This is the second part of our interview with the Bundesheer (see here for the first). At the LibreOffice Conference 2025, you showcased the new LibreOffice features sponsored by the Austrian Armed Forces. How did that come about? From the very beginning, we clearly recognised the need to further develop LibreOffice. Before finalising our plans, we also examined how we could continue to develop the product. Ultimately, we issued a Europe-wide, open call for proposals to secure both support and development capacity for LibreOffice. The way we selected the product enhancements stemmed in part from this preliminary study, because we had identified specific import capabilities and compatibility requirements. That’s one major aspect: improving interoperability in line with our needs. The other focus was on improving LibreOffice based on ongoing user feedback and feedback regarding collaboration with external organizations. One example of this was the “Notes” bar in Impress. In the past, users had to edit notes in a separate notes view. We were told very early on that users wanted to be able to do this directly within the slide editing view. This is a very well-known enhancement that we sponsored, which – I think – works very well. In
one of the advantages of LibreOffice is that the format is ISO-standardised and truly open.
In my opinion I wouldn’t consider paywalled ISO standards as “open”. But maybe these ones are available for free.
That has not been the case for any of the ISO standards I have needed. Maybe I have been doing it wrong. Or do you think maybe they don’t realize they probably spend thousands of dollars to get access to those “open” ISO standards.
