ROSE Blog Interviews: The Document Foundation's Jacqueline Rahemipour

ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange

On October 31, Jacqueline Rahemipour posted a letter on the dev@native-lang.openoffice.org mailing list called Every end is a new beginning. The letter, which was signed by Rahemipour and 32 other OpenOffice.org contributors, addressed Oracle's response to the recent creation of The Document Foundation. The letter says, "Oracle's official response to the announcement of The Document Foundation was clear – Oracle will continue OpenOffice.org as usual. The result is now indeed the lately postulated conflict of interest for those community members who are in charge of or representing project, but to whom it is not enough 'to continue working as we always did'." The letter ends with the contributors announcing that they are leaving their positions with the OpenOffice.org project: "The answer for us who sign this letter is clear: We want a change to give the community as well as the software it develops the opportunity to evolve. For this reason, from now on we will support The Document Foundation and will – as a team – develop and promote LibreOffice."
After reading the letter, I emailed Rahemipour and asked her to tell us a little more about herself and her plans for 2011:
RK: Tell us about yourself and what you do.
JR: I am a member of the management board and founding member of the German non-profit organization OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V. For more than five years I was co-lead of the Germanophone OpenOffice.org project. Going forward I will also support LibreOffice and The Document Foundation. In my daily job, I work as an OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice consultant and trainer. I published several books and articles on the topic of OpenOffice.org.
RK: What do you love about working in an open source-related job?
JR: I love the spirit of open source, the freedom of thought, and I like to have an active role improving the software I use for my daily work. Actually, my main working areas are quality assurance, marketing, and localization.
When I got in contact with the OpenOffice-project many years ago, I was just a normal user with normal questions. But I was so amazed and encouraged by the enthusiasm of the other community members that I decided to volunteer as much as I could, to give a little bit back of what open source software gives to me.
RK: You're speaking to a group of women from other fields who are considering switching careers. Why should they consider moving into an open source-related career? What should they know about the open source environment to prepare them for the transition from a different field?
JR: Working in an open source environment means working in a male-dominated domain, much more so than in other areas of IT-business, so you have to be prepared to struggle with prejudices. But the one thing I learned in my many years contributing to open source is that women who have entered and found the projects that perfectly fit their skills are well-respected and reliable and stay long-term.
OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice are slightly different from other open source projects because they aren't as developer-focused as other projects might be. There are many chances to connect with the project and work in areas other than development, such as marketing, user support, or documentation. So women working in an open source
environment is not as challenging as it might seem to be, as long as they find the right project and do their job very well.
RK: What do you think will be the "hot topics" in open source for 2011?
JR: LibreOffice, for sure. :-) I am curious how its community will grow in the upcoming months. It seems to me that the project has grown up and is now truly independent. This also will mean hard work for all contributors, but this is also exiting and motivating.
RK: What will your focus be for 2011, particularly with The Document Foundation?
JR: I will continue with my work in quality assurance and localization for LibreOffice. Furthermore, there is much to do to make LibreOffice and The Document Foundation known, especially by German users and companies. We will organize many local events in Germany and get in contact with the people to explain what LibreOffice is and why we support The Document Foundation.
RK: What question do you wish I'd asked? And how would you answer it?
JR: "How about your plans concerning OpenOffice.org?" I am still connected with the OpenOffice.org Community because I was involved in many interesting projects with many enthusiastic people and I learned a lot during this time. I won't terminate my work on OpenOffice.org for now, and I will finish my current projects for both OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice.
Read additional interviews:
Susan Rose, OLF Medical Track Committee Chair
Margarita Manterola, Debian Developer
Valerie Bubb Fenwick, Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems
Ellen Siever, co-author of Linux in a Nutshell
Juliet Kemp, author and admin extraordinaire
Noirin Shirley, Vice President of the Apache Software Foundation
Con-Techie.com's Kendra "Admin" Schaefer
Emma Jane Hogbin, co-author of Front End Drupal
Sharon Moreland, Technology Consultant at the Northeast Kansas Library System
Meike Reichle, Debian Developer
Máirín Duffy, Team Lead for Fedora Design Team
Hillary Rettig, author and activist
Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation
Linux Foundation's Angela Brown
Ohio LinuxFest's Beth Lynn Eicher
LinuxToday.com's Carla Schroder
Urban Forest Mapping Project's Kelaine Vargas
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you've found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Arch Linux 2023.12.01 Released with a Much-Improved Installer
If you've ever wanted to install Arch Linux, now is your time. With the latest release, the archinstall script vastly simplifies the process.
-
Zorin OS 17 Beta Available for Testing
The upcoming version of Zorin OS includes plenty of improvements to take your PC to a whole new level of user-friendliness.
-
Red Hat Migrates RHEL from Xorg to Wayland
If you've been wondering when Xorg will finally be a thing of the past, wonder no more, as Red Hat has made it clear.
-
PipeWire 1.0 Officially Released
PipeWire was created to take the place of the oft-troubled PulseAudio and has finally reached the 1.0 status as a major update with plenty of improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Rocky Linux 9.3 Available for Download
The latest version of the RHEL alternative is now available and brings back cloud and container images for ppc64le along with plenty of new features and fixes.
-
Ubuntu Budgie Shifts How to Tackle Wayland
Ubuntu Budgie has yet to make the switch to Wayland but with a change in approaches, they're finally on track to making it happen.
-
TUXEDO's New Ultraportable Linux Workstation Released
The TUXEDO Pulse 14 blends portability with power, thanks to the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU.
-
AlmaLinux Will No Longer Be "Just Another RHEL Clone"
With the release of AlmaLinux 9.3, the distribution will be built entirely from upstream sources.
-
elementary OS 8 Has a Big Surprise in Store
When elementary OS 8 finally arrives, it will not only be based on Ubuntu 24.04 but it will also default to Wayland for better performance and security.
-
OpenELA Releases Enterprise Linux Source Code
With Red Hat restricting the source for RHEL, it was only a matter of time before those who depended on that source struck out on their own.