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Last updated: August 22, 2008 12:00 AM GMT

August 21, 2008

OOo Marketeers :  Join us at the OpenOffice.org booth at Systems in Munich!

OpenOffice.org will exhibit at the Systems trade show in Munich, which takes place from October 21th to 24th, one month after the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0. If you are offering products, services or software related to OpenOffice.org, you are welcome to co-exhibit with us at our booth. Booth management, organization and marketing will be done by the association OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V. More details via e-mail at floeff@openoffice.org or in German at http://www.ooodev.org/termine/aktuelle_termine/vorplanung_systems_2008_2.html

by floeff (noreply@blogger.com) at August 21, 2008 06:00 PM GMT



August 20, 2008

Benjamin Horst :  Poland’s Ministry of Education Recommends Open Source

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.

by Benjamin Horst at August 20, 2008 07:42 PM GMT



GullFOSS :  New: OOo-Dev 3.0 Developer snapshot (build OOO300_m3) available

OOo-Dev3.0 Developer Snapshot build OOO300_m3 which installs as OOo-Dev 3.0 has been uploaded to the mirror network.

The rename of the product name to OOo-Dev allows the installation of the OpenOffice.org snapshot parallel to an OpenOffice.org  'final' (released) version. For this version the usual language packs de, fr and ja have been uploaded and they should install into the OOo-Dev installation. Please note that these are not yet available for Mac OS X.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link
http://download.openoffice.org/300/index.html

MD5SUMS:
http://download.openoffice.org/300/md5sums.html

by Marcus Lange at August 20, 2008 07:33 AM GMT



August 19, 2008

Benjamin Horst :  Tom’s Guide Offers OpenOffice Tips

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.

by Benjamin Horst at August 19, 2008 03:59 PM GMT



OOo Marketeers :  announcing the winner of the splash screen poll


I'd like to announce the winner of the splash screen poll. We had a total of 789 votes, which is a quite good count! The winner is

Jacek Adamkiewicz: Proposal 3

with a total of 83 votes. You see that this result means that voting was quite tight and all proposals have seen nearly equal acceptance throughout the community.

I'd like to take the opportunity and thank all contributors for their great efforts! I hope that contributors whose proposal have not been chosen will support us in designing in the future nontheless!

by floeff (noreply@blogger.com) at August 19, 2008 12:47 PM BST



August 14, 2008

John McCreesh :  Building Communities

One of the pleasures of attending the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference is catching up with old friends. I always make a point of having a chat with Zaheda, one of the founders of the OpenOffice.org community, now with Google, but still keeping a keen interest in OpenOffice.org.

Zaheda is doing a Conference session The OOo Global Community which should be a ‘must see’ - note to community members - expect to be asked for your stories over the next few weeks! Conference attendees love to celebrate the new achievements of the OpenOffice.org software - let’s also celebrate the people who make it happen.

On a related topic, Phil Whitehouse has an interesting piece on building communities. There’s a growing feeling in OpenOffice.org that some of the structures could do with a good spring clean, starting with the Community Council. Maybe we need to spend some time on this in the bars in Beijing :)

by John at August 14, 2008 08:21 PM GMT



Benjamin Horst :  Malaysian State of Pahang Adopts OpenOffice.org

The Open Malaysia Blog announces a major OpenOffice migration: the Malaysian state of Pahang will move all its computers to OpenOffice.

“The driving force for this migration seems to be cost of proprietary software and the fear of unlicensed software. OpenOffice.org is the obvious solution to these two pressing problems (thanks, BSA!) What is good is that they have chosen ODF by default, and they are not changing the file format to the binary proprietary ones.

“What is interesting is that the public sector in Malaysia is moving towards FOSS independently from any government directive or mandate, so no amount of whining would derail our government from choosing and making their choice. Its a simple business decision, and the market has decided.”

Nowhere could I find how many computers will be involved or other details, but this is yet another promising development in Malaysia, which seems to be growing into an open source stronghold year by year.

by Benjamin Horst at August 14, 2008 01:14 AM GMT



August 13, 2008

OOo Marketeers :  The entire State of Pahang moves to OpenOffice.org

Its just been made official that the State of Pahang is migrating all its productivity suites to OpenOffice.org. Read more about this here.

by floeff (noreply@blogger.com) at August 13, 2008 11:20 PM BST



Alan Lord :  Crunch Proofing Your Business?

I know I’m kind of preaching to the converted here but I have been thinking about ideas to promote OSS, and our company’s services, here in the UK. And I’m particularly thinking about this with regards to our current economic climate, i.e. very dodgy.

For most of the readership of this blog it will come as no surprise that Open Source is a bloody great way to avoid spending money on software. That’s a very simple argument and one that has merit. But clearly capital cost isn’t the only answer and replacing existing infrastructure with something new, even if it is free, can be costly in other ways.

So are there other benefits and factors where Open Source Software solutions can be of distinct benefit in these rather troubled times?

Well I think there are, and I’ve dumped some of my rather random thoughts down here. I’d love to hear your opinion on them and get any other suggestions you may have too:

  • To me, a major benefit of OSS to a business is when they are looking to deploy a new solution or service. Be it a CRM, or ERP, or perhaps their business model has changed and they need to actually do something fundamentally different to survive. Deploying OSS in this scenario is almost a no-brainer. You will have to pay to integrate this new service to some degree whatever solution you select; so why not use a free one and one that gives you an ability to adapt and change features in a far simpler way than with a proprietary system?
  • But now, cash is really tight. It is even more important that your business gets every penny it can from any investment it makes. So there may be an even simpler argument: If you can’t afford to invest in a proprietary software solution but you can get similar functionality from a free OSS solution, can you really afford NOT to go down the OSS route? Your competitors probably will.
  • Is OSS now the ONLY choice for the cash-strapped business? You can’t stand still. You have to do something to generate more leads/revenue/cash flow or improve operating efficiency etc. Standing still in our current climate is equivalent to going backwards in a growth economy.
  • Vista bashing? Many firms will probably be getting close to needing an upgrade cycle on their desktops. Do they go Vista? There are a whole world of reason why not too, including performance, reliability, security and the need to upgrade hardware. Is OSS ready for the Desktop. Personally I think so; but does Joe Blogs? Can they be convinced? We are certainly hearing more positive noises in this direction but is it a step-too-far? The costs of replacing your desktop licenses is going to be pretty steep.
  • How about bringing certain tasks back in-house? Many businesses will outsource to external companies specific jobs or functions that they use on a regular basis. By deploying OSS in-house, could they do some of this work themselves and save money, speed up the process, become more efficient? I’m thinking of these sort of things: basic graphics work, PDF creation, page layout, web design/maintenance. There’s no cost to download and install The Gimp, Inkscape, OpenOffice.org or Scribus. Moving a web site to a decent CMS like Joomla! from a hard-coded site (that you have to go back to your web designer every time you want content changed) could provide longer term benefits although this would require some up front cost.
  • Security. Is it a big deal for most SMEs? It doesn’t crop up that much in discussion. So I don’t think it is an area to major on. Do you? Clearly there are big advantages to using OSS (Linux) on the desktop for protection from almost all malware. But with existing infrastructure protected by AV, Firewalls, filters and IDS etc, is it worth changing? For it’s own sake probably not, but as part of a bigger overhaul, probably.
  • Servers and networked services. With M$’s release of Windows Server 2008(tm), is there an opportunity to promote the OSS alternative? Again, upgrades are not going to be cheap. Current VAR expertise will be limited with the new platform so where is the downside to using OSS based servers instead? Free, secure, immensely flexible and scalable. We have just seen Alfresco announce that their Open Source ECM now fully supports Microsoft’s Sharepoint stack. The big benefit here is in keeping your businesses’ documents on an open platform. Not locked inside a proprietary M$ one where you will be forever asked to pay to get continued access to your data.

That’s it for now. If you got this far, thanks!

I’d like to think this might become a short series of posts if we can get more and better ideas from you too.

by Alan Lord at August 13, 2008 12:48 PM GMT



August 12, 2008

GullFOSS :  New: OOo-Dev 3.0 Developer snapshot (build OOO300_m2) available

OOo-Dev3.0 Developer Snapshot build OOO300_m2 which installs as OOo-Dev 3.0 has been uploaded to the mirror network.

The rename of the product name to OOo-Dev allows the installation of the OpenOffice.org snapshot parallel to an OpenOffice.org  'final' (released) version. For this version the usual language packs de, fr and ja have been uploaded and they should install into the OOo-Dev installation.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link
http://download.openoffice.org/300/index.html

MD5SUMS:
http://download.openoffice.org/300/md5sums.html

by Marcus Lange at August 12, 2008 09:27 AM GMT



August 11, 2008

OOo Marketeers :  Vote on the OpenOffice.org 3.0 splash screen

OpenOffice.org 3.0 will get a new splash screen to reflect our new and fresh release, and the community has the final word on it. Several great proposals have been sent in, and we ask all community members to cast their vote. Together with the splash screen, two other design elements will be included, namely the Windows installer graphic, and the about box image.

Voting will end on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 12:00 UTC+1. Every OpenOffice.org community member can vote, and voting is absolutely anonymous.

TO VOTE, PLEASE VISIT THE FOLLOWING WEBSITE:
http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/splashvote/

Should you have questions or issues with the voting system, please write to surveys@marketing.openoffice.org

by floeff (noreply@blogger.com) at August 11, 2008 01:21 PM BST



August 10, 2008

John McCreesh :  Beijing updates

FireworksAs you may be aware, an event eagerly anticipated around the world is taking place in Beijing this year. I mean of course the OpenOffice.org Annual International Conference, which will take place between 5th-7th November this year. We are now in a period of frantic activity for the Conference organisers. As usual, the bulk of the work falls on the local organising team, but the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project has the overall responsibility for organising the Conference Programme: collecting proposals from speakers, creating a Jury to select the best papers, and using the selected papers to create a balanced and attractive programme.

This process has been running for the past few weeks, which is one reason why my blogs have been few and far between. However, I am pleased to say that the Conference Programme and all the session Abstracts are now online:

  • if you are still dithering about attending, please browse the site and see what you will miss if you don’t attend :)
  • if you have decided to attend, please register now, and use the Programme to decide how you will spend your time in Beijing!

The countdown to the real big event of 2008 in Beijing is now underway ;)

by John at August 10, 2008 07:12 PM GMT



August 08, 2008

Leif Lodahl :  If you try to keep up with average, you will never get ahead

Bob Sutor spoke on LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco yesterday.You can find the presentation on Bobs blog here: http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=2446 . One of the issues Bob spoke about, was the problem that open source development has been trying to 'keep up' with Microsoft for about a decade. 'The open source community cannot continue to copy a ten year old operating system' he

by Leif Lodahl (noreply@blogger.com) at August 08, 2008 09:43 PM BST



August 07, 2008

GullFOSS :  New: OOo-Dev 3.0 Developer snapshot (build OOO300_m1) available

OOo-Dev3.0 Developer Snapshot build OOO300_m1 which installs as OOo-Dev 3.0 has been uploaded to the mirror network with the usual language packs "de", "fr" and "ja".The rename of the product name to OOo-Dev allows the installation of the OpenOffice.org snapshot parallel to an OpenOffice.org  'final' (released) version.

Due to the recent branch OOO300 (from DEV300_m28) there is a new direction for developer milestones. Therefore also the upload of developer milestones had to be split:

  • the new OOO300 is going towards the OOo 3.0 final
  • the common DEV300 is now used for the future OOO 3.x release

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Also new webpages had been created to avoid any mixup with the builds from DEV300. Please take the following links:

Download:
http://download.openoffice.org/300/index.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/300/md5sums.html

by Marcus Lange at August 07, 2008 09:33 AM GMT



August 06, 2008

Charles Schulz :  Miscellanea before leaving on vacation

  • I have not been blogging for a week now but as it turns out, I have been microblogging. I do have a Twitter account but I am now using my Identi.ca account much more regularly. Of course microblogging does not replace blogging. I guess it opens a new channel for different content that has a real amount of immediacy and spontaneity. Understand that it may include noise, buzz, and senseless chatter.
  • I have recently been working with a group of volunteers on an informal, behind the scenes project inside OpenOffice.org. It aims to define and deliver a concept document that could be used as something of a “roadmap framework” for future versions of OpenOffice.org. Check out here for more details. It started out with Kay Ramme designing his “ODF@www” mechanism and it will use this idea extensively.
  • Stay tuned as the votes for the splashscreen contest for OpenOffice.org are about to start! You will get to choose among several splashscreen proposals submitted by various members of the community.
  • The Ars Aperta web site will be undergoing a revamping on the inside. Some new pages will be added, content has already been a bit improved but most importantly, we’ll be rolling out the Ikaaro Content Management System and its wiki behind the scenes. If you wonder what kind of platform we were using before, well, we were using our very own custom and minimalistic platform (that amounted to little more than changing the web pages through the command line). We now feel we should put more content online and take full advantage of the fact that the Ars Aperta web site has been running on Caudium, a very fast, very reliable, written in C and Pike. In other words, that’s not your everyday Apache…

Meanwhile, I will be in vacation for a bit less than two weeks and I am ready to enjoy them. Thank you for reading this weblog and enjoy the rest of the month!

Share This

by Charles at August 06, 2008 03:05 PM GMT



August 05, 2008

OOo Marketeers :  Announcing the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference Beijing 2008

OpenOffice.org has today opened registration for its biggest ever annual international conference. The Conference - to be held in Beijing, China between 5th.-7th. November - is the main event of the year for developers, supporters, and users of OpenOffice.org software, the leading free software alternative to Microsoft Office. Read more at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/08/prweb1177594.htm

by floeff (noreply@blogger.com) at August 05, 2008 10:33 AM BST



August 04, 2008

Benjamin Horst :  OpenOffice Extensions: Last Session

I love to see the cross-pollination of ideas between open source projects, and the clever ways they can be adapted from one paradigm to another.

For example, recent versions of OpenOffice.org have become more like web browsers, especially Firefox, as OOo introduced its Extensions features, as developers have worked to provide wiki-capabilities, and now, as a new extension called Last Session allows you to reopen OOo and have all your previous documents open for you with one click, just like I’ve become accustomed to with Firefox’s session restore.

Last Session is something I had a distinct need for, and I look forward to making good use of it starting immediately.

by Benjamin Horst at August 04, 2008 02:10 PM GMT



Alan Lord :  Microsoft Midori: That Sounds Familiar?

I just read this article on the BBC’s website.

Apart from being a complete waste of screen space from a serious point of view, there were a few tit-bits that seemed worth looking at:

Windows worked well in an age when most people used one machine to do all their work. The operating system acted as the holder for the common elements Windows programs needed to call on.

“Windows worked well…”. Did it? Really? When? Never heard of that before. lol.

Then we get this real pearl of wisdom from the chaps who gave us Winframe…

“If you think about how an operating system is loaded,” said Dave Austin, European director of products at Citrix, “it’s loaded onto a hard disk physically located on that machine.

“The operating system is tied very tightly to that hardware,” he said.

That, he said, created all kinds of dependencies that arose out of the collection of hardware in a particular machine.

Well if that isn’t stating the f****ing obvious I don’t know what is… And he goes on to say:

This means, he said, that Windows can struggle with more modern ways of working in which people are very mobile and very promiscuous in the devices they use to get at their data - be that pictures, spreadsheets or e-mail.

What? You mean like when these people don’t use Windows? And they realise that all their stuff is tied into some M$ application software that ONLY works on Windows. Well, tough luck; that’s what happens when you play with monopolies. Try using Open Standards and Open Applications (like OpenOffice.org) instead.

The article then rather strangely moves on to talk about virtualisation technology.

Midori is widely seen as an ambitious attempt by Microsoft to catch up on the work on virtualisation being undertaken in the wider computer industry.

That’s not what I thought it sounded like. It sounded more like an attempt to make a small kernel based OS that was portable between and across many different hardware platforms. Oh hang on a minute. I’ve heard about something like this before…

What’s that thing that runs on really small things, mobile phones, mini laptops, desktops, laptops, appliances, super computers, servers and runs all these new “cloud thingies”?

What was it again?

Ahhhhhhhh yes, that’s it. Now I’ve got it!

It’s called Linux.

Even more funny is this from 2001:

Midori Linux is an Open Source project for delivering system software on small devices. Midori includes a build system, a Linux kernel with memory- and storage-conserving features, and system-level support for running normal Linux software.

So maybe M$’s Midori is Linux afterall…

by Alan Lord at August 04, 2008 01:06 PM GMT



August 01, 2008

GullFOSS :  New: OOo-Dev 3.0 Developer snapshot (build DEV300_m29) available

OOo-Dev3.0 Developer Snapshot build DEV300_m29 which installs as OOo-Dev 3.0 has been uploaded to the mirror network.

The rename of the product name to OOo-Dev allows the installation of the OpenOffice.org snapshot parallel to an OpenOffice.org  'final' (released) version. For this version some language packs have been uploaded and they should install into the OOo-Dev installation.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link
http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html

MD5SUMS:
http://download.openoffice.org/680/md5sums.html

by Marcus Lange at August 01, 2008 11:10 PM GMT



July 30, 2008

Italo Vignoli :  OOo is “the best of open source”

Sam Ramji of Microsoft announces the SourceForge Community Award for Best Project for Education, won by OpenOffice.org. Sam underlines the importance of affordable software for education, both for teachers and students.

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by italovignoli at July 30, 2008 09:20 AM GMT



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