October 15th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
FIVE YEARS OF OPENOFFICE.ORG, MORE TO COME
13 October, 2005 – 1400 UTC
On this day, five years ago, the fledgling OpenOffice.org community provided the first public access to the source code donated from StarOffice by Sun Microsystems. The OpenOffice.org community had recently been formed, and declared its intent “to create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data.” Since then, the popularity and functionality of the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite has grown exponentially and has had a major impact not only in the greater Open Source community, but for all users of office productivity software, worldwide.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Happy Birthday, OpenOffice.org!
October 13th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
Our friends at Mad Penguin are conducting a series of three interviews with developers behind the forthcoming release of OpenOffice.org 2.0.
The first interview, with Florian Reuter, covers X-forms, web services, service-oriented architectures, and the importance that everyone submit bug reports!
The second interview is with Gary Edwards, and focuses on the OpenDocument XML file format used by OpenOffice and other suites. It also reveals why the new XML formats touted by Microsoft will not be acceptable for widespread use.
The third interview is forthcoming.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice Developer Interviews
October 12th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
Fajar Priyanto writes in FedoraNews about his experience helping migrate companies from Windows to Linux and OpenOffice in Indonesia.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Migrating to Linux in Indonesia
October 11th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
The NSW Office of State Revenue plans to migrate to OpenOffice and Linux desktops for its 600 employees.
“[Manager of Client Services Pravash] Babhoota said the emergence of a new version of Microsoft Windows, Office and their commensurate licensing would naturally lead his IT shop to consider consolidating its applications on open source.
“At this stage the benefits have been in delivering [savings through] consolidation and thin clients. In a few more months the focus will shift to replacing Office,” Babhoota said…
“As soon as support ends for XP, we will look at moving to Linux [desktops],” Babhoota said, adding the back-end switch to open source had cost 17 percent of what a proprietary upgrade had been costed at, with the agency doubling the amount of business it processed in the same 12-month period.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on New South Wales, Australia, Heading Toward Linux
October 10th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
John Haller has hacked OpenOffice to run directly from a removable media or flash drive, without installing anything on the host computer. He calls his clever project “Portable OpenOffice.org” (and he has done the same thing with Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird and NVU).
This is a great example of how open source allows for innovation at the margins. Great work, John!
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on “Portable OpenOffice”
October 7th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
Newsforge publishes a good article about a number of Mac-specific open source applications.
Some of the apps discussed are ClamXav, Growl, Seashore, Vienna, Adium X, Cyberduck, DTV, and others.
Posted in Mac, Open Source | Comments Off on “Using Open Source Software on Mac OS X”
October 3rd, 2005 Benjamin Horst
More news comes from the MIT Media Lab’s effort to develop a $100 laptop for students around the world. The project website describes some of the laptops’ design elements: wireless mesh networking, an innovative, inexpensive screen, hand crank for electrical power, Linux-based operating system, and plentiful USB ports.
Posted in Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on The $100 Laptop
September 28th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
Sam Hiser debunks Microsoft’s bizarre response to the Massachuesetts decision to standardize on OpenDocument.
Here’s a juicy paragraph about the letter Microsoft employee Alan Yates sent to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
“Alan Yates’ public letter reveals many chinks in Microsoft’s armor and shows his company’s lack of fitness, and unwillingness, to compete on a level pitch. This is a letter of arrogance and deliberate misdirection. In it, Yates expresses his warm concern for the citizens of The Commonwealth, his grave misgivings about the appropriate use of their tax dollars, and his fond hopes for their future felicity with office software — his Office software. The citizens of The Commonwealth surely never encountered this kind of deep feeling from Microsoft before, not while that company charged its rates for software which it never intended — and today has no means or intent within its business — to support. His statements betray a jaundiced view and fear of free markets, and resonate with circular logic and disinformation about open standards and OpenDocument in particular.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Sam Hiser Sums up Massachusetts’ OpenDocument Project
September 27th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
According to an opinion piece in the Minnesota Daily, “The University wasted a whopping $2.7 million recently by purchasing licenses of Microsoft Office and Windows XP Pro for each registered student,” writes Jason Ketola.
Imagine how much custom software development for OpenOffice.org and Linux that same sum could have purchased! And it would only have to be paid once, instead of cyclicly forever.
Ketola writes:
“I have encountered many different students at the University who use Linux and other free and open source software… A great opportunity exists for these individuals to start a student group designed to help individuals on their way to using FOSS. Just by having a support system through a monitored discussion board on the Internet and maybe a few office hours during the week, many people could be freed from the wallet crunching clutches of Microsoft.
These are services which should be provided by the University in the interest of supporting a democratic model of software development. By spending $2.7 million on Microsoft licenses, the University missed a golden opportunity and in the process unnecessarily wasted its students’ money.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on University of Minnesota “Wastes Millions on Software”
September 22nd, 2005 Benjamin Horst
SUNY Albany has embraced open source software on the desktop. ResNet, the campus IT services group, provides incoming students with the ResNet Software Suite CD, which includes Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, anti-spyware and anti-virus applications.
With the upcoming release of OpenOffice.org 2.0, new university migrations are going to make current activities look like a tiny trickle. OpenDocument is poised to dominate.
Imagine a university system like CUNY with its 400,000 students each saving $200 by using OpenOffice or another free suite. That keeps $80 million from being drained out of the local economy! Even a city as huge as New York would notice the resultant economic bounce.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on SUNY Albany Distributes OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird to Students