Dear Sarper,
On behalf of those of us who have had the pleasure of working alongside
you, thank you.
Nearly 200 commits on master since 2020, across GSoC, allotropia, and
Collabora. That might sound modest next to some of the longer-tenured
contributors, but quality and breadth matter more than raw count, and
you have delivered plenty of both—and you have passed it on, mentoring
GSoC students in 2024 and 2025.
The Impress Notes Pane is probably your single largest body of
work—over 20 commits turning a long-requested feature into something
that actually works properly: searchable, persistent across sessions,
with correct keyboard navigation, sidebar interactions, and all the
fiddly details that separate a prototype from a real feature. That bug
was open for years. You closed it.
Security is not the kind of work that wins applause, but it is the kind
that matters. The password strength meter, built on zxcvbn with a
proper native LevelBar control, gives users real feedback instead of the
usual “your password is weak” fiction. The active content
controls—disabling DDE, OLE Automation, Python runtime, embedded
objects—are exactly the enterprise hardening features that
organisations need and that somebody has to build carefully. Automatic
signing with a default certificate rounded out a solid run of security
improvements.
The PDF metadata work added a proper batch of Dublin Core attributes and
fixed the XMP export. The format paintbrush rework made clone
formatting context-aware in both Writer and Impress. The freehand
drawing fix tamed the wild control points. And early on, you got your
hands into the Wasm build, writing the first cut of JavaScript UNO
bindings with Embind.
The code is in the tree, the Notes Pane is on screen, and the passwords
are stronger. It continues to be great fun working on this codebase,
and your contributions have made it concretely better. Onwards! And
probably to yet another FOSDEM beer. 