LibreOffice Conference 2026: Welcome, and opening session

[music] Hello, good morning and welcome to everyone. This [music] is not appropriate. >> Remote participation. >> Yeah, I don't know who is the guy. Um, good morning. My name is Italo Vignoli. I'm one of the founder of the document foundation and I'm in charge of uh marketing and media relations together with Mike Saunders who is somewhere in this room. It's up there. Um I'm Italian as you can imagine from my first name. So uh it's um I'm very pleased to welcome uh you uh as also the president uh uh the the the honorary president of associia who has uh organized this uh event uh with the penonug u people at penonug have done most of the job I just uh help them from remote uh to to coordinate the organization. So a big thank to them. Penon uh you will be visiting the city in the next days is a very nice Italian town. Uh it has a long heritage from the Republic of Venice. It's interesting. you will see a a city that is not part of normal touristic uh um travels but is extremely interesting some housekeeping information to start uh so the schedule um al I also sent a message but all speakers please look again at the schedule uh for last minute changes. So, I will uh tell you if there are other changes. At the moment, there are not, but please have a a look every now and then because it may happen. Coffee breaks are at 11 and 3:30 p.m. They are in the bar which is behind. You will see people going walking there uh at the right time. Lunch breaks are at 1:00 p.m. in the same place. uh lunch is served for different dietary um situations. So there will be uh things to eat for vegetarians, for people not eating beef, for people not eating pork, etc. As usual for our conferences, community events today, Thursday, we have the community dinner at Restaurante Boond Deino. People staying at Hotel Santin. The restaurant is just behind Hotel Santine. So, it's very easy to reach. For the people who are not staying at Hotel Santin, uh look for Hotel Santine. And just behind Hotel Santine, uh you will find the the restaurant. Um we will gather them around 8:00 p.m. tomorrow, Friday, uh there is a hackfest at Hotel Santin as well is in the for the people staying at Hotel Santin is in the breakfast room. Uh of course there will be food different from breakfast. Uh the setting uh is free in a sense that there will be uh tables and chairs and people will be able to to adapt the the the setting to their needs. Uh if you want to act in a group, you are free to do it. Uh if you want to stay alone, you are free to stay alone as well. Uh Saturday there is a guided tour of Porton is not leaving from hotel Santin. Sorry, but I wrote this yesterday and I checked this morning. [snorts] Um, Saturday there will be lunch at 1 like every other day. At 2:30 there will be a bus bringing you back to Hotel Santin. Then we will walk to the city hall. Uh [snorts] this is the city hall. So the uh unfortunately the it's uh partially hided by restoration works but it's uh rather easy to find. It's uh if you uh want to ask and the Italian is not uh speaking English, you ask for moneyio and they will tell you where moneyio is. Wi-Fi for the people that want to connect. There are there are signs uh everywhere, but uh um this uh is what uh you see uh what you need to do. Uh the network is uh unpn oppy. Uh you open the network with captive portal. If uh the browser doesn't open automatically, you just open the browser. It will open on that page. You enter that code and you have to check terms and conditions. If you don't check terms and conditions, it will not connect. Uh you don't you have to do this only once the first time then uh you are registering the network. [snorts] Now uh something uh uh who is not on the schedule but uh it's important for everyone to know and for TDF member because they will have to vote on this. Um we uh we have a we will have a logo for the document foundation. the logo for Libra Office will not change. So we have used the Libra Office logo as the foundation logo since 2011. Basically uh why we did this because uh we decided to have just one logo to avoid diluting the percept the the perception from the market. We wanted people to recognize us as the Libra Office project. It was the right choice. Today uh the Libra Office logo and the Libra Office icon are known. Uh but on the other hand, what has happened is that the project has grown. So um the the level of visibility is good. Of course if you tell me that the Microsoft Office and logo is more visible, Microsoft has a budget of something like $10 billion every year while our budget for advertising is zero. So it's the last figure of the $10 billion that Microsoft is investing uh for u a project that has not invested anything apart from uh activity from from people's activity on the brand. I would say that the Libra office has a more than decent visibility in term of brand awareness. Uh so uh and uh if you think all the other office suites are not as visible as Libra office in term of brand awareness. Um why we need a logo for the document foundation because uh we are involved more and more in discussions with governments and with the bodies that are active at a higher level than the product. We have been involved in the uh cyber resilience act development. We are now involved in the cyber resilience act deployment. We are regularly uh pinged by Brussels authorities and by authorities in other countries. Uh we are always to remember that we have a we are a global project not just a European project. Although our roots are in Europe, um we have been involved in investigation about monopolistic behavior of uh our competitors and we are invited to project where it makes sense to be there as a project and not as a product. Um and therefore we need to be recognized as a project today and as a product. the product is already recognized but we need to be recognized as a project and as a as an entity. So we have worked with URA design is an agency uh that was born out of the open-source movement. Uh the Ura design uh members are Albanian. They contributed as volunteers to the conference in Tana who was the most visually polished conference in term of uh graphics in term of representation. [snorts] Uh they they've made different proposals and I will show them uh immediately. The only difference that there will be uh from these proposals to the final one is the font that will be used. Um in uh 2011 we uh chose a font ve for uh the logo and uh that font was a new font but has not developed to become an international font. Vor has just a limited number of glyphs. Uh and therefore if you need a vowel with a umlout in Germany or a vowel with an accent in Italy or the the letters with diioritical signs is not working. So we have looked at different fonts and we have chosen Inter not because uh it's the same name of a football team of in Milan and uh by the way I'm not a supporter of that team but anyway is because the font has 3,000 glyphs and can be used for all western alphabets and for some eastern learn alphabets. Of course, having a font that is good for everything is difficult. There is only no who is really available in all the possible variants. So the lo the the the font that you will see with the logo proposal at the end will have enter for the name of the document foundation and for the others. So this is the first logo proposal. They're all based in on elements from the the uh Libri Office logo. So we have used the the same elements to have a connection. Uh this is institutional in a way that is has not any connection with animals or other stuff. And this uh is are the potential different uh uh declination of the logo uh buttons for the website. Of course uh once uh TDF members will receive today a token to vote for the logo. Uh once TDF member will decide which is the logo, URA design will create a brand identity manual. So that that will be shared as everything else uh at the document foundation. So it will be an official document of the foundation will be uh a reference for everyone. Uh this is the second one. uh you can see is uh an evolution let's call it this way of the Libri office icon and this is the uh declination of the this uh logo actually this is already with the inter font so who is curious about the inter font this is the inter font is a non serif is a sans serif font of course it's an open font But this I don't think it's even to ask. Um nothing in is proprietary. Then we have three font three logo proposals that uh use the elements to create a a a bird. Um people um let's say uh less young less young pe people will remember that open office and the seagull uh as a and therefore one of the idea is to have something that connects Libra office to open office. Uh we are connected by the source code of course uh having uh the seagull or a bird as a as the logo. This is also the declination. This is another one. Uh of course there are people that like them, there are people that do not like them. Um I I don't think we it will be possible to have a logo that makes everyone happy. uh but at least we will have a logo which uh we will start investing in term of brand recognition and this uh is again also this one is with inter and this is the last one. So they as you see they are progressively less and less connected to the to the elements. this one although the the element is used twice but it's more there is more fantasy in this one and uh uh so as I said today uh the uh TDF members will receive uh the token for uh voting they will have to vote the logos in order of preference. So from the what they like best to what they like least for 10 days. So today it will close on the 24 and uh to give URA some days to prepare the final version, the polished version, the official one which will be announced on October 1st. And uh this uh is the final logo proposal. Um and uh I think um I mean I like the logos of course I had discussions with the guys at URA. They started with more proposals. Uh then we narrowed that to the to these five. uh the we started discussing about the font after their proposals. This is why not all the proposal are with the inter font because we realized that uh what an a a specific need of our project was to have a font that was uh that could be used in many different languages because uh uh if you translate for instance the website to a lang to another language and you have to be free to have buttons which are in the same style of the corporate identity and maybe in the button you will have a a word with a diioritical sign and we don't want to limit this as it was for veour because at the end what we did is that we use veour only for the logo but not for the website because it was not flexible enough to for the website because the website is in different languages and uh uh in Italian for instant voras no accents and we have accents in many words in Germany as not um llot and you have um llot and sharpes but these are just two examples there are many others tild in Spanish uh accent in France sadas as um it's u it's limited of course uh this uh so an invitation to uh TDF members is to vote to choose because uh we want the logo to represent our diverse community. Of course, some of these logo are more European if you accept the term. Some are less European. Uh we don't want to be recognized as a European only project. Although as I said our roots are in Europe, many of the founders are European and therefore there will always be a very important role of Europe but this has to be uh not to be imposed to others. So uh I finished and um now I think it's the time for Moreno Cherves who is the president of Poronug to give you the welcome [applause] and a and a a big applause to Moreno and to all his team. You see many different people here. You have Paulo in the first Alen there. You have other people in the front row. All the students that they have been uh uh that that are helping us. Uh and there are other volunteers, the guys that are looking at the uh recording and other guys that have uh created all the environment and made all the agreements for the conference to be uh important positive. Uh Porton will be the capital city, the Italian capital city of culture in 2027. And this is one of the events that uh will anticipate this role of penon which will be a very important role for next year for Italy. Uh because there will be many events and the libra office conference is one of the events that lead to this uh uh to this important year. Uh, Moreno. Uh, I will bring up the, uh, Lin the the Linux day um, poster in a second. Thank you. [applause] Ladies and gentlemen, they are guest, they are friends. Welcome to Porton and welcome to the Libre Office Conference 2026. It's a great pleasure for me, Moreno Cervesato, president of Porton Linux user group APS to welcome all of you here today. We are truly honored to host so many people who have come from different countries to share ideas, knowledge, experience around the Libra office and free and opensource software. First of all, I would like to sincerely thank you all the authorities and representative of the institution who joined us today. Their present is very important to us and represent valuable recognition of the work carried out by our association Porton University and by the entire Libre office community. I would express a warm thank to Barbara and Kiara, members of Pelug, but also they are my wife and daughter. Every lunch, every dinner was an occasion to evaluate the step of the organization. [clears throat] Peneluga PS the Pon Linux user group has been promoting Linux free software and opensource culture in our area for many years. Our goal is not only to talk about technology but also to promote important value such as freedom, collaboration, knowledge sharing and digital independence. Technology can have an important social role. This is why one of the activity we are particularly proud of is a recovery and reuse of computers donated by the companies. Instead of becoming electronic waste, these computers are refurbished and equipped with free and opensource software before being donated to schools in particular libre office inside. In this way, we try to give techn technology a second life while helping schools and students gain access to useful digital tools. We believe that this is a concrete example of how open-source can contribute not only to techni technological innovation but also to sustainability and social responsibility. Our commitment to spread the culture of free software will continue with the next Linux day which take place here at the university campus on October 24th. Linux day is an annual event that take place simultaneously throughout Italy with the aim of spreading knowledge and awareness about Linux free software and opensource technologies. Here in Porinon, we are expecting the participation of more than 400 students from local high schools together with around 100 of techn technology enthusiast. For us, this is a particularly important opportunity to introduce younger generation to the world of digital freedom and open technology. Some of you will be joined here in Penon to show all the progress of Libre office. So thank you in particular. But today is dedicated to Libra office and to all of you. Over the next few days, you will have the opportunity to exchange ideas, share experience, learn from each other, and strengthen the international community that makes project like Libra Office possible. I hope that this conference will be productive, inspiring, and enjoyable for everyone. And of course, I hope that you will have the opportunity to enjoy your time here in Porton. Discover our city and appreciate the hospitality of our region. Thank you once again for being here. I wish you all a wonderful conference and a very pleasant stay in Penon. Welcome and enjoy Libra Office Conference 2026. [applause] Good morning everyone. On behalf of the board of directors and uh the entire team at the document foundation, it is an extraordinary honor and incredible joy to be here with you to start the Librovs conference 2026 here in Penoni. And uh allow me to begin on a very personal note. As a Brazilian, I must say that I feel absolutely at home. The kindness and generosity with which we are been welcome here in Italy speak deeply to my heart and to the spirit of hospitality in my own country. Being in Penoni means feeling at every moment that geographical distance dissolves when we find ourself in such a warm and welcome environment. Thank you. [applause] And uh looking out at the auditorium today means so much to me. I see the face of people who have crossed oceans and continents, faced dozens of hours of long trips and exhausting connections to be here. to our speakers to every member of community and also to the ecosystem companies that traveled here to speak and attend this event. Thank you so much for your presence, your generosity and your effort. The physical journey each of you has taken reflects the loyalty, courage, and passion that drive our our project every day. We spent the entire year working behind the screens. We exchanged thousands of committees, refine translations, design interfaces, fix bugs and align governments through repositories and mailing lists, but that we are experiencing today goes far beyond pure technology. Being here reminds us of something fundamental. Free software isn't made by machines or distant corporations. It's made by real people working together. It's sustained by the determination of those who refuse to accept that digital world belongs to close the monopolies in a global scenario of technology dependence and the gradual loss of privacy. What we do here is a day act of digital sovereignty and dignity. Open formats and auditable code are not secondary technical abstractions. They are the backbone of working in democracies and citizens freedom and libriopsy stands strong as evidence that open collaboration can deliver softer of the higher higher quality. Just look at the fantastic program that awaits us starting today. Three days dedicated to showcasing the full power, maturity and scope of our software. We will hear talks on advance in our core engineer, new design features, interopell interopellability, documentation and real world examples of institutional sovereignty. This conference is our big showcase to demonstrate to the world that the value and power of the biggest free officer suite on the planet. But no conference of this magnitude can can take place without a solid base. And what a fantastic support network we've found here. And if we are here today in this city, there is one person in particular who deserves our immense gratitude. Itali without Ital's dedication, vision and leadership, this bridge would not have been built. this institutional connection would not have been established and we simply would not be here in Poni Ital. On behalf of the document Foundation and everyone here in this room, our deepest and most sincery thanks for making all this a reality. A huge applause for Hitler [applause] >> [applause] [applause] >> Gracia. Thank you. [applause] And uh I would also like to express our sincere gratitude to PN lug podoni Linux user group APS he presented by Moreno Cervesato and his entire team. You are not only partners in organizing this event. You gave your heart, soul and spirit to this project. Your dedication and hospitality are the very sense of a spirit of cooperation, hospitality and commitment on the common good. A warm round of applause for Moreno and the entire Pina team. [applause] [applause] And uh I would like to extend a very special thank you for from the deep of my heart to all the volunteers. You are the invisible and essential force behind this event. from the exception registration and room logistics to technical support and the small details that no one notices. None of these would work without the generosity and energy you devote to serving our community. And a round of applause for each and every one of our volunteers. [applause] >> [applause] >> I'm finished. Okay, [laughter] hold on. I have 15 minutes. You told me. Okay. Okay. Just to be clear. And uh our gratitude goes to the uni denoni which opened the doors of the university campus to us and embrace the free knowledge as a tool for transformation. Our sincere gratitude goes to the institutions oops hold on that have granted their prestigious sponsorship. son of Julia, autonomous region of Julia Regional Council, Municipality of Penoni, Andrea Galvani Oper Adriatic Technology Hub, Italian Linux Society and Libertalia. This partnership between public sectors, technology hubs, universities, volunteers, and the local community demonstrates in practice how to build an autonomous in innovative and truly human digital ecosystem. And there is one group we must never forget to thank because they are the basis of everything that sustains these projects. Our donors, Libriovsy maintains this massive global structure thanks to the generosity of thousands of people around the world who donate to our foundation every single day. It is these daily donations that keep our servers running, support our developers and operations teams, ensure the security of infrastructure, and make events like this one possible. Without our donors, there would be neither sustainability nor independence. To every person in the world who contributes to Libriopsy financially, we offer our respect and eternal gratitude. Enjoy every hour of these three days. Listen carefully to the talks. Share what you know without reservation. welcomes warmly those attending the conference for the first time and celebrate your friendships with longtime colleagues. With immense proud in our journey and the abyssolute conviction that digital freedom is the only way forward I heraldby officially declare the libri conference 2026 open. I hope you all have a productive, inspiring and unforgettable conference. Thank you very much. [applause] Cloud Audio. There is a video message from um councelor of Frei Freia Julia region. conferences. Office. in politically. software Open source labator open source. Soft Open source. George, the mathemat The software transparent, the software, the software on >> [applause]