EU open source news site Joinup reports that the crowdfunding appeal launched by Wilhelm Tux for the incorporation of signed PDF functionality in LibreOffice (posts passim) has reached its target of CHF8,000 (about €10,000) in just three days.
To date 90 organisations, companies and individuals have contributed to the Wilhelm Tux crowdfunding campaign, including Swiss Post Solutions, a division of the Swiss Post Office (isn’t it great to see the public sector supporting free and open source? Ed.).
Once implemented, LibreOffice will be able to:
- Create PDF documents with legally accepted digital signatures accompanied by a timestamp;
- Conform to PDF/A signature standards;
- Use either Mozilla Firefox or Thunderbird to manage certificates using a simple interface.
Implementation of the project has been awarded to Collabora, an open source IT service provider, and the work is expected to be completed by April 2015.
Collabora, which is based in Cambridge, has issued a statement in connection with the Wilhelm Tux crowdfunding campaign, which declares:
The success of their campaign shows that Swiss businesses want LibreOffice, want digital signing, and, given the opportunity, are happy to pay for it. It also demonstrates the freedom that the LibreOffice ecosystem provides to businesses. Independently of The Document Foundation who steward and steer LibreOffice development, and independently of the many businesses who have stakes in the future of the application, organisations of any size can organise the addition of new features. When their needs are shared, they need not even bear the exclusive burden of cost.
Work on adding digital signature functionality to this popular free and open source office suite was initially started in 2012, but then stagnated.