November 6th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
IBM’s Lotus Symphony was developed based on OpenOffice.org’s codebase and uses the same ODF (OpenDocument Format) as its standard file format.
To help users create attractive documents, IBM has released a number of ODF file templates for things like schedules, invoices, budgets, memos, letters and presentations. While promoted on Symphony’s website, these standard ODF files can be used in any compatible software suite, including OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice, KOffice and many others.
Download and enjoy!
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on ODF Templates from IBM
November 4th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
After reaching the 3 million mark in its first week, OpenOffice.org 3.0 exceeded 5 million downloads after two weeks, announces Meall Dubh.
5,290,166 to be exact. 83.8% of them for Windows, with a very strong showing for Mac and Linux (despite the fact that most Linux users get OOo from the built-in package managers, and lots of Mac users already run NeoOffice).
Another week has elapsed since these numbers were collected, so it will be interesting to see where the weekly download plateau ultimately settles.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OOo: 5 Million Downloads in Two Weeks
October 31st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
That open source is more cost effective in initial deployment and ongoing maintenance is not surprising to anyone who uses open source software, despite the premise being attacked by Microsoft (and some people apparently do believe MS’ marketing).
The experience of the German Foreign Ministry is that open source desktops cost less to operate and maintain than Windows and Microsoft Office-based systems, reports Metamorphosis:
“Open Source desktops are far cheaper to maintain than proprietary desktop configurations, says Rolf Schuster, a diplomat at the German Embassy in Madrid and the former head of IT at the Foreign Ministry.”
This is an informed opinion, as the Ministry has been working with open source since 2001, and is currently midway through a complete migration to FOSS.
“The Foreign Ministry is migrating all of its 11,000 desktops to GNU/Linux and other open source applications. According to Schuster, this has drastically reduced maintenance costs in comparison with other ministries. “The Foreign Ministry is running desktops in many far away and some very difficult locations. Yet we spend only one thousand euros per desktop per year. That is far lower than other ministries, that on average spend more than 3,000 euros per desktop per year.
“The ministry has so far migrated almost four thousand of its desktops to GNU/Linux and expects to complete the move by the summer of 2009, Schuster said. About half of all the 230 embassies and consulates have now been switched over. “It is not without problems. It took a while to find a developer in Japan to help us with some font issues we had in OpenOffice.”
The groundwork of the past few years is beginning to pay off for a large number of first-movers around the world. I expect the migration trend will continue to accelerate as more and more case studies help to sway the slower adopters.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
October 30th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The following study has been making the rounds lately, but it’s also worth keeping track of here, for future reference.
Living in a world where most companies and small businesses I know are comfortable with open source and most already use it to a greater or lesser extent, it’s even more important to understand those who don’t use it and the smaller set of those who deliberately decide not to adopt open source yet. This knowledge will hone our development and promotion efforts to address those users’ needs in future revisions.
An academic paper written by Huysmans, Ven, and Verelst entitled Reasons for the Non-Adoption of OpenOffice.org in a Data-Intensive Public Administration is an informative resource for this purpose.
The paper’s abstract reads:
“Several academic studies have already been conducted to investigate the reasons influencing the adoption of open source desktop software such as Linux and OpenOffice.org. However, few studies have been devoted to determine the reasons for not adopting open source desktop software. In order to address this issue, we present a case study on the Belgian Federal Public Service (FPS) Economy which considered the use of OpenOffice.org, but eventually decided not to adopt OpenOffice.org as their primary office suite. This decision was to a large degree influenced by the fact that a large number of users within the FPS Economy perform data–intensive tasks such as statistical data analysis and reporting on a daily basis. Notwithstanding the fact that several reasons were actually in favor of the migration, we have identified several barriers that may discourage the use of OpenOffice.org in similar environments.”
The entire paper is available online at the link above for a detailed reading.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Case Study on Non-Adoption of Open Source
October 29th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
For ComputerWorld UK, Glyn Moody writes, “All Russian Schools to Use Free Software.”
“It began with a few pilot projects, and apparently these have been so successful that the Russian government has now decided to make it the standard for *all* schools.”
Most of Moody’s links lead to articles in Russian, so I cannot glean anything from them. However, when he runs them through software translation, Moody discovers that Russia plans to have one million computers in schools by 2010, and their default software platform will be locally-customized open source applications (presumably including Linux, OpenOffice, etc). After a three-year period, schools will be permitted to switch back to proprietary programs, but they’ll have to pay the licensing fees on their own. I do not expect many will be interested by that option.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on All Russian Schools to Use Free Software
October 28th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
This year the annual OpenOffice.org Conference will be held in Beijing.
“Since Redflag 2000 and IBM officially joined OpenOffice.org in 2007, Beijing has become the second hot-spot for the development of OpenOffice.org and several derived products. The contributions to OOo from China are steadily growing. It’s an exciting time: China’s software developers and users are able to look at office software with fresh minds, untainted by years of exposure to Microsoft products.”
The conference starts on November 5. News updates should be frequent during the run-up to the conference and there are many interesting sessions planned for the conference itself. I’m especially excited by the case studies of major national-scale adoptions happening around the world, specifically Malaysia, Cambodia, Spain and Brazil.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org Conference 2008 in Beijing
October 27th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
An email from Jean of the OOoAuthors project announces, “Friends of OpenDocument Inc has just published the printed edition of Getting Started with OOo3, here: http://www.lulu.com/content/4633456
“In addition to the paperback book (US$17.95), a free download of the PDF of the book is also available from that link. The interior pages are in black & white. It is formatted for approx. 6×9-inch pages (the size of the printed book), which should print fine on A4 or US-letter paper if someone wants to print it. If you are paying for your own ink/toner and paper, buying a printed copy is probably cheaper than printing it yourself.”
For a color PDF of the same document, designed for on-screen viewing, download from OOoAuthors.org.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Getting Started with OOo 3.0 Guide Arrives
October 20th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
OpenOffice.org 3.0 was released one week ago today. John McCreesh writes:
“From the official announcement on Monday 13th October at 09:00 UTC, to midnight on Sunday 20th October, OpenOffice.org 3.0 recorded an astonishing three million downloads via the Bouncer. That’s:
- 221,230 GNU/Linux users (who might be considered obvious users of the world’s leading open-source office suite)
- an impressive 320,622 Mac OS X users (enjoying OpenOffice.org with a Mac “look and feel” for the first time), and
- a staggering 2,449,863 Microsoft Windows users.”
Another of John’s posts provides additional information and analysis.
“If you download OpenOffice.org from the download page, you will go via the Bouncer, and your download will be logged. These logs are the only figures we are able to quantify accurately, but they are a considerable underestimate of the actual number of downloads…”
So how many people are already using OpenOffice.org 3.0? No-one knows. We know that the Bouncer figures underestimate the number of downloads. We know the number of downloads is considerably less than the number of installed copies. So five million users already?”
The release of OOo 3.0 is definitely its biggest to date. The userbase is clearly expanding, and now Mac OS X can be a part of that, as in this first week its downloads represent a healthy piece of the total, at almost 11%.
Posted in Free Culture, Mac, OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
October 17th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
While it’s tough to find OpenOffice books in your typical physical bookstore, I’ve just discovered the wealth of options available online from self-publisher Lulu.
I’ve long known that the great OOoAuthors handbooks have been sold on Lulu, but only today did I search more broadly and discover a great cache of books self-published by OOo-savvy authors from all over the world.
Among those on my wishlist are:
Dmitri Popov’s OpenOffice.org Basic Crash Course
OOoAuthors’ OpenOffice.org 2.x Draw Guide (the 3.x version should arrive soon)
Roberto Benitez’s Database Programming with OpenOffice.org Base & Basic
And many more.
Posted in OpenOffice.org | 2 Comments »
October 15th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
OpenOffice.org 3.0 was released on Monday, October 13, and download demand has been enormous since then. In fact, it’s been so strong the website is down and a temporary download-only site has been put in its place until the spike recedes.
Frank Mau announces over 350,000 downloads were initiated in the first 24 hours since OOo 3.0’s release:
“It could be more but the huge traffic on www.openoffice.org bear down the web-infrastructure on the site host. Hope the next days will bring up the service back on a stable base.”
Eike Rathke points out the release of OpenOffice 3.0 is also the project’s 8th birthday. He also provides a list of known mirrors to download 3.0 from if you cannot reach the main site.
Kazunaro Hirano writes: 3.0.0 Released! Website down but Mirrors are OK! He too provides links to mirror sites for alternate download access.
There are lots of reasons for this huge interest in OpenOffice.org 3.0, and I like to think pent-up demand from Mac users is one of them.
Posted in Free Culture, Mac, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Huge Demand for OpenOffice.org 3.0