You are currently browsing the archives for the Open Source category.
The “Impulsive Highlighters” blog has a preview copy of Mac OS X Leopard, and has discovered TextEdit will include support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF).
From searching around online, no one yet seems to know how deep OpenDocument support will be in Mac OS X Leopard, but the screenshots at the link above showing TextEdit’s ODF support are a promising start.
OpenOffice.org is focusing more on teaching users and developers how to create extensions for the suite, and at the upcoming Euro OSCON in Brussels, OOo will be hosting a BoF session titled Developing and Extending OpenOffice.org.
Here’s the summary description of the event:
“What do you need to know to develop for OpenOffice.org? How should you go about learning it? Whom should you contact? What skills should you possess? And what things should you consider working on? This BoF will try to answer these and other related questions. The focus is on explaining how to code for OpenOffice.org and to make the coder’s job a little easier. We expect there to be developers from Sun and other stakeholders present to answer your questions, to help you with code, and to suggest where OpenOffice.org is going. The project is large, it is important, and you can be part of it!”
Yesterday was the conclusion of the OpenOffice.org Conference 2006, held in Lyon, France. Archived media coverage can be found here. It sounds like it was a good event, and I wish I could have been there.
The media site contains photo galleries, audio and video recordings, and a blog planet.
Today I participated in a Skype interview with Solveig Haugland and Randy Orwin, hosted by Steve Hargadon. The topic was OpenOffice.org, and in particular its growing use in educational environments. (Read Steve’s blog entry on the interview, or listen to the mp3 here.)
When Randy’s school district (Bainbridge Island, in Washington State) calculated their annual Microsoft subscription costs would run over $100,000, they developed a plan to migrate entirely to OpenOffice.org and put other open source software into place (including Linux thin clients), which is being rolled out this year.
Meanwhile, Solveig reports that she’s seen an increase in demand for OpenOffice.org training from governmental organizations this year. I’ve seen a lot of press about governments formally adopting ODF, and many times that means they’re also moving to OpenOffice, so it looks like Solveig is also seeing this trend.
We also discussed the inevitability that Microsoft will have to make MS Office free to educational customers in order to compete with OpenOffice.org. I think this is an ironic reversal of what Microsoft did to Netscape in the 1990s, when Bill Gates cackled at “cutting off their air supply.” Now it’s his air supply being cut, and I do not believe there is any joy in Mudville (huh?) over this twist of fate.
Cool OpenOffice.org extension OOoWikipedia:
“OOoWikipedia allows you to use this famous encyclopedia directly from OpenOffice.org. Simply highlight a word in a text portion, launch the tool and your browser will open the corresponding article in the encyclopedia, if the definition is available.”
ThoughtFix has hacked his Nokia 770 to make it into a miniature, rugged laptop. With video! Something like this should go into manufacture for widespread sale because it is awesome.
Since the Maemo platform is open source, it should be easy for other manufacturers to make devices that can run it… which would broaden the market, pique the interest of more developers, increase the overall value as more apps and third-party hardware is developed, and help Nokia as well as other participants in the growing ecosystem. ThoughtFix, you should hop on a plane to China and start a company to build these things!
Andrew Price posts a “brain dump” on his blog, in which he wonders how to work with university student computer societies to promote open source.
He writes, “I’ve come to realise how much potential there is for organisations to utilise student computer societies to advocate and spread awareness of free/open source software at a local level and to a demographic which would find some of the principles surrounding open source attractive. Students, that is.”
This is a topic I’ve long been interested in, but haven’t made a great deal of progress. I don’t have much of a connection to either Vassar or Harvard any more. If I were still a student, I imagine I could have a positive impact, but from far outside the walls of any campus, it looks like a long shot.
A major topic for the upcoming OpenOffice.org convention in Lyon, France, will be OpenOffice.org extensions.
Extensions have been a huge success for Firefox, and have the same potential for OOo, acting as a major differentiating factor from competing products. It’s a typical, and solid, software strategy–build up an ‘ecosystem’ of applications and even companies that rely on your program as their foundation, which locks you into the center of a larger and more powerful coalition than you could be on your own.
Off the top of my head, I don’t know of any current famous OOo extensions, however, the Wiki Extension I recently proposed could become a good one!
ZDNet Asia reports U.N. official Sunil Abraham has called for governments in the Asia-Pacific region to “seriously consider” adopting the OpenDocument Format (ODF):
“Last month, Malaysia became one of the first Asian countries to propose the use of ODF as a national standard for office documents. Hasannudin Saidin, a member of Sirim, the country’s standards development agency, said on his blog last month that the proposal will now undergo approval from a higher-level committee within Sirim.”
“In the Philippines, there is no official policy on the adoption of ODF in the country, according to Peter Antonio Banzon, division chief of the Philippines’ Advanced Science & Technology Institute, although the government agency has already standardized its internal documents on the ODF.”
In Singapore, the government has not yet made a migration decision, and continues to use Microsoft Office. However, one of its agencies is well ahead of the rest:
“The island-state’s Ministry of Defense (Mindef), however, has gone ahead on its own to adopt the ODF after it made the decision to roll out OpenOffice in 2004.
According to Mindef CIO Cheok Beng Teck, ODF offers Mindef “true” ownership of its intellectual property. “We now know [how] the XML (extensible markup language) format [is implemented in] our documents, and have the freedom to manipulate it in whatever way we want,” he told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview. “We are no longer tied down by the proprietary standards of a vendor.”
Sys-Con’s Linux magazine reports New York School Districts Select Linux Desktops:
“Students in upstate New York have moved one step closer to having a computer at every desk thanks to a pilot program using Linux desktops from Novell on Intel-based computers. Designed to increase student engagement and awareness among students that they are part of a connected global community, the pilot program is aimed at delivering an Internet-connected computer to every student.
This new program will significantly increase computing resources at school while still controlling costs. Ultimately, some 80,000 students in the Rome City School District and other schools supported by the Madison Oneida Regional Information Center could benefit. As a result, students will gain technology skills and a new research tool that will improve their learning experience…
As part of the pilot, the school will make available to students Intel processor-based laptops running Linux desktops from Novell, which include the OpenOffice 2.0 productivity suite for word processing, presentations and spreadsheets…
“Linux on the desktop offers compelling value for schools, which face permanent budget challenges,” said Susan Heystee, president of Novell Americas. “With the Linux desktop from Novell, students get all the tools they need to do their work and the IT staff get a solid, secure, easy-to-manage platform — all at a fraction of the cost of the alternatives. Not surprisingly, we’re seeing increasing interest in the education sector in Linux on the desktop.”
Desktop Linux and OpenOffice.org are getting closer and closer to me here in New York City! I am looking forward to the day when the City government and school system make the migration (and of course I’ll be glad to help in any way).