LibreOffice Conference Budapest 2025

In September 2025, I attended the LibreOffice Conference in Budapest, Hungary, on the 4th and the 5th, and a community meeting on the 3rd. Thanks to The Document Foundation (TDF) for sponsoring my travel and accommodation costs. The conference venue was Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE).

The conference was planned to be held from the 4th to the 6th, but the program for the 6th of September had to be canceled due to the venue being unavailable because of a marathon in Budapest. So, all the talks got squeezed into just two days, making the schedule a bit hectic.

The TDF had booked my room at the Corvin Hotel. It was a double bedroom with a window. The breakfast was included in the hotel booking. The hotel was walking distance from the conference venue. One could also take a tram from the hotel to reach the venue.

3rd of September

On the 3rd of September, we had a community meeting at the above-mentioned venue. I walked with my friend Dione to the venue. Upon reaching there, I noticed that the university had no boundaries and gates. This reminded me of the previous year’s conference venue in Luxembourg, which also had no boundaries or gates.

In contrast, Indian universities and institutes typically have walls and gates serving as boundaries to separate them from the rest of the city. Many of these institutes also have security guards at the entrance, who may ask attendees to present proof of admission before allowing them inside. I was surprised to find that institutes in Europe, like the one where the conference was held, did not have such boundaries.

The building where the conference was held was red, which happened to be the same color as the building for the previous year’s conference venue. I remember joking with Dione that the criteria for the conference venue might have been the color of the building.

During the community meeting, we shared ideas on how to spread the word about LibreOffice. The meeting lasted for a couple of hours.

After the community meeting, we went to the hotel for dinner sponsored by the TDF.

4th of September

On the first day of the conference, attendees were given swag bags containing a pad, sticky notes, a pen, a conference T-shirt, and a bottle.

The talks started early in the morning with Eliane Domingos, Chairperson of TDF’s Board of Directors, giving the inauguration talk. As always, I found Italo Vignoli’s talk on the importance of document freedom interesting.

During the snack break, I noticed that there were three types of milk available for coffee: cow’s milk, lactose-free milk, and almond milk. Almond milk is rare in India, but I have managed to get it, but I have never seen lactose-free milk in India.

Since I run fundraisers in my projects, such as Prav, I could relate to Lothar K. Becker’s talk. He discussed the issue that certain implementations in LibreOffice require a budget that is too large for any single interested entity to fund independently. Furthermore, The Document Foundation (TDF) cannot legally receive funds from government entities. Therefore, there is no organization or entity to pool resources from all the interested entities to finance the implementation.

Another talk was by the Austrian Armed Forces on their migration to LibreOffice. I wanted to know why they migrated, and I found out that they did it for their digital sovereignty, and not for saving on the license costs. Another point presented in the talk was that LibreOffice is available on all the operating systems, while the Microsoft Office suite is not that widely available. The migration was systematic and was performed over a few years. They started working on it in 2021, and the migration was finished recently. In addition, it also required training their staff in using LibreOffice.

The lunch was inside the university canteen. We were provided lunch coupons by the TDF. I got a vegan coupon with 4000 Ft written on it, which meant I could take lunch for up to 4000 Hungarian forints.

During the evening, it was my turn for the presentation. I was done with preparing my slides ten days before my talk. I also got my slides reviewed by friends.

My talk was finished in 20 minutes, while I was given a 30-minute slot. This helped us catch up on the schedule. Furthermore, I made my talk interactive by asking questions and making sure that the audience was not asleep. During my talk, my friend Dione took my pictures with my camera.

My talk was on how free software projects could give users a say in freedom to modify the software. I illustrated this using the Prav project that I am a part of.

After the talks were over, we were treated to a conference dinner at Trofea Grill. It had a great selection of desserts, which helped me sample some Hungarian desserts. The sponge cake was especially good.

5th of September

The next day—the 5th of September—I went with Dione to the venue early in the morning, as her talk was the first one of the day. Her talk was titled Managing Tasks with Nextcloud Deck. Later that day, I also attended a talk on Collabora. At lunch, I found the egg white salad quite tasty.

After the lunch break, we had the conference group photo. I had a Nikon camera, which we used to take the group photo. I requested a university student to take our group photo and also taught her how to operate the camera.

By the evening, the conference ended, after which we went to a pub, which was again sponsored by TDF. I had beer, but that one really tasted bad, so I couldn’t finish it. The only vegetarian option was goat cheeseburger, which my friend Manish and I opted for. The burger tasted awful. Apparently, I don’t like goat cheese.

The next day I went sightseeing with Dione in Budapest. Stay tuned for our adventures in Budapest!

Credits: Thanks to Dione and Richard for proofreading.