January 24th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
At the KDE 4.0 Release Event last week, Inge Wallin presented KOffice 2.0, a major forthcoming upgrade to the suite that leverages numerous KDE 4 technologies.
KOffice is the broadest office suite available today, with 11 components at present. It includes project management, vector and raster graphics programs, desktop database, word processor, slideshow and spreadsheet tools, and a handful of others. New components including a mind map tool are also being added.
KOffice adopted ODF even before OpenOffice.org supported it, and OpenDocument Format has since become KOffice’s native file format.
One of KDE 4.0’s biggest additions is the ability to run on Mac OS X and Windows, as well as Linux. Thus, KOffice 2.0 will be available on Linux, Mac and Windows when it’s released. (Alphas are already available for testing users now.)
Some other cool features coming with KOffice 2.0 include:
- Integrated into KDE; can be embedded in Konqueror browser.
- Each application is scriptable. The codebase is modular, allow for extensions to be built as complementary pieces to the core KOffice code.
- Sophisticated color management supports CMYK color space, and mixing colors in different color spaces (not for 2.0, but soon afterward).
- Like other KDE 4 applications, KOffice 2.0 offers more features with a smaller footprint in terms of system resources needed.
It’s great to see the explosion of ODF-capable suites hitting the marketplace. Soon, users will be able to choose between OpenOffice.org, KOffice, and IBM Lotus Symphony on any one of the big three OS platforms. All of these suites have strong feature sets, and all are free of cost or open source.
These new contenders are going to bring major changes to a market that has been stagnant far too long!
Posted in GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source | Comments Off on KOffice Notes
January 23rd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Lotus Symphony, IBM’s new derivative of OpenOffice built on Eclipse technology and first released as a beta in September, has been updated with support for 24 languages.
The press release announces: “Downloaded for use in English by more than 400,000 individuals at work and at home, IBM’s Lotus Symphony suite (www.ibm.com/software/lotus/symphony) of desktop office software is now available in 24 languages serving major markets worldwide.”
For a beta that’s only 4 months old, these are impressive download numbers. I expect that Symphony, with its native use of ODF, will help to grow the overall market of ODF-capable applications more than it will cannibalize OOo’s marketshare. (I believe Symphony is not open source, so many users will want to stick with OOo. But Symphony is free of cost, and has a very attractive UI, which will entice many others to adopt it.)
Not only is Symphony designed for a global market, but it’s also engineered as a global product: “IBM has employed innovative development techniques in the development and translation of Lotus Symphony. Lotus Symphony was developed by a global network of IBM laboratories led by a core team in Beijing, China using agile development techniques that allow work to continue seamlessly and in parallel on components of the product at all times.”
If I were IBM, my strategy to spread Symphony now would be to leverage OEM bundling. Clearly there’s a lot of interest from end users who are downloading it, but to really impact the market, IBM should enlist their old friends at Lenovo to install Symphony on every computer they ship. Leverage that to encourage other PC makers to follow suit, and then marketshare will climb extremely fast! IBM, and all users of ODF, will benefit.
Posted in ODF, OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | Comments Off on More News on Lotus Symphony
January 18th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Today at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley is the largest day of presentations and meetings for the KDE 4.0 Release Party.
We flew in from New York to participate in the conference sessions, invited to help cement the collaboration efforts between many projects around the ODF standard. (Used by OpenOffice and KOffice, among many others, ODF provides a shared meeting ground for many open source communities, as well as corporate entities.)
Aaron Seigo’s presentation gave us an overview of the new additions to KDE. One of the features that I was most interested in learning about is the cross-platform capability of KDE 4.0 applications. With 4.0, Mac and Windows users will be able to run KDE applications natively on their platforms. Demos of Marble, KStar and a few other apps really impressed me–and I’m very much looking forward to using KOffice on my MacBook in the near future.
Memory footprint is also much more efficient in KDE 4.0. The Eee PC, with 512 MB of RAM and a 1 Ghz processor, can run KDE 4.0 with all the visual extras turned on. Aaron said many applications will run with 30-40% less RAM using KDE 4 than they did with KDE 3.
KDE 4.0 is targeted primarily at early adopters, distributions, testers and developers. KDE 4.1, scheduled for the middle of this year, will focus on end users and is clearly going to be a watershed in the global move to open source.
Posted in Announcements, Free Culture, ODF, Open Source | Comments Off on KDE 4.0 Release Party at Google
January 14th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization responsible for the Wikipedia, has announced plans to support ODF export from the MediaWiki wiki engine.
From the press release:
“This technology is of key strategic importance to the cause of free education world-wide,” said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “It will make it possible to use and remix wiki content for a variety of purposes, both in the developing and the developed world, in areas with connectivity and without.”
In this multi-stage project, the last will bring support for ODF.
“The third stage, planned for mid-2008, will be the addition of the OpenDocument format for word processors to the list of export formats. “Imagine that you want to use a set of wiki articles in the classroom. By supporting the OpenDocument format, we will make it easy for educators to customize and remix content before printing and distributing it from any desktop computer,” Sue Gardner explained. This work is funded through a US$40,000 grant by the Open Society Institute.
“The technology developed through this cooperation will be available under an open source license, free for anyone to use for any purpose. It ties into the MediaWiki platform, the open source technology that runs Wikipedia. As a result, thousands of wiki platforms around the world will have the option of providing the same services to their users.”
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, Wiki | Comments Off on Wikipedia to Support ODF
January 9th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Computerworld UK reports “OpenDocument Format making ‘amazing progress’ claim supporters.”
“Twelve countries and six regional governments have adopted “pro-ODF policies,” according to the group, composed of companies and organisations that advocate for the format.
“The latest countries are the Netherlands and South Africa, which require government agencies to use the format. Also, more than 40 applications now support ODF and the Alliance’s membership ranks are set to rise above 500, according to the report.”
ODF supporters can be found everywhere online and around the world as additional governments and applications adopt the format. The news of its continued success will bring even more supporters as it strengthens the resolve of its longtime proponents.
“Another ODF advocate, Andy Updegrove, also expressed pleasure over ODF’s adoption to date and optimism about its future. “The tipping point has been passed. I don’t think it will lead to a deluge, but progress will continue,” said Updegrove, an attorney with Gesmer Updegrove LLP in Boston.”
Posted in ODF | Comments Off on OpenDocument Format Making “Amazing Progress”
December 20th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Virtuelvis translates a Norwegian government announcement that from January 1, 2009, it will require government offices to use ODF, PDF and HTML for publishing documents online.
“Goverment, state and regional agencies, authorities and services may also publish in other formats, but they must always publish in one of these formats. The decree is retroactive, and by 2014 all documents published prior to this decree must have been converted and made available in one of the three formats.”
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Norway Mandates Open Formats
December 19th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The New York State Office for Technology has put forth a request for public comment on the issue of data storage formats, particularly ODF vs MSOOXML:
“All stakeholders are encouraged to submit responses to all or parts of the RFPC, irrespective of whether they currently do business with or intend to participate in future procurements by CIO/OFT and/or the State of New York.”
Responses are due by December 28.
The RFPC consists of two parts and asks many detailed questions. I suspect this means New York State takes the issue very seriously, so I imagine they’ll see through the smoke blown by a monopolist, to understand that adopting ODF is of great importance to NYS and its citizens.
This could turn out to be big!
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on New York State Looking for ODF or MSOOXML Comments
December 18th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Following up on my post from last week about the Dutch government adopting ODF, CNN Money has picked up the story as well. (Clearly from the same release, with the same errors!)
Writing “Dutch Government: Open Source Software To Be Adopted By April 2008,” CNN announces, “The Dutch government has set a soft deadline of April 2008 for its agencies to adopt open-source software such as free word processing programs and Internet browsers, a spokesman for the Economic Affairs Ministry said Thursday.”
The motivation is primarily for cost savings and vendor independence:
“The decision directs government organizations to use the Open Document Format, or ODF, to save text files, rather than Microsoft’s Open Office XML (sic, should be “Office Open XML”), and to use Mozilla’s Firefox or other open-source browsers, rather than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Van Scherrenburg said the government estimates it would save EUR6 million annually on city housing registers alone due to a switch to the ODF standard.”
The phrase you’re thinking of is “tipping point.”
Posted in ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on CNN Money on Open Source and the Dutch Government
December 13th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Erwin Tenhumberg let loose a flurry of blog posts this week covering OOo and ODF issues…
He uncovered a UK outfit selling PCs with OpenOffice.org preinstalled, adding to the pressure on other OEMs. I’m sure we will see steady progress on this front, bringing us ever closer to the tipping point.
He also announced (though I’m sure I already knew this) the OLPC XO will use ODF as its default format for its office productivity applications, meaning several million more users will be joining the ODF installed base.
And, he follows up on the Dutch government’s ODF plan: “According to this German article on heise, the Dutch parliament approved the open standards and open source adoption plan submitted by the Ministry of Economy. According to the plan, government agencies are supposed to read and write ODF in parallel to existing formats by April 2008, at least that is my understanding.”
Momentum is growing tremendously for ODF and OpenOffice.org. Congratulations to everyone involved!
Posted in ODF, OLPC, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
December 12th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Our friends in the KDE project were the first to fully adopt ODF in their office suite, KOffice, putting to rest our opponent’s claims that ODF was designed only for OpenOffice.org.
Now KDE has come out with a strong statement of support for ODF and against the dishonest Microsoft effort to rubberstamp its MSOOXML file format as an ISO standard. (Note: to date, Microsoft has failed in that project.)
ITWire quotes the original release in part:
“The standardisation process of OfficeOpenXML has turned sour, not in the least because Microsoft couldn’t resist the temptation to cheat. Right now we’re seeing evidence of a concerted campaign at discrediting OpenDocument vis-a-vis OfficeOpen XML. That’s unfortunate, to say the least. If OfficeOpen XML becomes an ISO standard, we will, in all likelihood, still not spend time on supporting it. The standard is enormous, very complex and to a large extent so badly specified that a full implementation is probably even harder than implementing the old Microsoft binary file formats. Add to that patent encumbrances and problems with copyrighted elements — and our conclusion is that we prefer to concentrate on making KOffice a great set of applications that are satisfying to use and satisfying to develop.”
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source | Comments Off on KDE on ODF