January 12th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
BBC covers the future availability of One Laptop per Child’s XO computers to purchasers in the developed world.
Linux Today writes A Close Look at the OLPC, a very detailed article on the technical aspects of the XO computer:
“Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Pakistan, Nigeria, Libya, and (most recently) Rwanda are the countries currently signed up for the program. Bletsas indicates that the program will actually be supply rather than demand limited in 2007. The goal is to deliver five million laptops within a year of the summer rollout, a goal he notes will represent a 10% increase in the total worldwide laptop production for the year and will be the largest single deployment of a computing platform ever. The units will be divided up between the program countries rather than concentrating on any one to the exclusion of the others, with countries encouraged to deploy to entire schools rather than cherry-picking students, to avoid envy. The only requirement being placed on the countries is that the laptops must go directly to the children.”
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on Two Articles on OLPC’s XO Laptop
January 11th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Malaysia has developed a Public Sector Open Source Software Initiative to help government agencies move to open source software in accordance with the national master plan.
A recent seminar focused on Successful Deployment of OpenOffice in the Public Sector and consisted of a number of different presentations by industry, government, and non-profit groups.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
January 10th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
In Pictures launched a line of free computer application tutorials, prominently featuring OpenOffice.org.
The press release announces, “The tutorials were developed as part of a U.S. Department of Education study, to make it easier for people with learning disabilities to learn computer subjects. When the study was completed in 2006, it showed that the illustration-based tutorials worked well for everyone, not just those with special needs.”
The free tutorials are supported by ads on each page, and the collection is intended to be the equivalent to a complete software guide book.
This new training product is another valuable addition to the collection of products and materials being developed around the platform of OpenOffice.org. As its community of users continues to grow, we’ll see more and more services and tools provided to complement OOo. That this startup would feature OOo as prominently as MSO is a sign of its increasing importance to the education, government, and business worlds. (And that the screenshots were taken in Linspire also shows the growing importance of Linux, as well.)
Posted in GNU/Linux, OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
January 10th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Tamil Nadu, an Indian state with a population of 62 million, will be deploying over 32,000 state computers running OpenOffice.org and Linux.
“We have already dispatched 6,500 Linux systems to village panchayats and another 6,100 Acer desktop systems with Suse Linux operating systems are on their way. We are procuring 20,000 desktop systems for schools, which will run only on Suse Linux…” Mr Umashankar told this newspaper. He said all the ELCOT servers were on Redhat Linux and the government IT company’s 28-seat software development wing was fully on Suse Linux.”
Microsoft offered to cut its operating system prices by 90%, but they still could not match the cost of Linux-based systems, even before the cost of applications (MS Office vs. OpenOffice.org) was considered. And, lack of compatibility with ODF was another major strike against Microsoft Office’s suitability for Tamil Nadu’s needs.
In addition to all the technical and economic merits, politicians are providing high-level political support to the open source migration as well. It looks like a “perfect storm” of open source is hitting Tamil Nadu!
Posted in GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
January 9th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
I just discovered Opportunity Knocks, a blog covering ODF, free and open source software, and government interest in open standards and open source.
I plan to link to several of Walt’s recent posts individually, since I’ve found many of them to be very interesting.
Yesterday, Walt posted a list of desktop and online applications that can read and write ODF files, for people who may not yet know what ODF is or how to create and use ODFs.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on “Opportunity Knocks,” an ODF and FOSS Blog
January 4th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
DesktopLinux.com reports Amsterdam mulls the Linux Desktop:
“Amsterdam has decided to give the Linux desktop and OpenOffice a try. In late December, the city — previously a Microsoft-only operation — announced plans to spend 300,000 Euros (roughly $400,000) on testing Linux and other open-source software in its housing department and in the Zeeburg borough office in 2007.”
“The test is scheduled to run during the first half of 2007, and, if successful, all of Amsterdam’s government may start using open source software. The city, however, does not plan to abandon proprietary software completely. “It is the expectation that a new contract with Microsoft will be smaller,” added van Goethem. The contract comes up for renewal at the end of 2008.”
In the article’s conclusion, it suggests that a tipping point may be near for desktop Linux usage in governments. In Europe, this seems very likely, whereas the US may be a little further behind.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
December 27th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
It’s a good time, at the end of the year, to review the progress we’ve made.
Linux Journal’s Glyn Moody writes What Can’t Open Source Achieve in the Next 10 Years? in which he looks back at the past ten years of progress in open source and reflects on what the next decade may bring:
“I take it for granted that open source will be as successful on the desktop as it has on the server – with the caveat that the desktop itself may well be far less important in ten years’ time. I also assume that everyone will be using ODF as the standard for document interchange and storage…”
Posted in GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source | Comments Off on Linux Journal’s FOSS Retrospective
December 6th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Yusseri writes a great piece on the Open Malaysia blog on his research into Microsoft’s efforts, directly and through proxies, to undermine ODF around the world.
“I looked around in the web and the available documentation that we had to provide data for my presso. I found lots of other OSS initiatives all over the place. What I also found was a fair amount of resistance against the initiatives. This resistance was led by one large multinational corporation and a few “alliances” — namely the BSA and the Initiative for Software Choice. There were no other single corporation that protested, campaigned, lobbied or made donations against the disparate initiatives.
There was only one: Microsoft.
All the others — IBM, Sun, Oracle, SAP, CA, Symantec, Adobe, Autodesk, etc. — either made supporting noises or kept quiet altogether.
I checked all over the world — America, Australia, South Africa, India, Korea, Japan, Germany, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, and more — and it was all the same.”
Read Yusseri’s article to see the details of “free” Microsoft software and “discounts” and “donations” (and the occasional veiled threat), all intended to block or stall the open source efforts.
It is dangerous how far this one rich company’s arms stretch around the world, and it is a terrible shame to see so much progress being held back by one stubborn and corrupt organization. Let’s hope the dam breaks soon, hundreds of places all leap to freedom at once, Microsoft cannot keep up with it all, and a free market based on open standards emerges to replace the repressed environment of today.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Open Malaysia Blog on Microsoft’s Attempts to Undermine ODF
December 4th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
It appears my recent post on Birmingham’s Linux pilot did not tell the full story.
Techworld (UK) writes Birmingham City Council claims open-source success.
“With Birmingham’s trial period over and with lessons learnt and understanding gained, the Council now expects to make cost savings over time, and contrary to press reports which claimed Birmingham had scrapped the Linux initiative, it will in fact “significantly increase” its use of open-source software, Evans said. The trial also had other positive results, he claimed, such as demonstrating the ease with which Firefox and OpenOffice.org can be substituted for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office.”
Excellent news! And, later in the article, OpenOffice and Firefox’ potential are explored further:
“OpenOffice, for one, met little or no resistance with most users, many of whom said they didn’t notice they’d been using a different application. (Power users did face some problems.) The public had no trouble using Firefox on public terminals and some said they preferred the open-source desktop to Windows. “It appears that OpenOffice provides a satisfactory equivalent to Microsoft products for those using basic or intermediate functionality,” iMpower found.”
This seems to justify the strategy of porting open source programs to Windows, to acclimate users to FOSS before they migrate fully to Linux. Smaller steps make the path easier to travel.
One of the major reasons Birmingham ran into trouble with its pilot is that the UK has some catching up to do with regard to open source:
“The UK has less than average usage of open source compared with other EU countries, according to a report by the University of Maastricht, with 32.1 percent of all UK local government users on open source compared to the 78.7 percent European average.”
But, it’s clear they are moving in the right direction, if slowly.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Birmingham Revisited
November 29th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
One Laptop Per Child News is a blog that bills itself as “Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child’s computer, the OLPC Children’s Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte.”
It’s got plenty of great information on the state of the project, along with some fun stuff, too.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on One Laptop Per Child News Site