

To manage day-to-day operations, The Document Foundation employs Florian Effenberger as executive director, who oversees a team of 14 staff members.

Advisory board

TDF established its Advisory Board in June 2011 to provide a forum for organizations offering substantial financial or other support to meet with the Board of Directors, offer strategic advice, present proposals, and provide feedback to help sustain the foundation and the LibreOffice project.

As of 2025, Advisory Board members include: Adfinis, CAGE Technologies, Collabora, Free Software Foundation Europe, GNOME, KDE e.V., Open Source Business Alliance, and Software in the Public Interest.

The initial members included: Freies Office Deutschland e.V., Free Software Foundation, Google, Red Hat, Software in the Public Interest, and SUSE (then part of The Attachmate Group).

Former members include: allotropia software, AMD, BPM Conseil, Canonical, CIB Software, the City of Munich, CloudOn, Free Software Foundation, Google, Hypra, Intel, ITOMIG, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Kopano b.v., Lanedo, MIMO, Red Hat, RusBITech-Astra, Studio Storti, and the UK Government Digital Service.

History

Creation

The Document Foundation was announced on 28 September 2010 with the Foundation being governed by a "Steering Committee" during the phase of initial creation. The announcement received support from companies including Novell, Red Hat, Canonical and Google. In December 2010, The Document Foundation announced that the ''BrOffice Centre of Excellence for Free Software'', the organization behind BrOffice joined the Foundation.

The Foundation also made available a re-branded fork of OpenOffice.org which was based on the upcoming 3.3 version, with patches and build software from the Go-oo fork. It was hoped that the LibreOffice name would be provisional as Oracle was invited to become a member of The Document Foundation, and was asked to donate the OpenOffice.org brand to the project. Following the announcement, Oracle asked members of the OpenOffice.org Community Council who were members of The Document Foundation to step down from the council, claiming that this represented a conflict of interest, leaving the community council composed 100% of Oracle employees.

Jacqueline Rahemipour, Co-Lead of the OpenOffice.org Board, stated:

When the project was announced, The Document Foundation did not exist as a legal entity. The Steering Committee wished to formally set up a foundation, and following research chose to establish the foundation in Germany.LibreOffice 50,000 Euro Challenge
The Document Foundation accessed 2011-02-20 On 16 February 2011, a fundraising drive was announced to raise the €50,000 needed to create a German foundation. The required amount was raised in eight days.

After clearing legal requirements, the foundation was finally incorporated on 17 February 2012.

Reaction

In assessing Oracle's role in the events surrounding the establishment of The Document Foundation, writer Ryan Cartwright in late October 2010 said:

In October 2010 ''Linux Magazine''s Bruce Byfield suggested that the formation of The Document Foundation is just the Go-oo project reinventing itself to the long-term detriment of users.

In April 2011, Oracle announced its intention to move OpenOffice.org to a "purely community-based project". Oracle also terminated its commercial product, called Oracle Open Office. In the view of some these moves were a reaction to the formation of The Document Foundation, but according to former Sun executive Simon Phipps:

As of 2 June 2011 Oracle has relicensed OpenOffice.org under the Apache License 2.0 and transferred ownership of the project's assets and trademarks to the Apache Software Foundation.

Adding the Document Liberation Project

On 2 April 2014, The Document Foundation announced a second top-level project, the Document Liberation Project. It defines itself as "a home for the growing community of developers united to free users from vendor lock-in of content".

Conferences

Starting in 2011, The Document Foundation has organized the annual LibreOffice Conference, as follows:

* 2011 – Paris, France – 12–15 October
* 2012 – Berlin, Germany – 17–19 October
* 2013 – Milan, Italy – 24–27 September
* 2014 – Bern, Switzerland – 3–5 September
* 2015 – Aarhus, Denmark – 23–25 September
* 2016 – Brno, Czech Republic – 7–9 September
* 2017 – Rome, Italy – 11–13 October
* 2018 – Tirana, Albania – 26–28 September
* 2019 – Almería, Spain – 11–13 September
* 2020 – web conferencing – 15–17 October
* 2021 – web conferencing – 23–25 September
* 2022 – Milan, Italy & remotely (hybrid) – 28 September–1 October
* 2023 – Bucharest, Romania – 20–23 September
* 2024 – Luxembourg, Luxembourg – 10–12 October

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Document Foundation
2010 establishments in Germany
Free software project foundations
LibreOffice
Non-profit organisations based in Berlin
OpenOffice
Organizations established in 2010

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