History

Hi all,
I need your help.
Volker has made a page in German to show the history of LibreOffice [1]. I took this and let Google translate it [2] because my English won't be that good to give it the right note.
Can the English speaking have a look at this page with right wording and grammar? We can put the content to our website as a subpage of [3] and in our documentation, dvd etc. if you want to do so.

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/History/de
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/History
[3] https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/

Hi :slight_smile:
The English version apparently wasn't written by a native English speaker.  Obviously Star Office was bought BY Sun not "from" Sun.  Most people probably wouldn't notice little slips like that as the meaning was very clear due to the context. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

I'm trying to do a proper English version of this. I can't do it on the wiki because it won't let me register. Their "capchas" are so fiendishly distorted that I can't read them at all.

Here is the first paragraph:
In the mid-80s, the German student Marco Boerries, then 16 years old, was living as an exchange student in Silicon Valley. He was so enthusiastic about the tech scene that he began to develop office software (later known as StarOffice (TM)). In 1986 he founded the Star Division company with headquarters in Hamburg. It was bought in 1999 for $73.5 million by Sun Microsystems. Star Office (TM) 5.1a was the first version of the software to be published by Sun. The current version 9 Star Office (TM) appeared in November 2008. The OpenOffice.org project was founded 13.10.200 by Sun to develop this leading international office suite, which runs on all major platforms and provides access to functions and data through transparent interfaces and an XML-based file format. It is based on of the source code for StarOffice (TM) 5.2 as well as technology that Sun has developed for future versions of StarOffice TM. The source code is written in C++ and provides language-neutral and scripting functionality, including Java-based APIs. These allow you to use the suite either as separate applications or embedded into other applications.

Hi Tom,

Hi :slight_smile:
The English version apparently wasn't written by a native English speaker. Obviously Star Office was bought BY Sun not "from" Sun. Most people probably wouldn't notice little slips like that as the meaning was very clear due to the context.

Google translate will never be a native English speaker :wink: but a crutch for all non-native speaker who had learned this language for years and years in school and never will be able to translate/talk/write it in the right way (like me).

Hi Hazel,

Here is the first paragraph:
In the mid-80s, the German student Marco Boerries, then 16 years old, was living as an exchange student in Silicon Valley. He was so enthusiastic about the tech scene that he began to develop office software (later known as StarOffice (TM)). In 1986 he founded the Star Division company with headquarters in Hamburg. It was bought in 1999 for $73.5 million by Sun Microsystems. Star Office (TM) 5.1a was the first version of the software to be published by Sun. The current version 9 Star Office (TM) appeared in November 2008. The OpenOffice.org project was founded 13.10.200 by Sun to develop this leading international office suite, which runs on all major platforms and provides access to functions and data through transparent interfaces and an XML-based file format. It is based on of the source code for StarOffice (TM) 5.2 as well as technology that Sun has developed for future versions of StarOffice TM. The source code is written in C++ and provides language-neutral and scripting fun

ctionality, including Java-based APIs. These allow you to use the suite either as separate applications or embedded into other applications.

Thanks for that.
I changed it in the wiki (and wait for the other paragraphs ;-)).

OpenOffice.org
In May 2002, the first official version was released: OpenOffice.org 1.0 was born. The final version of the 1.x series appeared as 1.1.5 in September 2005.

OpenOffice.org 2.x
In October 2005, OpenOffice.org 2.0 was released. The user interface was updated and Base was added. ODF was the new standard format for all modules. The 2.x code branch was long maintained, with OpenOffice.org 2.4.3 being published in September 2009.

OpenOffice.org 3.x
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released in October 2008, was again greatly extended. The adaptation to the various user interfaces provided by the supported operating systems and MacOS has been improved, with a native version now supported as well. The latest version of this development is the OpenOffice.org 3.3.0, released in January 2011.

Autonomy and rights
The supreme governing body of the project was the Community Council, elected by the members, which however had virtually no influence on the main processes of development at Sun. The release of the code as open source was planned with all rights to the name, etc. to be transferred to a foundation still to be established. As a basis for this, some developers at Sun Microsystems founded as a precursor the association "OpenOffice.org team" which received donations for the project in order to support various marketing campaigns. By 2009, this body managed the rights to the name "OpenOffice.org". To improve the policing of infringements, the trademark in 2009 transferred to Sun Microsystems.

Sun/Oracle
Throughout this time, Sun Microsystems had taken a large role in the development of the code, supported primarily by the community, but also by other software companies such as Novell and IBM. In 2009, Oracle made a takeover bid for its rival Sun, which was economically depressed, and after approval by the antitrust authorities, this acquisition was completed in January 2010. The development department of OpenOffice.org in Hamburg was included only on the condition that it was profitable in itself.

Transfer of the code to Apache
In April 2011, Oracle announced the recruitment of professional support for OpenOffice.org and announced the conversion to a community-based project. In early June 2011 the source code and all trademark rights was given to the Apache Foundation. OpenOffice.org continues to be developed significantly there, with IBM as a major contributor.

The Document Foundation / LibreOffice
In September 2010, some of the developers, in particular volunteers from the community, announced the establishment of "The Document Foundation" to allow the program to continue independently of Oracle with the product name "LibreOffice".

LibreOffice
LibreOffice 3.3.0 was presented as a beta in September 2010 and published on January 25, 2011. Unlike the approach in OpenOffice.org LibreOffice is developed in strict accordance with a time-based release plan. Several code branches are maintained in parallel and supplied with corrections.

The Document Foundation
The Foundation holds all rights to the project and was legally founded on 17.02.2012 [1]. The necessary foundation capital (a minimum amount of Euro 50,000) was raised by a campaign in February 2011 and collected within eight days. The members of the Foundation chose a board of directors in accordance with the Bylaws , which controls the fate of the Foundation. Further information is contained in the Geschaeftsordnung (Bylaws).--

Hi :slight_smile:
Ahhh, i misunderstood.  I thought you were translating from an existing English document.  It wasn't 100% perfect but it was pretty impressive.  The meaning was clear throughout. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
Captchas usually have a speaker icon that might be worth trying
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

There is apparently a missing digit in the year the OpenOffice.org project was started. It says 13.10.200 ?

(Also, it is helpful to use International (ISO) dates of the form yyyy.mm.dd or yyyy-mm-dd since it is an international project [;<).

- Dennis

Hi Dennis,

There is apparently a missing digit in the year the OpenOffice.org project was started. It says 13.10.200 ?

Changed in 2000

(Also, it is helpful to use International (ISO) dates of the form yyyy.mm.dd or yyyy-mm-dd since it is an international project [;<).

Done so for this date and the date of foundation of TDF.

Hi Hazel,

I'm trying to do a proper English version of this. I can't do it on the wiki because it won't let me register. Their "capchas" are so fiendishly distorted that I can't read them at all.

It seems that you managed it:

2012-04-09T18:02:39 Hazel (Talk | contribs) New user account ‎

Hi :slight_smile:
Ahh, we cheated!  I set-up the account and then mailed her the info.  I've never been able to do that before and it's very cheeky of me but i wanted to see if they did have a speaker icon for the wiki.  They don't :frowning:
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Hazel,

I'm trying to do a proper English version of this. I can't do it on the wiki because it won't let me register. Their "capchas" are so fiendishly distorted that I can't read them at all.

Please do mail me off-list if you need me to create an account for you
on the wiki - I've got admin powers there.

Hazel:
            I was revisiting this old mails (basically to put them in
Trash) and found a little thing that sounds strange to me:
    "The Foundation holds all rights to the project and was legally
founded on 17.02.2012"
It was founded so late as in 2012? I thought that was last year its
foundation.
Sorry if this is too little and found my mail annoying, but I was
confused.

Regards
Lailah

Please see this blog post, which explains the significance of that date:
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2012/02/20/the-document-foundation-officially-incorporated-in-berlin-germany/

"Founded" may not be the best word here; we should probably change it to "incorporated".

Jean

Don't ask me! I'm only the translator. Klaus is the one you need to contact.

Hi :slight_smile:
Companies don't usually spring fully armed like Athena from the head of Zeus.

Usually these things have to grow and it takes time to get officially and legally registered.  It helps if the company can show that it is already running like a company in order to show that it has a track record and knows how to manage itself.

TDF founders and all the rest of you did a brilliant job.  The finances were being held by one or 2 community groups that were legal entities and did have secured and accountable bank accounts and a good long track record of appropriate financial reporting and structured so that it was independent of OOo/LO.  Mostly it was the German Community organisation.  Funds are likely to be transferred to proper TDF-owned bank accounts very soon.

So, everything was safe and "all in the plan" as they say.  Often these things drag on for years and one excuse after another, such as "operational efficiency" prevent the formation so TDF may have set a record for soemthing of this size.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Oh, so sorry! I just answered your email.

Regards