Nationality German Name Thorsten Behrens | Occupation Software engineer Home town Hamburg | |
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Known for OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, odpdown Website | ||
Aarhus libreoffice conference 2015 welcome session thorsten behrens
Thorsten Behrens is a software developer and is heavily involved in the creation of open source software, especially in the area of productivity suites. He was part of the OpenOffice.org project almost from the start, when he joined the Sun Microsystems development team in early 2001. He completed his education as a computer scientist, and is an enthusiastic advocate for Free Software and open standards.
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Research and software development
At the University of Hamburg, Behrens provided research on pattern recognition and 3D image processing. Joining OpenOffice.org later and following that LibreOffice, he contributed to a wide range of code areas ranging from build system, platform abstraction libraries, LibreOffice Impress and LibreOffice Writer. During his time at OpenOffice.org, he was a co-lead of the late graphical system layer project. Since it was created in 2011, Behrens is a member of the Engineering Steering Committee for LibreOffice. Thorsten Behrens is a frequent speaker at open source conferences, including the annual LibreOffice conference and FOSDEM.
Open standards and executive work
Thorsten Behrens is a member of the OASIS ODF technical committee, and he is a technical advisor on the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 working group 4. He has been a founding member of the Steering Committee of the Document Foundation which set up the Document Foundation, the Berlin-based Foundation that backs the development of LibreOffice. Behrens emphasised that the creation of the Foundation strengthens the community aspect of the project. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation since the first election, and he is the chairman of the Board since his reelection in 2013.