Wilhelm Tux is raising funds for the implementation of digital signatures on PDF documents in the free Office Suite LibreOffice.
Our fundraising project is completed, PDF signatures are a part of LibreOffice since version 4.4. And starting with version 4.5 digitally signed timestamps are also part of the PDF signatures.
Special thanks to all of our sponsors, who have made this success possible in the best of open source tradition!
The PDF document format is considered the de-facto standard for inter-enterprise and inter-platform document exchange. The well-known free Office Suite LibreOffice can natively create PDF documents. Additionally, it can already digitally sign normal documents in its native ODF format, but cannot do so with the PDF generated from them. Digital signatures are important for being able to verify the authenticity of a document, just as hand-written signatures are on paper documents. The feature met unexpected interest at the LibreOffice Conference 2014 in Bern.
Take the initiative
For more than 10 years Wilhelm Tux has advocated the use of Free Software, especially in public administration and in enterprises. Therefore, we wanted to take the initiative to make it possible to create digitally signed PDF documents directly from the Office suite LibreOffice. Based on our conviction that this feature is of great importance for free document exchange and thus should be implemented in Free Software, we have started a fundraising campaign for the implementation of that feature.
Because: Even though Free Software is mostly and prominently distributed free of cost, its development on a professional level does in fact require a lot of effort and does lead to costs on the developers' side.
With the company Collabora, we were able to find the ideal partner for this idea: It employs some of the core developers of LibreOffice and merges all development back into the main project. So the additional feature will remain Free Software! We think this is an exemplary business model that we would also like to support.
Wilhelm Tux is looking for donations and sponsors for the 8 days of development work estimated by Collabora. Every contribution, large or small, from individuals or companies, is more than welcome!
May we count on your support? If yes, please register your donation / sponsoringon this form. You will then receive an e-mail with all required information.
Thank you very much!
Currently pledged:
CHF !
115 %
You did it!
All of you together have made it possible to achieve our sponsoring goal in an absolutely incredibly short time.
The following companies, institutions and individuals have so far pledged contributions for the implementation of PDF signatures in LibreOffice. (Some donors have preferred not to be listed personally.)
