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Recorded downloads of OpenOffice.org via the Bouncer since the launch of Version 3.1. For more stats, see this page. ContributorsAlan Lord (feed)Benjamin Horst (feed) Charles Schulz (feed) Christian Driga (feed) GullFOSS (feed) Italo Vignoli (feed) John McCreesh (feed) Leif Lodahl (feed) Louis Suarez-Potts (feed) OOo Marketeers (feed) Feeds  
Bloggings on marketing topics by project members - see disclaimer. November 19, 2009Charles Schulz : Politicians, lobbyists and scapegoats: When choosing not to choose should make you vote the next time
The famous and much awaited RGI (Référentiel Général d’Interopérabilité) has officially been published and enacted. This announcement was met with mixed reactions and as I have been following the RGI for quite a few years now, I thought I would write some of my thoughts about it. The RGI is actually old, not just because it was already online as a final draft in May 2009, but because the RGI as a project dates back several years. Its story goes like this: Somewhere in 2006 the decision is made by the French government to draft a public sector-wide policy on IT matters. This policy is to be published in several parts, one on security, another on accessibility and the last one on interoperability. The last one, called the RGI, is published as a draft on the same year and submitted for public comments on a wiki, which was at the time something daring and courageous. The feedback that was received was ominously  good. In fact the first version of the RGI was mandating the use of Open Standards, and most notably ODF throughout the whole administration. At that very moment, Microsoft decided it was time to intervene and through a violent strategy of pressure and influence, managed to repel the RGI and have the process restarted. The process did restart and the same document finally got finalized for official approval in 2007. There the RGI progressively fades away, partly because of the presidential elections taking place in France at that time, partly because of a strongly applied pressure from the outside. The freshly elected government seems to have not so fresh ideas about I.T. Its track record in the matter is probably one of the worst possible as it is the one who authored and championed the Hadopi law (the french three strikes system) and other network censorship legislation. Any communication system that is not controlled by the Hungarian director of police  glory of our nation, the President, is progressively being put under his control.  In this context one could believe that the RGI would have lost not time being reexamined again. The exact opposite happened, partly because of the neo-conservative bias of the new government who seems to believe in the omnipotence of markets vs State intervention, partly because of a strange proximity with Microsoft (four ministers inaugurated the new Microsoft offices in Paris!) and a common hatred of Google. In this context, the people in charge of drafting the RGI discovered they were deprived of any political support. Moreover, they also realized that the opportunity for a clear policy drafting had gone away. They are public servants, after all, and public servants cannot do a lot without the support of the politicians in power. This is how we come to the present RGI. The document by itself has been totally rewritten, choosing to leave aside the policy aspect in favor of an exhaustive referencing and classifying of existing technology and standards.  This document itself integrates well with the upper echelons of European interoperability framework and does not attempt to dictate what the public sector stakeholders should do. On the crucial question of the office file formats, it is obvious that the authors spent some time carefully choosing their words. While the use of xml-based file format is clearly recommended, ODF is being put under observation (the reason for this is unclear) and so is OOXML, but at least we know the reason for this: OOXML has no known implementation (and won’t have any until a long time, they might have added) and therefore cannot be used. This is what happens when a government is fiddling too much with powerful corporations and forget the interest of its own people: honest, competent, public servants have to compose with whatever they have in order to keep things going. If I were to judge this document from this standpoint only, I would actually give it a big cheer.The problem is that the whole concept of the RGI has become somewhat of a loaded gun in France, and it is I believe useless to use people of the DGME as scapegoats. With what they have, they could not have done better. But what was at stake was an opportunity for France to become a champion of open standards and sustainable digital future. It’s sad to see this government never gave it a chance. I hope one day we will realize that the ideological bias against any form of openness entertained by the present President and Prime Minister is something akin to the outrageous denial of global warming by the previous U.S. administration.I look forward to the future versions of the RGI, and think they will bring more constructive, innovative and positive elements to the development of a coherent information infrastructure  for our national public sector. by Charles at November 19, 2009 11:40 AM CET GullFOSS : Improved websites to download OpenOffice.org builds
The current setup of websites for downloading OpenOffice.org installation sets provides builds for several languages and operating systems. But nowadays a lot more are built. Unfortunately they are not that easy to find as they are on mirror servers. The most users do not know this or how to come to these mirrors. Furthermore there was no comfortable way to download language packs (currently for 96 languages !). Another reason is that many native language teams have only a small staff or do not have the time to test all available Release Candidate (RC) builds on all platforms for their language. However, these are very close to a final release but have not got the latest tests. But why not offering these to the users with a hint to be carefully when using? To improve this situation and to deliver more choice we have created a new download website layout. Main Download Page http://download.openoffice.org This website was enhanced to download easily the build you want. Of course the well-known (green) One-Click download remains the same easy way to get your favorite version. The same for the orange button for Developer Snapshots. The new thing is the yellow button that will guide you to the website for Release Candidates. Full Installations and Language Packs The improvements were done here to provide all available stable builds: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html The first table provides all full installation sets as stable release of the current OpenOffice.org version. The second table provides all stable language packs. BTW: Release Candidates A complete new website was created to offer all Release Candidates. Also here the first table has links to the full installation sets and the second to all language packs:http://download.openoffice.org/all_rc.html Some days ago the 100 millionth download of an OpenOffice.org build was announced. We hope to increase this impressive number with the new download websites. Happy downloading. :-) by Marcus Lange at November 19, 2009 11:20 AM CET November 18, 2009GullFOSS : New: OOo-DEV 3.2.0 Developer Snapshot (build OOO320_m5) available
Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev OOO320_m5 which installs as OOo-DEV 3.2.0 has been uploaded. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following link: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: by Joost Andrae at November 18, 2009 10:53 AM CET GullFOSS : New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m65) available
Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m65 which installs as OOo-DEV 3.2 (subject to change) has been uploaded to the mirror network. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following link: Packages are also available from extended mirror sites ( listed with an [E] ) from the ".../extended/developer/DEV300_m65" directory: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: by Marcus Lange at November 18, 2009 10:07 AM CET November 12, 2009GullFOSS : Odt2DAISY - create DAISY Digital Talking Books with OpenOffice.org!
Vincent Spiewak has finished his OpenOffice.org extension for converting ODF text documents to DAISY Digital Talking Books - you can find the press release here. The extension not only creates XML content, but also can make use of different text to speech engines, so you will have fully featured talking books. I recommend this extension for everybody who wants to create DAISY books. Binaries and source files are available on sourceforge, the license is LGPL 3. If you never heard of DAISY before, you might want to look at the screen casts which will show you how it works. Thank you very much for this great OpenOffice.org extension!
by Malte Timmermann at November 12, 2009 12:12 PM CET GullFOSS : Community Council Elections: Use your invitation to vote!
3 seats on the OpenOffice.org Community Council are to be taken by community members to represent their constituency. After the nomination and introduction period now the 3 elections are open. Code Contributor Representative: candidate Jürgen Schmidt seeks the support of code contributors. Product Development Representative: candidates Christoph Noack and Alexandro Colorado strive for the majority of votes from leads of accepted projects and incubator projects. Native Language Representative: candidate Charles-H. Schulz seeks the support of leads of native language projects. If you are a member of one of the above mentioned constituencies you will have received an email that invites you to participate. Please cast your vote until November 16. It looks a bit complicated but there are descriptions available about the OpenOffice.org Community Council, its charter, the election process and the candidates for the November 2009 elections. Thanks go to the helping hands running the elections as commissary (Louis, louis@ooo) and observers (Mechtilde, mechtilde@ooo; Sophie, sgauti@ooo). PS: If you think you should have received an invitation please drop me, the commissary and observers a note (after a look in your spam folder ;-). by Stefan Taxhet at November 12, 2009 11:10 AM CET November 10, 2009John McCreesh : Nat sae timârous beastie
I hope the product does well for Theo, but I would like to clear up one point of confusion. Contrary to recent press reports, this is not an OpenOffice.org Community product. The mouse will be produced by WarMouse, an independent company with no business relationship with the OpenOffice.org Community. The OpenOffice.org Community will continue to do what it does best – produce the world’s leading open-source personal productivity suite. As Rabbie might well have said about WarMouse’s Press Release:
The full text of “To a Mouse” may be found here by John at November 10, 2009 10:07 AM CET GullFOSS : New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m64) available
Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m64 which installs as OOo-DEV 3.2 (subject to change) has been uploaded to the mirror network. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following link: Packages are also available from extended mirror sites ( listed with an [E] ) from the ".../extended/developer/DEV300_m64" directory: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: by Marcus Lange at November 10, 2009 09:29 AM CET November 09, 2009Leif Lodahl : Another municipallity chalenges MicrosoftCity of Roedovre (Rødovre) is the next municipality in Denmark to challenge Microsoft on expensive software licenses.From today, employees at the city hall will use OpenOffice.org in conjunction with their case- and document handling system.http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=da&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.business.dk%2Farticle%2F20091109%2Ftechmobil%2F91108011%2F&sl=da&tl=en& by Leif Lodahl (noreply@blogger.com) at November 09, 2009 07:48 AM CET November 06, 2009John McCreesh : âCento Milioniâ Conference â day 3
A chat with Olivier about what we can learn from Brazil, home now to three ‘Cento Milioni’ corporate desktop deployments, then a quick sesson with Italo to decide how we will close the OOoCon, and just time to knock together a few slides in Impress. Back to the Conference, where the Marketing Project had grabbed a vacant conference slot to continue the discussions about plans for next year. These discussions need to be continued on the mailing lists with colleagues who couldn’t attend the Cento Milioni Conference, so we can get budget proposals in front of the Community Council for next year. Looks like I have some transcription to do when I get home. First proper lunch of the OOoCon (i.e. > pizza) then back to join in a Community Council Q&A sesssion. This was not as lively as in some past Conferences, but it was interesting that several of the issues raised today, had also been raised by the candidates for the vacant seats in our conversation on Thursday evening. Then on to the stage to bring the Conference to a close with the expected lively contribution from Italo. Italo handed the “poor man’s torch” to Peter for next year’s OOoCon in Budapest – I’ll try and link to photos of this on the web… And that was it. The three days of conference have flown by, and our amazing interntional community becomes virtual for another ten months. Mille Grazie Orvieto! by John at November 06, 2009 08:41 PM CET John McCreesh : âCento Milioniâ Conference â day 2
Another full day at the OpenOffice.org ‘Cento Milioni’ Conference , from 9am to 7pm followed by the famous Native Language Confederation (NLC) Party – tickets a very non-threatening 10 Euro. The NLC is arguably OpenOffice.org’s greatest success, with mostly volunteer teams around the world translating the software and documentation nd providing the full range of support in the world’s major languages. I spent the morning listening to the documentation and translation teams sharing success stories and best practice, and grumbling about software support for their activities. There’s a clear opportunity for some open-source developers to fill gaps here … and earn the gratitude of hundreds of people around the world! The afternoon was spent hopping between tracks. One major conference theme has been User Experience (UX) work. The OpenOffice.org Renaissance team had provoked a storm in the blogosphere earlier in the year. I enjoyed watching the team trying to cajole an OOoCon audience into a participative session showing how UX goes about it business. It was interesting to compare this with the work IBM have done on Lotus Symphony, their commercial product derived from OpenOffice.org. It was also great to hear from the hugely successful NLC operation in Brazil, where OpenOffice.org (or BrOffice,org as it’s known for trademark reasons) is in danger of becoming the de-facto choice, with three major corporate deployments each with ‘cnto milioni’ desktop deployments. So it was only right to round off the day at the NLC Party, which was a hugely convivial event. Alas, the caterers had failed to estimate the appetites of software developers – or the necessity for strict portion control at buffets attended by said population by John at November 06, 2009 07:57 AM CET November 05, 2009John McCreesh : âCento Milioniâ Conference â day 1
Another ten hour day – even the lunch hour was taken up by a follow-up Community Council meeting – so I won’t attempt a summary of every session. The Conference Programme is on the web, as are the recordings of the conference sessions. My main impression at the end of the first day is the way that OpenOffice.org is becoming mainstream. We had presentations from municipal authorities who have adopted OpenOffice.org wholescale; from a systems integrator who building OpenOffice.org into solutions; even a hardware company launching a multi-button mouse specifically designed for OpenOffice.org. Presenters addressed the kind of issues that only arise in large scale deployments: migration, training, tailoring OpenOffice.org / locking down the software for mass desktop rollouts. Presenters talked about running OpenOffice.org on netbooks and creating portable versions to run from a usb stick – OpenOffice is now a truly pervasive application. To end the day: another civic reception with drinks and a buffet, this time featuring local wines, meats, pastas, cheeses, etc. These people take their food seriously. A quick conversation with some senior Oracle folks – I hope they were impressed with the astonishing value for money which the OpenOffice.org Community represents I now need to add today’s photos to my OOoCon album in Facebook… by John at November 05, 2009 08:18 AM CET November 04, 2009John McCreesh : Watch OOoCon!
Stop Press
by John at November 04, 2009 11:48 AM CET John McCreesh : âCento Milioniâ Conference â day-1
My day began at 10am, with a workshop led by Italo Vignoli, a PR professional who has worked wonders in driving up the brand recognition and market share of OpenOffice.org in Italy. Italo’s session was a masterclass in how open source communities with zero marketing budget can compete and win against companies with six figure annual budgets – by doing what they do best. After a quick pizza, back for a meeting of the MarCons (Marketing Contacts) again to learn from the successful Italian operation, and discuss how 2009 had gone. It was our “Year of the developer”, and we had focussed spending on going to developer conferences. We had feedback from those who had taken part – what hadn’t worked, what had, and what we should do more of. Looking to next year, we had some good discussions on priorities and budget requests – but we decided to continue this in a full conference session to canvass wider views. The Community Council then kicked in at about 5pm – we manage to be even later when meeting face to face than we are on irc Just time to upload some photos to Facebook, and the end of a long day. Ten hours of meetings, and that was just the pre-conference day! by John at November 04, 2009 07:24 AM CET November 01, 2009OOo Marketeers : Follow OpenOffice.org Conference on Twitter!
At http://twitter.com/ooocon we've just set up a Twitter bot for the OpenOffice.org Conference. It checks Twitter every five minutes for posts with the tag #ooocon and retweets them automatically.  by floeff (noreply@blogger.com) at November 01, 2009 09:54 PM CET GullFOSS : New: OOo-DEV 3.2.0 Developer Snapshot (build OOO320_m3) available
Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev OOO320_m3 which installs as OOo-DEV 3.2.0 has been uploaded. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following link: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: by Joost Andrae at November 01, 2009 01:07 PM CET October 29, 2009GullFOSS : October Status Update for Project Renaissance
Thinning out process for the existing OOo user interface has started. Focus for OOo 3.3 will be on Impress. Please find the October status update presentation for Project Renaissance at the OOo Wiki (1 MB). Feedback welcome. Best regards, Project Renaissance Teamby frankl at October 29, 2009 04:20 PM CET Leif Lodahl : 100,000,000 downloadsOn October 28th. 2009, the one hundred millionth person clicked on the Download OpenOffice.org button since version 3.0 of the software was announced just over one year ago.www.openoffice.org by Leif Lodahl (noreply@blogger.com) at October 29, 2009 12:49 PM CET October 28, 2009John McCreesh : OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2010
An interesting piece of research came my way today courtesy of Computer Weekly magazine. They asked their tame panel questions about open-source versus commercial software, and published their findings here. The section of interest to OpenOffice.org enthusiasts states:
This provides evidence to support our belief that in large organisations, software purchasing decision makers are pretty conservative – “no-one gets fired for buying Microsoft”. In smaller organisations, decision makers are more willing to do their own research, and having tried OpenOffice.org, are more likely to go for it. They are probably also more careful with their budgets! by John at October 28, 2009 08:38 PM CET John McCreesh : Oracle and OpenOffice.org
It was also good today to see a report on Oracle’s plans for OpenOffice.org. Sun Microsystems is OpenOffice.org’s founding and principle sponsor, so the news that Sun was to be acquired by Oracle had set hearts fluttering in the open-source world. It’s worth quoting the relevant section in full:
Which sounds remarkably similar to the Sun proposition, with OpenOffice.org (shame about the .org) as the free version and StarOffice as a commercial offering. Another reason to be cheerful in the run up to OOoCon 2009 – the Cento Milioni Conference. by John at October 28, 2009 08:23 PM CET Disclaimer: all views expressed on this page are those of the individual contributors, and may not reflect the views of the OpenOffice.org Community. If you find any offensive or objectionable material, please notify the Marketing Project Leads. |
It’s interesting to see what catches the attention of the computer media. I got back online yesterday to find the blogosphere humming with stories such as 
Another wet morning in Orvieto. My conference day started with the Art Project’s proposals for a new logo for OpenOffice.org. These are the results of just a few weeks’ visual brainstorming, and showed a wide range of ideas from the evolutionary to the revolutionary. I must say I’m not a fan of real-life seagulls – rats with wings…
leading to long queues and people threatening to ring Dominos for additional pizzas. Maybe this is the ’slow food’ for which Umbria is famous 
The minutes of this will be posted on the wiki, so I’m not going to duplicate them here (especially as I will be writing them…) We finally called it a day at 8pm, and went off to enjoy drinks and nibbles courtesy of the local suthorities here, grateful for the out-of-season conference business.
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