September 3rd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The Open Malaysia Blog predicts “OOXML won’t be accepted in South America.”
“In the International Congress of Society and Electronic Government (CONSEGI) 2008; Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Paraguay signed a joint declaration against the latest decision by ISO to ignore the appeals.
“They reiterate the issues of ISO “bending of rules” to fast track DIS29500, ignoring the contradictions with ODF, the growing and widespread use of ODF based applications in these countries, and questions the “vendor neutrality” of ISO, where its reputation and relevance is now suspect.”
If Microsoft’s plan was to create an international standard approved by ISO, they succeeded, barely. But both Microsoft and ISO took a great deal of collateral damage along the way to achieving this Pyrhhic victory, and may be in a worse strategic position than when the process began. MSOOXML is widely seen as a mere rubber-stamped fake standard, and the depths to which Microsoft sank in order to get its approval, as well as ISO’s failure to follow its own procedures, has sullied both organizations.
“Even though Microsoft may have gotten the ISO certification it desperately needed, the damage done has been considerable. The past two years brought together the international community, raised more awareness to real open standards than before, and unfortunately for them, pinpointed them as a common “enemy.” It looks like countries south of the equator have clearly indicated that OOXML will NOT be recognised as any form of government interoperability format.”
Posted in Free Culture, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Open Malaysia Blog Predicts MSOOXML’s Failure
September 2nd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Computer users are naturally a bit hesitant to reinstall operating systems, so the strategic impact of having open source pre-installed on consumer PCs is very high. Many folks will happily use whatever comes on their new machines, so it’s a great opportunity to provide high-quality open source solutions instead of the problematic proprietary systems commonplace today.
In this vein, Hugh’s Space notices Ubuntu pre-installed on retail laptops in Poland.
He writes, “I’ve read about many companies doing this but it is the first time I’ve seen it in a shop here. I managed to snap this photo on my camera phone…”
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on Ubuntu Pre-installed in Poland
August 29th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Smashing Apps publishes “19 Most Essential Open Source Applications That You Probably Want To Know.”
As the site’s audience is largely graphic design professionals, this should help promote open source programs to a new cadre of possible users.
The majority of applications in this collection are web apps, but a few desktop programs make the list, including OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Seamonkey. (Not Firefox, though. They must feel that everyone already knows it.)
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Smashing Apps’ 19 Most-Essential Open Source Applications
August 28th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Mail merge has been a pain for some friends of mine using OpenOffice.org within their university administrative department, so I’ve been on the hunt for ways to make it easier. Solveig covers OpenOffice 2.x mail merge in an article from 2006 (which I’ve mentioned before), but they still have a few problems with editing the results of the merge before printing labels.
A new extension, Fast Mail Merge, was created to simplify some aspects of creating a mail merge, but I can’t really test it out since it’s not available for OOo 3.0 on Mac OS X (Linux and Windows versions are available). Nonetheless, this extension should prove useful to many OOo users out there.
Posted in Extensions, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
August 27th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
O3Spaces is a companion tool for OpenOffice.org users in need of collaboration space.
Offering document management and collaboration, it competes with programs like Alfresco and Sharepoint. O3Spaces focuses on interoperability with OpenOffice.org as well as Microsoft Office and StarOffice, but has focused on OOo first and foremost.
Free community versions of O3Spaces are available. (Packaged product versions, and support subscriptions are also available, as revenue sources which provide the company’s business model.)
Posted in OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
August 22nd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Social networking sites and tools are one of the most fascinating areas online these days. But sharing my information with a company whose goals and intentions I just don’t know makes me somewhat nervous, hence my interest in open source social networking applications and protocols. One of the fastest-growing and best-known, Elgg, has just reached 1.0.
Elgg has already been implemented by several universities and online communities around the world, has a Packt book, and should grow even faster with the 1.0 stamp on its codebase.
See Elgg’s homepage and download the code to get started!
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Elgg 1.0 Arrives
August 21st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
InformationWeek tries to guess what Linux will look like in another four years in “What Linux Will Look Like In 2012.”
The most interesting and important issue will be continued efforts, and successes, in simplifying Linux for use by regular people who don’t care that much about computers.
IW emphasizes this first in its piece: “The single biggest change you’ll see is the way Linux evolves to meet the growing market of users who are not themselves Linux-savvy, but are looking for a low-cost alternative to Microsoft (or even the Mac). That alone will stimulate enormous changes across the board, but there are many other things coming down the pike in the next four years, all well worth looking forward to.”
The growing wave of ultra-mobile PCs (or “netbooks”), inspired by the OLPC XO and led by Asus’ Eee PC, may prove to be the first foothold Linux makes in its assault on the end-user space. “By 2012, it’ll be a brand name unto itself, thanks to the exploding netbook market, where Linux has proven itself to be a solid way to build an inexpensive computing platform. By that time, many first-tier manufacturers like Dell ought to be offering such devices — and those that already do (like HP) will probably be looking seriously at offering more Linux-based gear.”
(Ubuntu also sees the potential of netbooks, and has launched “Ubuntu Netbook Remix” to address this market.)
In conlusion, IW sees Linux increasing its technical strengths, consolidating its current markets, and successfully branching out to new areas. Better usability and pricing will ensure it rapid and sustainable growth.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on InformationWeek Predicts Linux’s Future
August 20th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Metamorphosis, based in Macedonia, announces that Poland’s Ministry of Education recommends open source software for the country’s schools. As one of the more populous members of the EU with over 40 million people, this could have a big impact!
In addition to general support of open source, the Ministry also specifically recommended OpenOffice.org:
“The Ministry recommended in a statement that schools and universities use OpenOffice. The application suite is sufficiently mature and advanced to be used for teaching and for office use in education and science institutes. “OpenOffice can successfully substitute proprietary applications and will result in significant savings on licenses.”
This recommendation is the culmination of a 10-month project in which 99 schools and over 4,500 students were introduced to FOSS by volunteer members of the Free and Open Software in Schools campaign.
“About 30 percent of the schools visited by the Wioo w Szkole [Free and Open Software in Schools] campaign have switched at least partly to Open Source. Most of these schools configured their PCs to run a GNU/Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, Suse or Mandriva, alongside Windows.”
More information is available at the Open Source Observatory website.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Poland’s Ministry of Education Recommends Open Source
August 19th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Tom’s Guide offers a visual tip collection for OpenOffice 2 and 3.
They noticed something we have long been keeping an eye out for: the early mainstream beginning to adopt OOo.
“We’ve talked up OpenOffice before in other articles, but the software is worth a closer look since more and more companies are beginning to dole it out to employees.”
The premise of the article is to support new OOo users: “Here, we’ll show you some simple tips and tricks so that you can use OpenOffice in the easiest and most efficient way possible. All the information that we’ve included works just as well on OpenOffice 2 as it does on the new beta 3 version. It’s straightforward and easy — we promise.”
Using 20 screenshots and a short descriptive text for each, Tom’s Guide covers lots of basic functionality and helps new users get accustomed to the software. It will make a good reference to help the coming waves of new users get comfortable on their new suite.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 2 Comments »
August 14th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
KDE 4.0 was designed to be a watershed rethink of the technologies providing the graphical user interface, and now KDE 4.1 will help to finish the transition to the new paradigm. North Davis Road describes some of the details in the post “Reimagining the Desktop.”
“Disruptive change comes from the unlikeliest of sources at times. It rarely, if ever, comes from established players in a space particularly commercial ones.”
The writing is a bit ill-organized, but the information in the article and the saga of KDE 4.x remain quite interesting.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on On KDE 4.1