Episode 112: Mike Saunders on The Document Foundation and LibreOffice

Guest Mike Saunders Panelists Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and
welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open
source for the long haul. Richard is solo today, but very excited
to have as his guest, Mike Saunders, joining us from Munich, where
he’s the Marketing and Communications Coordinator for The Document
Foundation, a longtime advocate of open standards, and wrote his
own operating system at one point called MikeOS, which we’ll find
out how that happened. Today, Mike tells us all about The Document
Foundation, LibreOffice, how they work together, and how he really
wants to grow the LibreOffice community. Also, besides The
Documentation Foundation, there’s another much smaller project
called the Document Liberation Project that we learn more about, as
well as what Mike is most excited about happening this year. Go
ahead and download this episode now to find out more! [00:01:12] We
learn how MikeOS happened. [00:02:10] Mike explains how he ended up
at The Document Foundation. [00:03:25] What is LibreOffice?
[00:05:33] We hear about how the state of LibreOffice is today and
The Document Foundation, how they work together, and how many
developers there are. [00:10:36] Richard wonders why Mike hasn’t
decided to have a giant corporate empire and what keeps him small
and end user focused instead of something else. [00:14:28] Mike
talks about a huge challenge for them which is growing the
community. [00:20:12] Mike mentioned getting people involved is
some of their community and he tells us what he does to lift people
up and make it so that they stay around and feel like they’re a
part of the community. [00:23:05] Richard wonders how Mike
facilitates a handover of trust and not show that he’s not making
the decisions in the end, and how do they become part of those
power structures and not just be contributors. [00:26:00] We learn
about the Document Liberation Project. [00:29:57] Richard wonders
what Mike’s doing to make sure that he’s sustainable in the face of
Google Docs taking over the market for documents. [00:33:21] We
find out where the 200 million users are. [00:35:20] Mike reveals
what he’s most excited about in the next few years. [00:36:20] Find
out where you can follow Mike and the LibreOffice community online.
Quotes [00:11:40] “We estimate we have 200 million users of
LibreOffice.” [00:13:05] “We exist to serve the LibreOffice
community.” [00:21:13] “The best thing you can do is to put your
trust in people.” [00:21:33] “Doers decide.” Spotlight [00:38:50]
Richard’s** **spotlight is Mozilla Fellow and researcher, Narrira
Lemos. [00:39:33]** Mike’s **spotlight is Slackware Linux. Links
SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/) Richard
Littauer Twitter (https://twitter.com/richlitt) Mike Saunders
Twitter (https://twitter.com/michael_from_uk)
mike.saunders@documentfoundation.org
(mailto:mike.saunders@documentfoundation.org) MikeOS
(http://mikeos.sourceforge.net/) The Document Foundation
(https://www.documentfoundation.org/) LibreOffice
(https://www.libreoffice.org/) LibreOffice Twitter
(https://twitter.com/libreoffice?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Sustain Podcast-Episode 67: Ryan Sipes and Building Community at
Thunderbird (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/67) Document Liberation
Project (https://www.documentliberation.org/) OpenDocument
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 54: Danese Cooer on the History of Open Source,
InnerSource, and What’s Next (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/54)
LibreOffice Blog (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/) LibreOffice
Fosstodon (https://fosstodon.org/@libreoffice) Narrira Lemos GitHub
(https://narriral.github.io/) Slackware Linux
(http://www.slackware.com/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer
(https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree
Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr
Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest:
Mike Saunders.