 How long has been Allotropia involved in the LibreOffice project? So Allotropia is a very young company, we're barely a year old, and we're a spin-off from CIB. So we've been essentially taking the LibreOffice open source team from CIB, spun it out into a separate company, so in a way we're active since January 1st and contributing towards LibreOffice. In effect, in reality, it's the same team that has been working with me at CIB for by now more than six years. So that's been, if you will, that's been the time we've been contributing. Strictly speaking, it's since January 1st. Which are Allotropia main objectives for sponsoring the LibreOffice conference? Thanks for asking. So there are two main objectives. First and foremost, we'd like to give back a bit to the community. It's a way to help TDF towards running a successful conference. As we all know, that involves lots of things, lots of work, but also there's a need for money to pay for things. So we're quite grateful to be able to contribute a little bit towards that. The second objective, obviously, since Allotropia is a very young company, we're a startup and perhaps not as well known as other commercial providers of LibreOffice services and products. So we'd like to get to know, have the community get to know us a bit better. And that's a very nice way as a conference sponsor to put our name in front of people. According to analysts, the office with market segment will grow at a yearly rate of 5% during the next five years to reach a global value of $30 billion. Where do you see LibreOffice in this scenario? So the hope is, of course, that we will be able to grow with that market. Personally, I'm convinced that we will grow even faster. One of the reasons why I set up this company is that I'm convinced that there will be a step change in LibreOffice uptake and also LibreOffice technology uptake. You see that across the globe, there's increasing awareness that with the pervasiveness of digital processes and workflows, how important it is to be in control of your own destiny and being able to drive your IT agenda rather being driven by large vendors. And I think open source and especially open source and such a critical piece of software like office productivity is regarded strategically important from a number of people including governments and large corporations. So the hope is that with LibreOffice being able to drive lots of things, being able to run even in the background with the LibreOffice technology processes that you don't even see. The hope is that we will grow and be much more pervasive than we are now. That's across the industry and the fact that open source is slowly growing from rather low levels like operating systems but now increasingly also into user space areas, user facing software makes me very optimistic that it will happen. Since the launch of the LibreOffice project, the end of desktop productivity has been predicted several times but the application are still alive. Which is your opinion on the future of this market segment? Yeah, that's an interesting question and as always those that are proclaimed death, that they tend to live a long and healthy life. So there's two aspects to that question. First of all, I do believe that desktop office productivity has a future. There's just so many desktop computers out there. There's so many processes still designed around desktop office solutions. The other side of the coin is the fact that for LibreOffice, the project doesn't really matter so much because the way that LibreOffice is able to adapt the way that LibreOffice can be ported and converted into pretty much any solution out there. So LibreOffice has been ported to every major platform architecture and operating system out there. Has been adopted as a back office solution as a driving technology with the LibreOffice technology moniker. So even if desktop office would be in steep decline, LibreOffice would still be relevant because of the way it can be used and adapted and ported. On the other hand, as I would expect LibreOffice on the desktop would be in decline but not in steep decline. You would still have the flexibility to run that for many years. And if you take this all together, the one unique aspect, the one unique property of LibreOffice, by the way it works is that it's essentially the same code that runs regardless of where you are, whether that's on the desktop, whether that's in a browser, whether that's on a mobile device. That's the same code that renders, that loads and renders your document. So you won't have any issues with diverging, rendering within compatibilities. So I think the question whether desktop is in decline or not and what the future brings, we from the LibreOffice project and people working in that ecosystem can be pretty relaxed because we know that pretty much everything that the future will bring, even those that we don't even know about, the innovations five years down the road, we will very lightly be able to adapt. During the last 18 months with the pandemic, open source software and LibreOffice have helped people working for a moment. This has increased the global number of users. Do you see this as a trend? Yes, absolutely. I think that ties in with what I said earlier that the fact that LibreOffice is so flexible and it's available everywhere, most of the time at a very low or zero cost, that is a trend that will continue. I think the pandemic essentially has just accelerated something that was there before. It was just a fast forward, like catching up with five years, ten years of held back development and with people running very many different computing devices, having like needing in need of more computers while there are at home or where they're on the road or whether they sit in the office. They need to have the same, pretty much the same software available everywhere that renders the same document in the same way. That's a very important aspect that LibreOffice can provide and I think that need was there, but it has only been accelerated and I do expect it to continue and grow even more pervasive. Which are the three best characteristics of LibreOffice that make the software stand out against the competition? Yeah, so I think that there's three, indeed three aspects that are essential in my mind. First of all, as I said, the fact that LibreOffice is very, very flexible. So the code has been ported to every major platform, to every major architecture out there. By now it's very easy to port. It's not trivial, but it's easy compared to other software. It's kind of in the DNA of the project to be adaptable and to be portable. That really helps because the future will only see more platforms and more architectures and less uniformity in computing. And that's very, very, very important to be future proof. And that's really at the core. That's really the DNA of the project. The second aspect is the fact that LibreOffice with the Open Document format has a standardized file format. There was actually the very first XML-based Office Productivity format that was fully standardized. It's an open standardization process, so it's pretty much open to everyone. And LibreOffice is driving that. So we're kind of in control in the way of our own destiny. We're not required to follow others that dictate what we can or what we cannot put into our document format. And I think that will also be increasingly important as an aspect of that project where we can shine. And the third, I think, very important attribute of LibreOffice is the fact that not only it's an open source project, but it's a multi-vendor and community-driven open source project, which is not a given. So you find open source software that is essentially, if you need to talk business to someone, it's essentially just one company. For LibreOffice, it's different. There's a multitude of companies. There's quite a large number of unaffiliated LibreOffice developers that would be available for hire if you need to do something. And it's a community-driven project. So the community is essentially in control of the project. And it's not a single company. And all of that makes it a very future-proof project and something that if you want independence and flexibility, you're probably very well served to choose. Thank you and see you soon at the LibreOffice conference.