SUSE, Red Hat, and FSF on New TDF Board

The Document Foundation today announced new advisory board members saying it's a demonstration of wide corporate support. Florian Effenberger said, "its composition shows that LibreOffice is a vendor-neutral, truly-free office suite, and confirms that The Document Foundation has created a solid base to build upon, for the community, for corporations and enterprises, and for adopters and end-users."

Members include " Google, SUSE, Red Hat, Freies Office Deutschland e.V., Software in the Public Interest, and the Free Software Foundation." Representatives from each will serve for one year providing advice and guidance on future development of LibreOffice.

Jeremy Allison, founder of Samba and current Google employee, said, "Google is pleased to be a supporter of The Document Foundation, and to provide funding and advice to advance their work."

Holger Dyroff, a vice president for SUSE, said, "SUSE recognises the value of community governance and is very pleased to help fund as well as provide advice to The Document Foundation."

Brian Stevens, from Red Hat, added, "The Document Foundation shares the objectives of openness, transparency, interoperability and user choice that are reflected in Red Hat's core values."

A representative from the Free Software Foundation added, "we applaud TDF's demonstrated commitment to user freedom, and will do our best to help it achieve its free software goals going forward."

If The Document Foundation persists in this kind of activity, folks may start think they are serious about this community-based free office suite thing.