April 28th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Recently, I came across an article about Geneva schools migrating to open source.
Now, more information emerges by way of IDABC in “Geneva Schools Completely Switch to Open Source.” It turns out this migration will include a population of 70,000 students and 7,000 teachers, and will occur gradually over the next three years.
From the article: “The migration to Open Source will begin after the next summer holiday with three projects. One school, the Candolle College in Geneva, will try out a complete Open Source desktop, using the GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu. Next, OpenOffice will be installed on the 9,000 PCs in the school district that are used by teachers, replacing Microsoft Office. A third project is the migration to OpenOffice on the PCs used by the boards of all primary school.”
“Replacing Microsoft Office by OpenOffice saves the state some 300,000 SFr (about 186,000 euro) per year, says Grandjean. “Moving to a complete Open Source system will cut the IT costs by a third.”
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on FOSS in Geneva Schools: Followup
April 22nd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Italo Vignoli, member of the OpenOffice.org project and a PR professional from Italy, estimates that OpenOffice is competing very strongly in Germany, France and Italy.
As always, measuring users of OpenOffice or any open source program is very difficult, if not impossible. Vignoli carefully reviews some information that is known, and extrapolates to the conclusion that OOo is a very strong competitor in a number of European countries:
“If we look at OpenOffice.org, the three markets where the open source office suite is competing most successfully with Microsoft Office are probably Germany, France and Italy, followed by other European markets like Spain and the Netherlands. In Italy, where I have the updated numbers, we are hitting today [April 18] – maybe while I’m writing this post – one million downloads since January 1st, 2008 (over 350,000 since the announcement of OOo 2.4 in late March). Although we don’t have Microsoft figures for Office 2007, we estimate a maximum of 1.8 million licenses sold in 2008.”
Based on the daily activities of local communities, Vignoli estimates that Germany and France are downloading and migrating to OOo even more quickly than Italy.
He has a message for Microsoft and its marketing propaganda team: “Please, be realistic. We’re eating your pie, quickly. We’re hungry.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice’s Strength in Europe
April 21st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Philipp Lohmann writes a status report on the OpenOffice.org Mac Aqua port:
“Roughly a year ago Sun joined the Macport community. The goal we – meaning the macporter team which Sun was now part of – set ourselves was that the Aquaport should be on par with the other OpenOffice.org platforms by the time of OOo 3.0 beta -which is now almost upon us.”
He announces the goal has largely been met, barring a few bugs. In fact, I have been testing an alpha version of the Mac Aqua port for a few weeks now and have been extremely impressed with it.
Posted in Mac, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
April 18th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Louis Suarez-Potts, Community Manager for OpenOffice.org, writes about OpenOffice.org at FISL 9.0, which is happening right now in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
It sounds like a wonderful event, and I hope to attend one someday.
Louis introduces the event and its importance, writing, “It’s hard not to be enthusiastic about fisl, or to expand the acronym, the 9th Fórum International Software Livre, held each year in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In part, my enthusiasm stems from the energy and commitment to free software shown by the government; and in part, from the warmth and friendship demonstrated by the Brazilians.”
Brazil is known as a major center for open source software, and the government has been a strong supporter for a very long time, recognizing the key role FOSS can play in enhancing economic and human development. Brazil has been a role model for many other developing countries to follow, and FISL is one of the key events that helps expand the FOSS community in Brazil each year.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org at FISL 9.0
April 17th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Solveig Haugland has another great article at K-12 Open Technologies. This one’s “The World of OpenOffice.org Extensions,” covering the fast-growing ecosystem of extensions you can install to add functionality to your installation of OpenOffice.
OpenOffice extensions were inspired by Firefox’s success with them, and became available in recent versions of OOo (2.3, I think, and then were beefed up in 2.4). They are an easy way for programmers and companies to participate in the community, to introduce their products to OpenOffice users, and to customize OOo to better suit specific niche market needs.
Solveig’s article explains how to install extensions and then lists some of her favorites, such as Pagination, the Sun Report Builder, GoogleDocs integration, eFax, templates and clipart from OxygenOffice, and more.
It’s a great starting point for learning about and using the wealth of extensions out there.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
April 16th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Solveig Haugland has published a great article for companies, schools and other organizations preparing to transition from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, “Five Principles for a Successful OpenOffice.org Transition.”
She’s been a premier consultant in this field for 6 years now and has seen many migrations, both good and bad. It’s easy to forget sometimes that not everyone transfers seamlessly from one software program to another, since most people just want to get their jobs done. End users often don’t care about the cost savings or longterm benefits of open source: “The big picture of saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and the principles of open source don’t seem to matter as much to the soldiers on the ground who at 7 PM are wondering why that text box is overlapping their graphic when it looked fine in Word.”
Change management is more about people than it is about technology. Solveig suggests the following principals for your best chance of a successful migration: a good pilot program, support from the top, tough love, proactive support and training, and providing templates, clip art and fonts.
She summarizes, “Switching to an entirely different piece of software is a big deal. The interface is similar and the price is free, so it seems at an unconscious level like it ought to be just a matter of installing new software. It won’t be. But if you want to save a huge amount of money; if you want to use software that everyone can install at home for free; if you think that saving the soccer program or the music program is important; then it’s worth it.”
See Solveig Haugland’s GetOpenOffice.org site for her training and support services.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Solveig Haugland’s Five Principles for a Successful OpenOffice.org Transition
April 14th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Sun’s GullFOSS blog is a great place to see what development is happening for upcoming versions of OpenOffice. Lately the buzz has been the upcoming 3.0, and an OpenOffice 3.0 beta version is due to be ready soon.
Some of the new features include a long-needed fix to notes in Writer, a cropping tool in Impress and Draw, multiple page view in Writer, and a start center when you launch OOo without opening a document.
One of the biggest features will be PDF editing, but I believe that will be implemented as an extension to be bundled with OOo.
See a technically-oriented list of features and enhancements on the wiki.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Notes on OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta
April 9th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Erwin Tenhumberg points out that OpenOffice.org will be installed on 41,000 computers in schools in New South Wales, Australia this year.
He discovered it via Computerworld New Zealand’s article, “NSW Education Downgrades Microsoft Deal:”
“Technology chief Stephen Wilson announced the department will install a free alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite…, OpenOffice, on 41,000 computers due to be distributed to schools across the state by the end of 2008… “For the first time we’re going to install OpenOffice on every computer under our Technology 4 Learning programme,” he says.”
In addition, they have been replacing Vista with Windows XP on new machines they purchase, most likely in order to get more out of cheaper hardware and to avoid software incompatibilities with programs they are running.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice on 41,000 Australian School Computers
March 28th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
OOo Ninja’s got a screenshot-full post on new features in OpenOffice.org 2.4, which was released yesterday.
See the official 2.4 feature notes at OpenOffice.org (check out more screenshots) and the Slashdot release announcement:
“The multiplatform, multilingual office suite OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.4. New features include 5 PDF export enhancements, text to columns in Calc, rectangular selection in Writer, bug fixes, performance improvements, improvements supporting the growing library of extensions such as 3D OpenGL transitions in Impress, and much more. Downloads are available either direct or P2P. In September, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will add PDF import, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, and ODF 1.2.”
Also, the OpenOffice website user interface was updated and it looks great.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice 2.4 Released