September 20th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
Earlham College, a Quaker college in Richmond, Indiana, has upgraded all of its public computers to OpenOffice. (This upgrade seems to have taken place at the beginning of 2005.)
From the College’s website:
“The point is not that we can’t afford Microsoft Office (it is expensive, but academic discounts make it more affordable for schools and students), the point is that those we serve may not be able to afford it. To the extent we foster the expectation that everyone has access to Microsoft Office we exclude the vast majority of people in the world who don’t have it and probably never will.
The good news is that OpenOffice can do nearly everything Microsoft Office can (and a lot of things it can’t), and once you have learned how to use it you can show others; anyone who can muster the price of a used computer can have access to its power. The great news is that OpenOffice can open Microsoft Office documents just fine and even re-save them in the same format, so there are almost no compatibility issues when collaborating on projects with people who are using Microsoft Office.”
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Earlham College Moves to OpenOffice
September 17th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
Dan Kegel maintains an interesting site with a wealth of OpenOffice-related information. He ran a Google experiment testing the incidence of the words “support” and “OpenOffice” at the websites of 50 large US universities. The results are posted here.
Undoubtedly, OpenOffice is catching on in American universities. Over the coming years, we’ll see how this translates into acceptance in businesses as well.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Dan Kegel’s OpenOffice Google Search
September 13th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
DesktopLinux.com reports that “Some 16,000 students in the mountainous South Tyrol province of Bolzano in northern Italy will find 2,460 classroom computers upgraded from Windows XP to Linux when they return to school this month.” In addition, 20,000 Linux live CDs will be distributed to students and their families so they can use the same software at home that they will be learning at school.
Posted in Open Source | Comments Off on Linux Replaces Windows on 2,460 Computers
September 12th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
The Boston Globe, generally great for computer and tech stories, publishes a piece by Hiawatha Bray about the recent OpenDocument decision.
Slashdot also revisits the issue. (The Slashdot discussion is based on this ZDNet UK article by Tom Espiner.)
Finally, for reference, the OpenDocument format is explained in detail at Wikipedia.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on More on Massachusetts and OpenDocument
September 7th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
David Wheeler analyzes why Massachusetts chose OpenDocument as its statewide standard document format of the future.
Wheeler writes, “Government officials in Massachusetts, Europe, and elsewhere, have been repeatedly telling Microsoft to stop posturing and actually meet their customers’ needs for complete interoperability, with no restrictions. Yet Microsoft has steadfastly refused to meet their customers’ needs, and they’ve done it so long that customers have abandoned their format. I suspect Massachusetts is only the first of many; governments around the world are working out their standards, preparing for the leap to XML-based office formats. The best information available suggests that everyone is switching to OpenDocument, for all the same reasons, leaving Microsoft with a proprietary format no one wants to use.”
This article also includes many other insights and analytical points worth examining.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Why OpenDocument Won
September 7th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
LXer.com interviews Con Zymaris about the progress he is making in promoting Linux and open source to Australian governments.
Zymaris writes, “We’re winning, but it’s no cake-walk… We’re winning in terms of acknowledgment from most industry stakeholders: The Australian federal and several state governments have enacted various procurement programs for accelerating the uptake of open source software. Corporates that won’t consider deploying open source software are now looked upon as anachronistic luddites by their peers. I’ve even been told of situations where vendors and staff have been fired for emphasizing Microsoft instead of Linux. The message is seeping out and opinions swayed.”
Continued good luck and perseverance to Con Zymaris and to us all!
Posted in Open Source | Comments Off on Linux in Government – Winning in Australia
September 6th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
ZDNet UK reports that South Korea will implement Linux and open source systems at 10,000 schools across the nation.
“The South Korean government is rolling out a home-grown open source platform to 10,000 schools in the country.
The project, dubbed the National Education Information System (NEIS), is built on a Korean-developed version of Linux which already services 190 schools in the heart of capital city Seoul.”
That’s a large pilot program. That’s an enormous migration!
Posted in Open Source | Comments Off on South Korea Launches 10,000-school Linux Program
September 1st, 2005 Benjamin Horst
Articles are appearing all over the web about the recently announced decision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to standardize all office-type documents on the OpenDocument format. The Enterprise Technical Reference Model PDF is available for download and public comment is requested until September 9.
Slashdot picked up the story.
Groklaw has an excellent piece.
One of the earliest reports appeared at LXer.
The Financial Times (UK) also reports.
The Information Technology division of Mass.gov highlights the decision on the front page of its site.
Peter Quinn, Chief Information Officer of Massachusetts writes,
“After receiving comments from the public regarding our proposed Open Formats standards earlier this year we have had a series of discussions with industry representatives and experts about our future direction. These discussions have centered on open formats particularly as they relate to office documents, their importance for the current and future accessibility of government records, and the relative “openness” of the format options available to us.
This new draft version of the Data Formats section of our Enterprise Technical Reference Model (beginning on page 16) identifies the newly ratified OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) as our standard for office documents. Additional open and acceptable formats are also identified for other types of documents. We are once again asking for your feedback and comments before finalizing the standards document. Thanks in advance for your input.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Massachusetts Chooses OpenDocument
August 23rd, 2005 Benjamin Horst
The Participatory Culture Foundation is launching DTV, an internet TV broadcast framework roughly equivalent to iTunes, but for user-generated and distributed video. The current beta is available for Mac OS X, with other platforms to follow.
Posted in Free Culture, Mac, Open Source | Comments Off on DTV Launch
August 18th, 2005 Benjamin Horst
Paul Graham writes an excellent piece entitled, What Business Can Learn from Open Source.
He discusses the parallels between blogging and open source, positing that they are both manifestations of enthusiast culture.
“Lately companies have been paying more attention to open source. Ten years ago there seemed a real danger Microsoft would extend its monopoly to servers. It seems safe to say now that open source has prevented that. A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers.
More significant, I think, is which 52% they are. At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don’t.
But the biggest thing business has to learn from open source is not about Linux or Firefox, but about the forces that produced them. Ultimately these will affect a lot more than what software you use…”
I cannot help but jump to the conclusion:
“These, I think, are the three big lessons open source and blogging have to teach business: (1) that people work harder on stuff they like, (2) that the standard office environment is very unproductive, and (3) that bottom-up often works better than top-down.”
Posted in Open Source | Comments Off on What Business Can Learn from Open Source