January 2nd, 2009 Benjamin Horst
ChannelWeb publishes “The 10 Coolest Open Source Products Of 2008,” selecting OpenOffice.org 3.0 as the number one coolest:
The popular — and free — open source productivity suite hit its milestone 3.0 version in 2008, making it more clear than ever that its functionality and compatibility with Microsoft Office (including OpenOffice Impress, which is PowerPoint compatible) make it a force to be reckoned with. With an acquisition cost of between $150 and $200 less than Microsoft Office 2007, it could have a big year in a down economy in 2009.
I agree that OpenOffice is the most useful, cost-saving open source application normal computer users and businesses should plan to adopt this year.
Other products on ChannelWeb’s list include IBM Lotus Symphony (based on OpenOffice, but I’m not sure if Symphony is open source itself), Firefox 3.0, Laconica (an open source Twitter competitor), and Google Android.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Social Software | Comments Off on Coolest Open Source Products of 2008
December 29th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Foswiki, the heir of TWiki, has released some first betas for the version 1.0 landmark release after its forking from TWiki.
Kenneth Lavrsen emailed the list to inform us of the first beta, writing:
It is with great joy and pride that I can announce the release of Foswiki 1.0.0 Beta 1
It is a beta!! It should not be used for production sites. But it is very stable now and absolutely worth trying.
For normal users please download and install it and confirm that your
existing webs work just fine.
Development has been happening quickly on Foswiki, which I find very exciting after having watched TWiki seem to stagnate for a long time without knowing what was happening to it.
(See Foswiki’s User Guide to learn more about wikis in general and Foswiki itself.)
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, Wiki | Comments Off on Foswiki 1.0 Beta Series
December 27th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
John McCreesh noted that OpenOffice.org 3.0 reached its 25 millionth download on Christmas Day, December 25. (See the bouncer statistics for the latest number, which is already well above 25 million, though it’s just a few days later.)
A few days earlier, McCreesh took a close look at the results of the latest user survey in “The Importance of Friends.” What most stands out in the data is that 41% of survey-takers learned about OpenOffice from a personal recommendation. The second largest group, 13.7%, came across OOo in a printed computer magazine.
From a marketing perspective, then, should we put our emphasis on making it easier for people to promote OOo to their friends and connections since that’s already showing positive results, or are we already well-enough represented there, and should thus focus on beefing up our other outreach/promotional/marketing efforts?
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 3 Comments »
December 22nd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Change.org (not the same as Change.gov) provides a feature where site members can suggest ideas they’d like to see adopted by the United States Government.
One suggestion currently getting attention on the site is to Support the Free Software Movement.
While this idea itself is highly open to interpretation, a site member offers more concrete suggestions for what it could mean in policy terms. Some of commenter John Zoidberg’s ideas include:
– No more software patents
– Financing and encouragement of Free Software development
– Make source code developed by public research organizations available under an OSI License/public domain/GPL
– Make all public services, government administrations use open document formats
– Make all public services, government administrations use Free Software (servers+desktop)
-Make software source code become GPL or public domain after X years
Government expenses could be trimmed by using more open source, while private sector innovation would also be increased due to competition around the best implementations of open standards. It’s a great way for the government to advance its technology innovation platform.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source | 3 Comments »
December 18th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Kerala, in southwestern India, has been emerging as an open source and free software stronghold over the past half-decade.
Indian free software community member Srikar recently traveled to Kerala and toured its schools to see how they use open source software. Over 2,500 schools, colleges and other organizations in the state have already adopted open source and have been using it successfully for several years now.
Srikar met with Anvar Sadith, a director of the IT@School project, who described Kerala’s migration process:
It all started back in the year 2002 when IT@school mission was actually planned. In 2003 teachers were given computer training to empower them in IT. By the year 2006 many schools were completely transformed to GNU/Linux. Free software was taught to teachers by SPACE (Society For Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment). By 2007 all the schools were stabilized with GNU/Linux and IT subject was made compulsory. New text books were created that taught school children free software tools.
Srikar toured several schools to observe students actively using open source software tools. Teachers were being trained, and students were learning HTML, OpenOffice, and GIMP. When questioned about the user-friendliness of Linux and their software, students found it very comfortable.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 2 Comments »
December 17th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
A few weeks ago, Project Renaissance was officially launched.
Frank Loehmann explains: “Project Renaissance, to rethink the graphical user interface (GUI) and interaction of OpenOffice.org, was announced on OOoCon 2008 and has been officially launched this week. Renaissance is a long running project and will start from scratch, so please do not expect to see something in OOo 3.1.”
The project’s mission statement reveals its ambition and reflects its importance: “Create a User interface so that OpenOffice.org becomes the users’ choice not only out of need but also out of desire.”
While I think the current interface is already very good, I’m interested to see what results from this effort to create a next-generation UI. Lotus Symphony, for example, has implemented some improved UI features that OOo itself might learn from.
Follow the Project Renaissance details on the OOo wiki.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice User Interface Project
December 16th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Australian IT publishes “OpenOffice Skakes Microsoft,” reviewing and promoting OpenOffice to a mainstream tech audience.
With OOo 3.0, most normal users will find OpenOffice a complete replacement for MS Office: “Here at Doubleclick we’ve been using OpenOffice 3.0 for some weeks and we must say it’s getting harder and harder to see why average users would want to shell out several hundred dollars for MS Office.”
That’s great for software users, but why does it “skake” Microsoft? (And what does “skake” mean, anyway?) Here’s author David Frith’s answer:
Steve Ballmer recently told a US business users’ conference OpenOffice is the only one that Microsoft regards as serious competition.
A “thermometer” on the OpenOffice.org website shows why.
In the first four weeks after release, OpenOffice 3.0 was downloaded more than 12 million times.
That’s probably at least $2.5 billion lost to Microsoft, and mounting at $600 million a week.
So now you know why OpenOffice’s existence gives Steve Ballmer the shivers.
Don’t look at these numbers as money Microsoft has lost (that would be cruel and unnecessary). Look at these numbers as money everyone has collectively saved, and that is a great thing in an economy like today’s!
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on “OpenOffice Skakes Microsoft”
December 15th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
It feels like InformationWeek is writing more and more about open source lately, perhaps because the open source tide is rising ever higher. Last week, IW’s Serdar Yegulalp published Open-Source Office Suites Compared, which reviews OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, IBM Lotus Symphony, KOffice and AbiWord:
“In this review I’ve taken a look at OpenOffice.org’s most recent release, along with the commercially-supported StarOffice from Sun, IBM’s reworking of OO.o as Lotus Symphony, the KOffice suite for Linux, and the minimal but still useful AbiWord. Talking about how these would entirely replace Microsoft Office would be misleading, since not everyone might be doing that — so I’ve looked at each product as far on its own merits as possible.”
Each suite has its unique strengths, and Yegulalp does a thorough job comparing their primary advantages and the factors that differentiate them.
Overall, the presence of these five major office suites as competitors, and cooperators that all support the open ODF file format, helps to encourage robust experimentation and innovation which the market has sorely lacked for well over a decade.
“Compatible competition” will bring better value and technology to all of us using these types of software tools.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
December 11th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Sun recently released the 1.0 version of JavaFX, an open source Flash competitor, providing a “unified development and deployment model for building rich client applications that integrate immersive media including audio and video, graphics, rich text and web services.”
I would like to see an open source Flash competitor gain traction, even as Adobe has open sourced parts of Flash, although it feels less urgent now that the overuse and abuse of Flash–such as when it’s used to implement entire websites–has subsided. (I’ve also installed Flashblock in Firefox, to make pages load faster and eliminate the most annoying ad banners.)
We’ll see if JavaFX can make an impact on the market, and if it offers something interesting and unique beyond what Flash can already do.
Posted in Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on JavaFX 1.0 Launches
December 9th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Suggestions have appeared that the United States Federal Government could save enormous amounts of money by abandoning the purchase of licenses for several major desktop software applications.
As the single largest customer of Microsoft’s Windows, MS Office, and other programs, the feds are clearly spending a lot on software licenses. In this time of unprecedented budget difficulties, no stone should be left unturned in the quest for saving costs and cutting back. Thus, the suggestion that US federal offices migrate from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org.
PC World calls this “your second economic stimulus check.”
Phil Shapiro writes:
One of Obama’s first executive acts may be to standardize all Federal offices to OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice is free, robust, stable and more than sufficient for 99 percent of government work. If any particular government office requires Microsoft Office, they’ll be able to purchase it — after explaining in a few sentences why OpenOffice is insufficient for their needs.
What do you get when all Federal offices standardize on OpenOffice? The effect of this is a second economic stimulus check. You get increased productivity at lower cost. Scratch that. You get increased productivity at no-cost.
Does Shapiro have any evidence this might happen? Not that I am aware of, but it makes for a good thought experiment, nonetheless. And maybe saving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars doesn’t look like much in this age of $700 billion bailouts, but on the other hand, every small act counts.
Other countries have taken this step already, increasing the necessity of adapting to remain competitive: “100 million students in Brazil will have several years more experience using free software than students in the United States.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org for the US Federal Government?