On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 2:42 AM, Khan Md. Anwarus Salam <kman...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > This is Khan, Convener of International Mother Language Day > Celebration. I am new in OpenOffice Community but I would like to take the > leadership for celebrating IMLD together with OpenOffice. Please let me > know who can help me and how for this purpose. >
Hello Khan, Thank you for writing to us. We are the Apache OpenOffice project. We are a volunteer-led open source project and we maintain and publish free office suite software called Apache OpenOffice. We are part of the Apache Software Foundation, a public charity with the mission to publish free software for anyone to use. OpenOffice has existed since 2000 and over 100 million users have installed our software. We are one of the most popular and familiar open source products. We describe the "Public Service Mission" of OpenOffice on our website here: http://openoffice.apache.org/mission.html As you can see, we aim for cultural and linguistic diversity. This includes the support of regional and minority languages that commercial software vendors often neglect. As an all-volunteer project we are not constrained by what is "profitable" in a commercial sense. Our only limit is the enthusiasm of our volunteers. When I heard about International Mother Language Day, I thought that this was a very sympathetic idea and that we shared several goals and a similar outlook on the importance of promoting mother languages. So what could we do in OpenOffice to support IMLD? Some things that we can do include: 1) Use our project's outreach via our website and social media, to promote IMLD. Our website receives millions of visits each week. We could, for example, put an IMLD banner on our website during the week of IMLD. 2) We could do a blog post on our blog to talk about IMLD 2013, and the importance for open source software to offer wide support for regional and minority languages. 3) Depending on location, we might be able to provide a speaker at an IMLD event. Or we could provide quote for a press release. 4) We could interview an expert involved in IMLD about the event and the intersection of these concerns and software. These are just some ideas, brainstorming. Perhaps you have some other thoughts. Finally, one thing I noticed is that past IMLD's had a theme. It would be good to know what the theme will be in 2013, so we can adapt our message to that theme. I am looking forward to your reply. Regards, -Rob Weir, Apache OpenOffice Project Management Committee > With Best Regards, > Khan Md. Anwarus Salam > Convener > International Mother Language Day Celebration in Japan > http://www.internationalmotherlanguageday.com/ > Phone: +81-8041803667 > Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/motherlanguageday
