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Business law The Business Law Committee actively monitors all matters relating to or associated with business law and represents the Law Society and its members on policy and practice issues arising in this area. The Law Society is a Recognised Tax Agent Association The Law Society became a Recognised Tax Agent Association in 2012.

Replacing FrameMaker with OOo Writer

'I began comparing FrameMaker and Writer when a regular onthe OpenOffice.org User's list asked what it would take to giveWriter the power of FrameMaker. When I started, I mentally pictured ascale with Microsoft Word on one end and FrameMaker on another, withWriter in the middle, but closer to Microsoft Word. As I proceeded, Ifound Writer was a much stronger contender than I had expected. Atthe end of the comparison, I had to conclude that the two productscompare quite closely, depending on what features are more importantto a given user.'
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/10/04/150207

Germans claim Linux lowers costs

'The greatest cost saving opportunities that Soreon Researchfound were in the adoption of a variety of office applications onwork-stations. Over three-years, a 2000-seat organisation would savearound €525,000 with office applications, €57,000 withservers, €32,000 with content management systems and €21,000with databases. For a €1,000,000 budget, the use ofOpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office would provide a 20 percent cost advantage.'

Open approach offers Mindef more choice

'The Defence Ministry installs Open-Office, an open sourceproductivity suite, in 5,000 new computers as an alternative toproprietary software.

The Ministry of Defence (Mindef) has installed the OpenOfficeproductivity suite on 5,000 new desktop computers. This move is aimedat giving employees in the ministry an additional choice inproductivity software. It will also help Mindef make 'significant'savings in terms of capital costs.'

Ballmer calls for horse-based attack on Star Office

'In a question and answer session after his closing speech adelegate asked what he should do faced with public sector customersinterested in Star Office, Sun's budget rival to Microsoft Office.Ballmer replied: “Email me immediately and we’ll send inthe cavalry. I’m joking...but I’m not. There is no reasonto lose business to Star Office - it’s as good as what we wereshipping seven years ago, it’s not compatible with MicrosoftOffice and it’s missing key applications like Outlook.”'

Open for Business - The 2004 OfB Choice Awards

'Best Office Suite: OpenOffice.org 1.1.1 OpenOffice.orgremains the only serious contender to replace Microsoft Office onWindows or GNU/Linux desktops. There are

some competitors, such as Abiword on Windows and GNU/Linux as wellas Corel WordPerfect Office on Windows; OpenOffice.org seems to havea unique hold on progress toward offering comprehensive compatibilitywith Microsoft Office in an interface that should minimize adjustmenttime for users migrating to it.'

OpenOffice.org reveals marketing ambitions

'The organisation behind the office suite for Linux hasreleased a marketing plan which explains how it plans to promote itsopen-source product.

The developers of OpenOffice.org, the open-source officeproductivity suite, have unveiled details of a major marketing pushto coincide with the OpenOffice.org Conference, which has been takingplace in Berlin, Germany, this week.'

Nonprofit brings Linux and open source to Hawaii

'Schools in Hawaii, affected by lean budgets like many otherUS states this year, are upgrading their computer systems with helpfrom the open source community and Linux. A local nonprofit, theOahu-based Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation (HOSEF), hassupplied over a dozen Hawaiian schools with computers 'recycled'with the Linux operating system and raised awareness of open sourcesoftware (OSS).

[...]

'We have an obligation to reciprocate that which we receive,if possible. OSS (open source software) has been very good to me. Ihave used it to help employers save money. I have used[Openoffice.org] for my college degrees, and I use it daily on mycomputers. If I can take my entrepreneurial, economic, and businessinterests and channel my passion for OSS through them, then Ishould,' Belford enthuses.'

UK charity builds Linux network on a shoestring

'Homeless charity Alone in London spent less than £2,000to set up a network of 30 PCs from scratch, compared to asimilar-sized charity which spent £30,000 on building a networkusing proprietary solutions and new PCs, according to James Holland,who ran the project at Alone in London.

[...]

The only other cost was less than £250 for the cable,connectors, crimper and switches of the network infrastructure - intotal, the network cost under £2,000. The PCs on the networkrun Red Hat Linux 9, OpenOffice, Evolution for email and Mozilla forbrowsing, saving Alone in London further costs on licences fordesktop applications.'

NSW opens door to Linux offers

'THE NSW Department of Commerce has released its eagerlyanticipated Linux tender, calling for a panel of suppliers to provideenterprise-level software and services for government agencies. Thecontract, reportedly worth $40 million, is seen as a major stepforward for open source lobbyists, as it requests suppliers toprovide Linux software for both desktop and server environments.

[...]

In keeping with the NSW government’s push for opennesswithin its IT environment, the tender document states submissions canbe lodged in file formats that can be read byOpenOffice.org/StarOffice Write and Microsoft Word.'

Leading Edge Forum Report 2004 - Open Source: Open for Business

'Desktop software such as OpenOffice, while still reachingmaturity, could offer significant savings for large organizations.Office suite software can cost roughly $300 per seat—or $3million in an organization of 10,000 people. That creates realsavings when going to acquisition costs of $0.

[...]

Meanwhile, OpenOffice has climbed to a 14 percent share of thelarge enterprise office systems market. Microsoft, however, stillholds a 94 percent share of the overall office market. 'It is aDavid and Goliath story, to be sure,' the report says, 'butDavid is getting stronger.'

Linux growing on SMB desktops: Yankee Group

'Pay attention to the less-than-20-employee size marketsegment because that is where the early Linux versus Windows desktopwars will play out, she said. The very small business segment showsthe greatest interest in Linux desktop adoption in the next 12 ormore months (at 10 per cent), outpacing the intent of larger SMBs byfour to six percentage points.

[...]

But YG also said SMBs ought to consider Linux as an alternative,lower cost desktop OS to Windows. The price of a Linux-loaded systemwith, for example, Sun's StarOffice productivity suite will be lessthan a system preloaded with a Windows operating system and MicrosoftOffice.'

'Independent' report used MS-sourced data to trash OSS

'Microsoft, incidentally, has a long and inglorious historyof reverse-process studies (i.e. starting with the conclusions thensourcing the data appropriate for arrival at it). There are many,many examples but we feel this blast from the past is particularlyappropriate to current circumstances. Regrettably, the link to LinuxMyths no longer works, but it was sort of release 1.0 of Get theFacts.'

OpenOffice.org Conference Presentations

The OpenOffice.org Conference presentations can be found at:

Open Office XML May Satisfy ISO

'A letter to Sun Microsystems' COO Jonathan Schwartz by theEuropean Commission (EC) this week may set the stage for theInternational Organization for Standardization (ISO) to adopt theOpen Office XML format (also known as OO.o XML) as an ISO standard.If it does, the stamp of approval would mark the largest evervalidation of Sun's work on the desktop.'

Weblog:

Slashdot story:

UN drive to boost free software

'The United Nations is holding events across Asia toencourage the region to adopt free and open source software.

The UN's International Open Source Network (IOSN) is organisingthe first annual Software Freedom Day on 28 August, giving out CDsand booklets about the technology.'

'These include the operating system Linux, OpenOffice, theMozilla web browser and e-mail project, mySQL database and the Apacheweb server.

Computer users in South Africa are joining in too, and will beable to take their computers to one an 'install-fest'station to have free software installed.'

OpenOffice Set for Larger African Effort

'As part of Software Freedom Day, set for August 28,OpenOffice will be translated into three African languages for thefirst time. After Saturday, the open-source desktop suite will beavailable to speakers of the South African languages of Zulu, Sepediand Afrikaans. The new versions have been prepared byTranslate.org.za, a South African translation project that spent twoyears developing the software.'

A strong OpenOffice.org community is the key, argues Sun's DaneseCooper

'You may have read some of the articles, blogs, and newsgrouppostings about excerpts from Sun's settlement with Microsoft thatappear in our SEC filing. The discussion centered around theprotection we secured for the StarOffice brand, and implications forthe OpenOffice.org community.'

OpenOffice.org Art Project

The OpenOffice.org Art Project has been formed to create andmaintain an art portfolio for use by all OpenOffice.org projects.

Initial and ongoing activities include collating existingOpenOffice.org artwork and liaising with other OpenOffice.orgprojects that have or need artwork.

The Art Project (http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/) web sitedisplays the artwork and graphics in galleries, provides informationabout licenses, requesting graphics, and how to participate.

The Art Project is currently seeking designers and graphicalartists to create icons, logos, banners, labels, and fulfill futurerequests from other OpenOffice.org contributors. The artwork andgraphics are to be seen and used throughout the OpenOffice.orgproduct and community.

If you are interested, please visit the Art Project web site forfurther information.

Norwegian Native-Lang Project announced (NO)

'We are very pleased to announce the opening of the NorwegianNative-Lang Project (http://no.openoffice.org) led by Gaute HvoslefKvalnes. This project is an offspring of the prestigious Skolelinuxcommunity who is a major player in many fields of the Free and OpenSource Software thanks to its Linux distribution, its solutionplatform and its community.

The localization of OpenOffice.org to the Norwegian languagesBokmål and Nynorsk has resulted in many schools andinstitutions using OpenOffice.org. This in turn has led to severalproviders offering books, courses and other teaching materials. AsOpenOffice.org is becoming very popular among Norwegian speakers, theNative-Lang Confederation is greeting an important new member in itsfamily.

Good luck to the Norwegian Native-Lang Project!'

Contract For The Sale Of Business 2004 Edition Nsw Rta Online

OpenOffice.org in three SA languages for Software Freedom Day

'In celebration of this weekend's global Software FreedomDay, Translate.org.za is planning the release of the OpenOffice.orgsuite in three South African languages. The popular free softwareoffice suite will be available in Zulu, Afrikaans and Sepedi. Tswanais also included but in beta form.'

U.K.'s NHS licenses Sun's Java Desktop System

'The U.K.'s National Health Service said this week that itpurchased 5,000 licenses for Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java DesktopSystem (JDS) as an alternative to Windows, in a move that couldpotentially open the door to greater use of the open-source softwareby the health agency.

The NHS is implementing a $9 billion program to upgrade its ailingIT infrastructure. It began evaluating the potential use of Sun'sopen-source desktop system last December. JDS includes the company'sStarOffice productivity suite, a GNOME desktop and the Mozilla Webbrowser, which Sun has touted as a comprehensive open-sourcealternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows.'

Novell SA implements wall-to-wall Linux

'Novell has not only become the biggest thing in Linuxlately, but the company has taken the decision to implement opensource solutions on its internal systems. Novell SA, however, ispioneering this worldwide decision by being the first to implementtotal wall-to-wall Linux and open source solutions from servers todesktops.

The global company recently passed a mandate whereby the companywould have to pursue the adoption of OpenOffice across all of itsregions. Novell SA, under the leadership of Stafford Masie, has takenit a step further and has decided to implement Linux and open sourcesoftware across its entire enterprise.'

'We will be running OpenOffice as our officeenvironment and have loaded all the filters needed to ensure thatpeople can still access and open Microsoft documents. With OpenOfficethey can even save these documents as a .doc. We have alsoimplemented SuSE 9 desktops on a Ximian desktop environment and theEvolution e-mail client,' states Singh'

Additional reporting:

(Vietnam) Students get free access to StarOffice software

'Vietnamese students and teachers can use StarOffice 7software free-of-charge in compiling documents, calculating, drawingand saving data at home or schools.

An agreement to this effect was signed on Monday by SunMicrosystems Director Andrew Lim in charge of South Asian educationand research and Vice Minister of Education and Training Pham VuLuan.'

Sun Deals Desktops Down Under

'Initially, Sun will install its StarOffice software in 1,500desktops in 120 offices. The goal is to connect up to 3,000 users tothe new system. Sun said its future plans include stocking the RTA'sback-end infrastructure with its other software products includingthe Sun Java System Portal Server, Sun Java System Access Manager,Sun Java System Identity Manager and Sun Java System DirectoryServer Enterprise Edition software.'

OpenOffice.org Team Cautiously Optimistic On AOL Office

'Members of the OpenOffice.org community are greetingyesterday's announcement of a new version of OpenOffice.org withcautious optimism.'

'As more product information is revealed about AOL Office,the OpenOffice.org team is sure to get the answers they seek. Andthe community will get a lesson in the pros and cons of open sourcecommoditization.'

UN body releases desktop Linux guide

'A UN-funded organisation has produced a Linux desktop userguide to encourage the take-up of Linux in developing countries.

A Linux desktop manual for novice PC users has been produced by aUN-funded organisation, the International Open Source Network (IOSN).The manual has been produced to encourage developing countries to useopen-source software. It includes basic information on how to managefiles, browse the Web and produce OpenOffice documents on a LinuxPC.'

'The Linux user manual is available online in OpenOffice andPDF format.'

LinuxWorld San Francisco Awards

'Winners of Product Excellence Awards Announced at LinuxWorldConference & Expo; Awards recognize the best products andservices on the exhibit floor

[...]

Best Productivity/Business Application
Sun Microsystems:StarOffice and Migration Tools'

New Book: 'OpenOffice.org Macros Explained'

'This book provides an introduction to the creation andmanagement of macros in OpenOffice. Numerous examples andexplanations demonstrate proper techniques and discuss known problemsand solutions. The underlying data structure is discussed andtechniques are introduced to evaluate OpenOffice objects,facilitating the use of returned objects in the absence of sufficientdocumentation.'

More information about the book can be found at:

Linux overtakes Mac OS?

'One analyst at IDC believes that this has already happened.'Linux captured the number two spot as desktop operating systemin 2003,' said IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky in a recent interview.

By 2007 IDC estimates that Linux will have 6 per cent of thedesktop market in terms of units, Kusnetzky said. '

Desktop Linux offers challenge to 'Microsoft world'

'MIT Technology Review has published an informative articleabout the current state of Linux on the desktop and the challenge itposes to Microsoft. Wade Roush examines the usage and market shareLinux is realizing in the enterprise and public sector worldwide.Reiterating IDC estimates that Linux now claims more desktopsworldwide than Apple, the article suggests that Linux's 3 percentmarket share will double by 2006.'

OpenOffice.org learns Welsh

'OpenOffice.org, Sun’s open source office softwarepackage, is now available in Welsh from Meddal.com. The packageincludes a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing and presentationspackage, and a Welsh language spell checker.'

Canadian university picks Xandros Linux desktop for laptops

'Xandros has announced that Canada's Acadia University hasselected the Xandros Desktop Operating System (OS) as the Linuxoffering for its undergraduate program. The Nova Scotia-basedfacility, credited as the first university in Canada to integratenotebook computers into the curriculum, is offering a customizedversion of Xandros on Dell D600 laptops through a three year programthat is expected to outfit 9,000 laptops to students and faculty.'

Press release: Allied Irish Bank Selects Sun Microsystems Java(TM)Desktop System

'Global Trend Continues as One of Ireland's Biggest Bankingand Financial Services Groups Turns to Sun's Java(TM) Desktop Systemfor a Secure, Reliable and Affordable Desktop Platform'

'Key features of the Java Desktop System include Sun'sStarOffice productivity suite, a familiar look and feel and file andprinting interoperability.'

The Psychiatry in the County of Aarhus switches to OpenOffice

'Why OpenOffice? The Psychiatry has to change its officesuite as the Corel office

suite is no longer supported/upgraded in Danish language and thefile exchange format in the public sector is Word97 .DOC format.OpenOffice is an open-component product based on APIs and anXML-based file format. By changing to OpenOffice the Psychiatry savesan initial investment of DKK 4,8 mill. in license expenses toMicrosoft Office. During 2004 the IT-department designs new templatesand macros, program setup, and plans education, etc. in cooperationwith a test group and our superusers. Finally, on 2 February 2004OpenOffice 1.1.1 in Danish is introduced on all workstations. By MidMay 2004 OpenOffice is the sole office suite in the Psychiatry in theCounty of Aarhus.'

Yatirimlar,Inc

'Turkish OpenOffice.org project group (tr.openoffice.org) hasannounced another success story with Yatirimlar, Inc. Yatirimlarpublishes an adjudication newspaper every Monday in Turkish andEnglish, and this newspaper is distributed to thousands of readersthroughout Turkey. All the editors work with OpenOffice.org, so wedecided to have an interview with Filiz Keskin from Yatirimlar. Itcan be reached at: tr.openoffice.org/yatirimlar.html (in Turkish).'

Source: Görkem Cetin

Gov't unveils open source solutions for SMEs, schools

' THE ADVANCED Science Technology Institute (ASTI), theresearch and development arm of the Department of Science andTechnology, has developed several open source solutions designed forsmall to medium enterprises (SMEs) and schools, INQ7.net learned overthe weekend. The agency has released the latest version of its Linuxdesktop system called Bayanihan Linux 3.0, which features a graphicaluser interface (GUI) similar to Microsoft Windows, according toChivas Sicam, ASTI senior science specialist.

[...]

However, a CD package is available for 200 pesos. This packagecontains an OpenOffice suite, a browser, multimedia applications,e-mail software, and a Bluetooth synchronization module, among otheritems.'

HP unveils 4-user computer with OpenOffice.org

'HP has introduced a multi-user desktop PC withMandrakeLinux. Dubbed the '441' solution, the conceptsystem can be used by four users simultaneously.

This new PC, available from HP for 'emerging markets' targets theeducation market and ships with productivity applications includingOpenOffice.org, educational software, developer tools, and role-basedcustomized graphical user interfaces. The 441 boasts cost savings at50% of acquisition costs and 65% of maintenance costs, according tothe HP website.'

OpenOffice is a workable and flexible alternative to Microsoft Office

'All this by way of introduction to my pitch forOpenOffice.org, an open-source software suite that at best is a lotmore program than Works and at worst only a little less functionalthan Microsoft Office.

OpenOffice.org, which was popularized as Star Office from SunMicrosystems, is more than adequate for perhaps 95 percent of users.Most interestingly, it is the only free Office-style program thatruns on both Windows and Linux, as well as the Macintosh, and itsfiles are mostly (more on that later) compatible with MicrosoftOffice. You can buy Sun's version, which includes product support,for $79.'

'Problems with Word are usually pretty simple to fix, butcomplex formulas in Excel occasionally generate outright spuriousresults. Setting up a mail list in OO isn't as bonehead simple as itis with Works. A fair number of users would like to see an integratede-mail program and personal information manager, a la Outlook.

But the price is right, and the program is more than adequate forcasual users. If you're doing anything complicated, evaluate theprogram yourself.'

Free online OpenOffice.org support program available

'Enfobridge has announced a free support program for theOpenOffice.org application suite, along with the launch of a newwebsite that offers users a way to register for support and downloadOpenOffice.org software. The program is available to new and existingOpenOffice.org users.

Free professional support is available online for up to 30 days,through a trial program from Enfobridge. ThroughDownloadOpenOffice.org, the company is offering two levels ofsoftware support. A free version gives users unlimited access to theonline support staff for 30 days, and an extended 90 days supportsubscription provides 90 days of support for US $13.95.'

UK government backed open source CMS supports OOo

'APLAWS is an Open Source Content Management System developedto assist UK local authorities deliver services online as part of theOffice of the Deputy Prime Minister's Local e-Government Programme.

New Functionality in the latest (July 2004) release:

* Allow searching of Word, Excel, PDF and OpenOffice.orgattachments

http://aplaws.sourceforge.net/'

Replace Microsoft Office with OpenOffice

'Spend a few days getting familiar with OpenOffice. Prettysoon you'll discover that it has no real liabilities. Beginexchanging documents with customers and friends, and they won'tnotice the difference. Once everyone in the office is familiar withthe programs, you can uninstall MS Office and save yourself a bundleon licensing or renewal fees.'

Microsoft offers the French 60 per cent off software licences

'Microsoft has offered a 60 per cent cut off the prices ofits licences for three years to the city of Paris. It's a tactic thatbore no fruit in Munich when the German city government opted foropen-source software on 14,000 desktops earlier this month. Will thesoftware giant be more convincing in Paris and stop the French makingthe swap? Faced with the possibility of losing the French capital,Gates and chums have opted for the same tactic that they used inBavaria when confronted with customers making eyes at Linux orOpenOffice: agreeing to take a knife to the cost of licences.According to French daily Libération, in January, Microsoftmade an offer to Philipped Schil, the Paris mayoral authorities'director of information technology and systems – an offercutting licence prices by around 60 per cent for the localgovernment's computers, which meant some 15,000 PCs. In financialterms, the bill for three years would drop from €13.27m to€5.65m. '

OPENOFFICE.ORG ANNOUNCES VERSION 1.1.2 - HAKONE

'18 June, 2004 - 20H00 UTC

OpenOffice.org is proud to announce the immediate availability ofthe new 1.1.2 version of the award-winning open source office suite,codenamed Hakone.

This new version is initially available on the Windows(98/ME/NT/2000/XP), GNU/Linux (X86 and PowerPC) and Solaris (SPARCand X86) platforms.

In addition to English, builds for Czech, Danish, French, German,Japanese and Slovak are immediately available with otherlocalisations following shortly.'

OOoConv : 10,000 conversions

OOoConv has passed 10,000 conversions !

This is a very nice performance for this tool which has beenonline since the 1st of January of this year. It was developed byLaurent Godard, and is hosted in Germany thanks to Patrick Prasse whohas offered the hosting and the domain name.

This tool is now translated into 17 languages with the help of thewhole OpenOffice.org community. The highest conversion rate is in theenglish language (about 40%), however some languages have only beenavailable for a short time.

The stats given on the site show a wider use of the convertor fromWriter to Word (more than 50%).

Many thanks to Laurent Godard for this tool that allow a largeravailability of OOo file format, but also to Patrick Prasse, SimonTosser, Fred Labbe and all the translators.

[Submitted by Sophie Gautier]

Ontario offers Sun's StarOffice to students

'The Ontario Ministry of Education has acquired Star Office 7licences from Sun Microsystems Canada for all the province's 72public and Catholic school boards, The Star Office productivity suiteis being described as part of a movement to deliver superiortechnology to students while keeping spending in check. It is thelargest- StarOffice 7 delivery in North America, with more than 2.5million students having access to the alternative office suite onWindows.

Schools at all levels have chosen the interoperable Star Officesuite instead of more expensive office productivity products becausethey can re-invest saved funds into other projects for students, theministry stated.

StarOffice software is an open-source based, comprehensive officeproductivity suite that runs on Solaris, Windows and Linux and iscompatible with Microsoft Office file formats. The StarOffice suitehas an intuitive interface and includes word processing, spreadsheet,presentation, drawing and database capabilities.'

Case Study: Hentzenwerke Publishing switches to Linux

'The third function was to determine if we were going to gethung up with exchanging data with outside entities. As with internaldata conversion, this step turned out to be a non-issue.OpenOffice.org reads Microsoft Office files with ease, although we'refinding more and more people are sending files in Adobe .PDF format,which is also readable by a variety of open source tools that comestandard with popular distributions. And the graphical images that weexchange are also platform-independent.'

Sun lands bank deal for Java Desktop System

'Sun Microsystems' Java Desktop System (JDS) is to bedeployed on 7,500 desktops throughout Allied Irish Bank's (AIB)branches. The network will run the Linux-based JDS software, and thedeployment includes the migration of branch applications. Theroll-out is planned for next year as part of AIB's New Branch BankingPlatform.'

Munich Seeks Bids For Municipal Linux Migration

'The city of Munich in Germany will officially kick off itsmuch publicized Linux migration project on July 1 but it remainsunclear which vendors will nail the $40 million contract, a spokesmansaid.'

'The project entails the migration of 14,000 desktop andnotebook computers from Microsoft Windows and Office software toLinux and OpenOffice.'

'In the same press release, the city said it had entered apilot project with German applications giant SAP to adapt SAP forOpenOffice.'

'Meanwhile, Novell announced a major Linux win with anotherEuropean city even as Munich begins the vendor selection process forits 40,000 seat migration. On Tuesday, Novell's SUSE Linux subsidiaryannounced it had landed a contract to migrate the serverinfrastructure of the largest city in Norway ' Bergen -- fromUnix and Windows servers to a Linux infrastructure based on SUSEEnterprise Server 8 platform. The deal will impact 50,000 users,according to a statement released by SUSE.'

Cityof Treuchtlingen

The City of Treuchtlingen is using StarOffice in a Sun Rayultra-thin client environment. The interesting part of the Germanarticle below is the link to an end user survey. According to thesurvey the users are very happy with the new environment. Here is onesample statement from the survey:

'Compared with the former equipment (MS WindowsNT4/Novell/Zen 1997-2001) I like the new environment

0% absolutely not

25% similarly well

50% better

16,67% I would like to have it at home, too.'

City of Wolfsburg evaluates Linux Desktop

According to the articles mentioned below the City of Wolfsburgwill have 21 employees testing a Linux desktop in parallel to theirexisting Windows desktop.

France looks to open-source in challenge to Microsoft

'Civil Service Minister Renaud Dutreil told Reuters thatFrance wants to use open-source software providers to resupply partof the almost 1 million state computers under a governmentcost-cutting drive designed to trim a bulging public deficit. 'Thecompetition is open,' he said. 'My estimate is that we cancut the state software bill at least in half.'

At stake, in the case of office suite software alone, is about$362.5 million worth of software to be introduced to state computersover three years. Savings on operating systems could be of a similaramount, officials said. '

Successful migration to OOo

Summary of article into English from Dutch:

The CIBG (Brussels, Belgium) switched about 100 users toOpenOffice.org for practical reasons rather than the basis ofideology. The migration went smoothly.

http://www.cibg.irisnet.be/ci/NL/Supports/Communicatie/Press(Dutch)

Battleof the giants

'COMPUTER giants Sun Microsystems and Microsoft are battlingit out for dominance in the Hungarian education sector.

On May 4, Sun announced that it had concluded a deal with theHungarian Education Ministry which would make the application suiteStarOffice 7 available for free to staff and students at all ofHungary's 5,500 schools and 67 higher education institutions.

The program has previously operated successfully in othercountries, but has only now been introduced in Hungary.'

http://www.budapestsun.com/full_story.asp?ArticleId=%7B7DB0F14CAE8349C590672A6DBDC6A5C5%7D&From=

PC Gemilang: Linux outsells Windows

' Ten thousand PC Gemilang units were sold in the first fewmonths following the brand’s debut, of which more than 7,000were Linux-based machines. Pikom said the Linux PC generated thehighest demand due to its attractive price.

The PC Gemilang project was kicked off in March with two models: ARM988 PC running a Linux-based operating system and bundled with theOpenOffice productivity suite; and a RM1,147 desktop with the BahasaMalaysia version of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system andWorks Suite 2004.'

NSW Roads kicks out Exchange for Sun, deploys Mozilla

'The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) will migrate 1500users across 120 offices from Microsoft Exchange to Sun’s JavaEnterprise System messaging and calendar servers for e-mail andcalendaring.

As part of the contract, the RTA will also deploy Sun’sStaroffice productivity suite for wordprocessing, spreadsheets andpresentation development; the open source Mozilla browser will beused for accessing e-mail and calendar information.'

Novell Australia leads global Linux migration, dumps MS Office

'The migration, which will see staff across the globe usingSuSE Linux systems running OpenOffice, is partly motivated by broadercommercial concerns.'

'However, Novell Asia Pacific CIO Sam Gennaoui said thatthere was also a basic financial argument for the shift. 'We arelike any other company; we still have ROIs to deliver,' hesaid.'

'Around 90 per cent all of the company's 350 Asia-Pacificstaff, half of whom are based in Australia, have started usingOpenOffice as a replacement for Microsoft's Office suite.

Reaction so far has been positive. 'There always tends to besome pushback from users, but there's a sense of willingness toembrace the new technology,' Gennaoui said. The local operationis 'way ahead of the movement' in the rest of Novell, headded. 'We have a smaller base of users and we're moreflexible.'

Novell has also developed a number of custom enhancements toOpenOffice to help migrate common internal document templates. Thesource code for those enhancements will be made available to thebroader OpenOffice community.'

StarOffice slashes seat costs

'IT wasn't long ago that Microsoft Office, at $500-plus aseat, was the only option for businesses seeking an integrated officesuite. Times are changing, however.

Sun Microsystems is slowly winning over large business customersto its StarOffice 7, which costs $50 a user.

IDC analyst Megan Dahlgren says Sun's success is based on itsreputation for high-quality support, coupled with deep discountingaimed at getting StarOffice widely adopted by government and bigbusiness.

StarOffice is based on the open-source OpenOffice.org, both ofwhich offer similar functions to Microsoft Office in spreadsheets,word processing and presentations.

StarOffice product manager Laurie Wong says Sun Java Desktop is acomplete package made up of StarOffice, Ximian Evolution (an Outlookalternative) and the Adabase database.

OpenOffice.org and StarOffice claim several technology advantagesover Microsoft Office, including the ability to output PDF files fromthe application without needing extra software, the option of usingfile formats based on industry-standard XML that are easily readableby other programs, and cross-platform versions of the package forWindows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris.

XML brings an important change in the way office packages work,enabling storage of structured content in a file, allowing theinformation to be reused easily in other applications.

Wong says Microsoft's file format is a binary file wrapped in someXML tags. 'It's XML only as long as you use another Microsoftapplication, or one authorised by the company to read it, which isnot in the spirit of XML,' he says.

In comparison, the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice binary fileformat is a zipped version of an XML file, allowing other software orusers to see the file format in readable XML.

Sewing machine maker Janome Australia has found the cost savingsof the OpenOffice.org package outweigh the inconvenience of migratingstaff away from Microsoft Office, IT manager Scott Langford says.

The biggest challenge was educating users to import MicrosoftOffice documents into the software, he says.'

OpenOffice.org in 5th FISL (International Open Source Forum) inBrazil

The coordination of the OOoBr is celebrating the results of itsparticipation in the 5th FISL, held in Porto Alegre, from June 3rd to5th, 2004.

Altogether there were 4 days of activities (one pre-event extra);3 companies sponsoring the stand of OpenOffice.org.br; 9 hours ofpanels, meetings and presentations in the pre-event and in the Forum;over 800 users registered in the stand of OooBr, from 23 BrazilianStates, Argentina, Uruguay, England, United States, France, Spain andGermany; 100 t-shirts sold in 3 days; 17 raffle winners of books andt-shirts, and 200Kg of food donated by the project, the sponsors andthe OOo community to the “Fome Zero” program.

More information:

[english]/.br/saite/conteudo.php?inc=noticias/ver_noticia&id_aba=57&id_noticia=14

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EU eGovernment policy-makers encourage the uptake of open documentformats

See also:

Advantages of the OpenOffice.org XML File Format Used by theStarOffice Office Suite

European Commission's IDA TAC Publishes Recommendations on OpenDocument Formats.

'You can find some of the materials on the EC Web site. Ourbasic points were first that the Office XML formats are incomplete(no PowerPoint, missing pieces in Excel), second that the licensingterms are kind of scary (our lawyer's acid-tongued comments have beenexcised from the online papers), third that the OO.o format is muchmore reusability-oriented, and finally that Microsoft has ironcontrol over every aspect of their XML, while the OO.o format iswell on its way to being an OASIS standard.'

OOoCon 2004: Call For Papers

The second worldwide OpenOffice.org is approaching quickly. Theconference team is still looking for more speakers, exhibitors andsponsors. Thus, submit your abstracts today!

Hungarian Native-Lang project

The Hungarian Native-Lang project lead by Andras Timar has openedits doors and is already bringing some fresh air to the Confederationby having been the first to implement fully localized webpages toOpenOffice.org and removing the default english links and navbars.

Azeri Native-Lang project

'Thanks to the mentoring of Charles-H Schulz, Rail Aliev andGorkem Cetin, The Azeri project lead by Emin Husyenov has started towork rather quickly after his setup phase and is now almostcompleted.

Upcoming Native-Lang projects

Bengali (bn) and Croatian (hr) Native-Lang Projects to be soon setup; Armenian (am) and Ukrainian Projects in queue, but they shouldfollow soon after Louis has checked the necessary steps with them.More on the reform of the Native-Lang Confederation, and the commondevelopment of right-to-left (RTL) lanuages (currently focused onThai, Arabic and Hebrew) in the Native-Lang newsletter:

Courtesy of Charles-H.Schulz, Native-Lang Confederation

Linux in action: A public library's success story

'Over the past year, the Howard County (Md.) Public Libraryhas migrated more than 200 public PCs from Windows 98 and Windows NTto Linux. These PCs are used both to surf the Internet and to accessthe library's catalogues. NewsForge recently spoke with Brian Auger,associate director of the library, and the IT team responsible forthe migration. We wanted to learn more about why and how it wasaccomplished, and how pleased they are with the results.

...

Using LFS as a starting point, Luis and Mike were able to build aminimal Linux kernel that included only the functionality required bythe 'kiosk style' machines. They added the Gnome desktopenvironment, the Mozilla browser, and OpenOffice.org to complete thepicture. They call the new distribution 'Lumix.' It's acombination of their first names, Luis and Mike. By the way, it'spronounced loo-mix, not lummox, which is something else entirely.'

Brussels embraces OpenOffice.org

“C.I.R.B has a mission of technological watch driven by theGovernment of Brussels” says Miss Lökkhana Quaremme,C.I.R.B PR manager, “and will deliver a positioning reportabout OpenSource opportunities for Local Government Agencies”.The actual feedback seems to be a positive first step.

...

After a product evaluation period, the 100 users got an dedicatedinformation program, followed by the installation of OpenOffice.org1.1 on every desktop, and a training. Document templates weremigrated and support implemented thru an internal and online F.A.Q.

...

“We did not face any heavy technical issues, just smalldetails to fix” says finally Miss Lökkhana Quaremme.

French article:

Dutch article:

Sonneburgh: OpenOffice.org deployment in Rotterdam

'In 2003 there has been a noticable trend of publicorganisations considering to migrate (or already migrating) toOpenOffice[.org] (1) . Large-scale examples include the FrenchMinistry of Interior and the city of Munich, but small cases are alsocommon. This paper looks at such a small-scale application in aresidential care centre for ill or elderly people, located inRotterdam, The Netherlands. We look at what has been done and why itmakes sense for them to use OpenOffice[.org].'

Scottish schools get help with StarOffice

'The Scottish Executive has signalled a possible move awayfrom Microsoft Office with the signing on Thursday of a deal thatwill enable it to manage licences for Sun's StarOffice7 suite ofoffice applications.

As a result of the deal, any school, college, university or localauthority in Scotland will be able to ask the Executive to manage itslicences.

The Executive has not actually bought any licences -- which areprovided at no cost to educational establishments under Sun'sStarOffice 7 Education Licensing programme. But the deal will allowit to provide licensing support for 2,833 Scottish schools - whichwould mean 738,597 students and 50,048 teachers using StarOffice ifevery

school decided to take advantage of the offer.'

Migration Study: Health First

'There are two big IT projects going on at Health First Inc.,and Linux is at the heart of both of them. Health First, a family ofBrevard County, Fla., nonprofit health care facilities, is migratingits desktops to OpenOffice[.org] and bringing in many Novell'sNterprise Linux Services. Weaning 6,000 IT users off of MicrosoftOffice 97 on 3,500 PCs is no small feat. It's manageable, however, ifan IT shop takes it one step at a time, according to Danny J. Walland Daniel Bray, Health First IT network administrators. Theirprimary pain comes from integrating OpenOffice[.org] with HealthFirst's almost 500 applications.

In part 1 of this in-depth migration story, Wall and Bray explainwhy Health First is backing away from Microsoft Office and choosingOpenOffice[.org]. Next, they describe the OpenOffice[.org]implementation process. Then, in part three, Wall tells us how HealthFirst is bringing in and will be using Novell's new Linux services.'

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

StarOffice: ready for the big time

'StarOffice is already very popular and has become somethingof a standard on Linux PCs often in the guise of OpenOffice[.org],its open source brother. Sun acquired Star Division GmbH five yearsago, with the clear intention of competing directly with Microsoft.It has taken time for Sun to establish a competitive position,though. StarOffice never got strong reviews until version 6, whichdebuted in early 2002. It is just now in version 7, which isattracting even more attention because of the quality of therelease.'

'For large organizations looking to reduce the costs of thedesktop significantly, Star Office looks compelling. Siemens did atrial project to test the Ximian/OpenOffice/Linux combination withoffice staff in Germany last year. (Open Office has some minordifferences to StarOffice, such as fewer fonts and graphics) Siemensconcluded that changing to Linux and StarOffice was no more expensivethan a Windows upgrade - in terms of training. On top of that, itsaved 20 to 30 per cent in administration costs, 50 per cent inhardware costs and 80 per cent in licensing costs. Pretty compellingwhen you think about it.'

New White Paper about the OpenOffice.org XML File Format

This new white paper explains the advantages of the OpenOffice.orgXML file format used by all applications of the StarOffice software.Developers also get a basic introduction to the different tools andresources available for leveraging the XML file formatprogrammatically.

The white paper can be found at at:

Article: Programming with the StarOffice 7 Software Development Kit

'While StarOffice software offers a full-featured officesuite, you can make it even better by extending it with theStarOffice Software Development Kit (SDK). You can create customizedextensions for your own organization or full-featured plug-ins thatother organizations may want to license.'

Star Wars: StarOffice Vs MS office

'Mr Pramanik said that StarOffice is fast gaining ground,citing a recent large 10,000 user win from United India and 8,000units from the Haryana government as an example.'

Sun-Microsoft deal: Questionable significance for OpenOffice.org

'In January 2001, Corel announced its intentions to spin offits various Linux products and not work on broadening its WordPerfectcustomer base beyond its existing audience. Now Microsoft has reachedan agreement with Sun, settling their $4 billion lawsuit for $1.6billion. Since Microsoft's total payment to Sun will come to wellover 10 times the amount it paid to Corel, I wondered what impact ifany this might have on OpenOffice.org? I asked Dr. LouisSuarez-Potts, community mnager for OpenOffice.org and Chair of theCommunity Council, what the possible repercussions might be for thepopular open source office suite.'

New Native-Lang Projects to be created

Two new Native-Lang Projects are on their way to be created: TheAzeri Project led by Emin Huseynov is at this moment in his pre-setup phase. Emin wanted to start the Localization effort first, butinsisted on providing his community a meeting place here onOpenOffice.org. The domain name hasn't been set up yet (no JCA norssh keys submitted). However Charles-H. Schulz has spent some timeshelping out Emin off list and asked Rail Aliev and Görkem Cetinfrom the Russian and Turkish Project to bring Emin and his communityon the right track.

Ukrainian Native-Lang Project proposal accepted: Led by Mr Vad V.Mashckoff (Adiel), backed by the Alt Linux Community and OSDNUkraine, the project will soon start. The Localization effort howeveris being undertaken by Sergyi Kudryk and will remain a separateinitiative on SourceForge.

Talk-shows & Politics

After two months of off list work involving discussions with manynative-lang leads, Charles-H. Schulz comes up with what he believeswill be the 'Next Big Thing' © for the Native-LangConfederation.

Proposal for the Directorates for the Native-Lang Confederationposted and voted on; despite a big majority in favor of the reformCharles-H. Schulz halted the process in order to propose a set ofideas to be implemented that would acknowledge and prevent possiblerisks of failure.

Software Patents not welcomed at all: the Homepage ofOpenOffice.org and many native-lang projects as well have displayedtheir solidarity agains the Software Patents in the European Union.Simon Brouwer, lead of the Dutch (nl) native-lang community launchedthe momentum and got many followers.

Native-Lang Confederation Guidelines revised and augmented byCharles-H. Schulz: new policies on projects'setup and creationprocesses and dispute settlement policies inside the native-langprojects.

Localizations

Ainu Localization effort started: Despite some cultural issuesmaking the translation of technical terms difficult, the Ainu peoplewill get OpenOffice.org in their own language; Hirano Kazunari, amember of the Japanese Native-lang Project works on it with severalother volunteers. Louis proposed to interview the Ainu localizationteam and sent them questions to the team. The team has answered themso the final interview will soon be published as an article linkedfrom the homepage.

Pavel Janik has extracted the Readme files of the upcoming 1.1.2in order to allow the native-lang projects to translate them andhence provide 100% translated builds in every available language.

Many localized 1.1.1 builds released: Prague gets multilingual:French, German, Danish, Turkish, Japanese, Italian and many moreavailable for download.

Development & Software

OOVirg, FontOO, OOConv get translated in several languages: afterhaving included OOVirg in the OOo software suite, the add-ons familyfrom the Native-Lang projects are getting a widespread use thanks totheir translations in several languages. Last to date but not least,OOConv has been translated in Hungarian. Congratulations to theirauthors and translators!

Marketing & Communication

Several leads, such as Marko Gronroos (fi) and Davide Dozza (it)expressed the idea to have another web site for marketing and users'support purposes. Albeit the discussion got stopped somewhere, theidea is already implemented in some sense through the many differentsites and portals about OOo in specific languages and countries.CollabNet is not that easy to use, after all....

German Poster Contest for OpenOffice.org: congratulations to thewinners!

The OpenOffice.org Schools Project Mascot Competition was won byAndrea Maggioni of Italy. Thanks to Ian Lynch for this contest thatwas made possible by the OOoEdu initiative

(http://marketing.openoffice.org/education/schools/).

Live from Japan: The OpenOffice.org's Official Users Guide will beavailable on the 23rd of April in the bookstores of Japan, thanks tothe members of the Japanese Native-Lang Project.

Wal-Mart teams with Sun on Linux PCs

'Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has begun selling PCs manufactured byMicrotel Computer Systems Inc. this week featuring Sun MicrosystemsInc.'s alternative operating system based on Linux and its StarOfficeproductivity software, according to Wal-Mart's Web site.

Sun's Java Desktop System (JDS) is available in Microtel PCs withprocessors from both Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Thesystems are being sold on Walmart.com at prices ranging from $298 to$798, depending on configuration.'

OpenOffice.org at Ministry of Health

By using OpenOffice.org, the Congress of Brazil could save 5million reals, i.e. 15% of the IT budget. In addition, the Ministryof Health will migrate this year 30% of their computers to freesoftware. Another very interesting initiative: thousand governmentemployees will get training about free software in April so thatthey can share their knowledge with their colleagues, once themigration has been completed.

French Article:

One of the Spanish source articles explicitly mentionsOpenOffice.org and Linux. According to that article Argentina is alsonot renewing their contracts with Microsoft.

Spanish Article:

310,000 copies of Catalan version distributed

'Next Sunday 25 of April, one of the biggest newspapers inSpain, el Periodico de Catalunya[1] is going to give away for free acopy of a CD-ROM that we at Softcatalà put together withsoftware localised into Catalan. The Catalan government is paying thecost of producing the copies of the CD-ROM. The CD-ROM includesOpenOffice.org 1.1, Abiword, Mozilla, FireFox, and other freesoftware tools and documents localised into Catalan by the peoplearround the Softcatalà community. Windows and GNU/Linuxversions are included.

You can see how the CD-ROM looks like at:

The newspaper has produced 310.000 copies of the CD-ROM This isthe large action never done in Catalonia to distribute free softwareto end-users. It's so cool to put some many hours of efforts intranslation and software developers in the end-users hands!.

Regards,

Jesús.

[1] http://www.elperiodico.es/”

Source: Jesús Corrius (jesus@softcatala.org)

10,000 Seats in Finance

'... i am in the middle of a huge OO implementation on aSpanish bank. We are done with the pilot which calls to implement10.000 OOo suites in a major bank in Spain. Hopefully, within a monthI will forward the business case which will be translated into 3different languages to be used in other countries as an example of OOTCO.'

Source: aromeo@lared.es (found on the OpenOffice.org marketinglist)

The Israeli finance ministry plans to distribute 150,000 copies ofOpenOffice

'According to the site, the goal of this step, is toencourage free choice, and to lessen the digital gap. It note theneed for support of organizations that can help the distribution tothe general population using Internet sites, advertising innewspapers and internal distribution within the organizationsthemselves. There is also a need, according to the site, for trainingusing the Internet and telephone support.'

Gati Limited (India) uses OpenOffice.org

'Gati Limited – A leader in the express cargo industryin India – is reaping remarkable benefits from its gargantuan200 man year effort spent in designing its own customized ERPsolution, called GEMS (Gati Enterprise Management Solution).

[...]

Describing how Gati has taken the Open Source trend forward,Ravikumar explained, “We have 1000 desktops out of which hardly10 users are on MS Office. The remaining have migrated to OpenOffice.We are also using iPlanet for our mail server, instead of MSExchange.”'

French OpenOffice.org Add-ons

'Some new tools are also available in french :

• Cart'OOo : a fabulous tutorial assorted with map libraries for the Gallery which allow you to create maps with Draw

• PincOOo : will allow you to reproduce the style in the same that the brush do it in Microsoft Office

• Multisave : in only one clic, save your documents in the file format of you choice SXW/SXC - PDF - DOC/XLS

• SHOOo : a PHP class which allow to create a HTML Table and a Calc document from the result of a SQL query or from the content of a PHP table, illustrating the XML file format of OpenOffice.org and how it could be processed out of the suite.'

Different web pages with screen shots:

Source: Sophie Gautier (sgauti@firstnet1.com)

Linux User & Developer Awards - Best Open Source Project:OpenOffice.org

'Linux User & Developer magazine last night announced thewinners of this year's prestigious Linux User & Developer Awardsat a gala event held in London's Royal Lancaster Hotel. Hosted bycomedian and renowned comedy scriptwriter, Barry Cryer, the night wasa spectacular success - the biggest and best awards show in the Linuxindustry. There were 12 panel-nominated award categories, with bestOpen Source Project going to Sun Microsystems for OpenOffice.org.'

OASIS Milestone Reached

'An important milestone in the evolution of a universal XMLfile format has been achieved. In a unanimous vote, the OASIS OpenOffice XML Format TC has formally approved the Open OfficeSpecification 1.0 Draft 12.

The completed phase one specification now goes before the OASISgeneral membership for comment and approval. The discussion periodand vote date have yet to be determined.'

OpenOffice.org BizDev Project

'We are proud to announce the opening of the BusinessDevelopment project of OpenOffice.org (BizDev) The goals of thisproject are to build a business partners' network aroundOpenOffice.org .

In this regard the BizDev project is the place where commercialleads, and business and consulting information can be discussed. Itis a project for services professionals who are looking forcustomers, projects, and for contributing the way they want. Severalcompanies have already joined the BizDev project. Among them is theOlliance Group, based in Palo Alto, California, a consulting firmpushing the adoption of Open Source Software and open standards inlarge companies. They believe in this project and think that lettingbusinesses participate and generate wealth around OpenOffice.org is amajor asset in today's industry.

'We are seeing and hearing a need for a more supportive andintegrated approach from the community to address users requirementsin deploying Open Source solutions. Creating a project where serviceproviders can present themselves, communicate, and discuss customer’sneeds and topics such as “best practices” is a bold,innovative, and needed step by OpenOffice.org” said AndrewAitken, Managing Partner, Olliance Group, a leading OSS strategicconsulting firm.

As a first step, the BizDev project volunteers have built abusiness directory called the Consultants' Directory(http://bizdev.openoffice.org/consultants.html ) where consultingbusinesses get listed in order to maximize their visibility to thepublic and the community. This list already provides a large amountof information and is still growing.'

Source: Charles-H. Schulz (BizDev Project Lead)

OpenOffice.org 1.1.1RC3

'Release Candidate 3 of OpenOffice.org 1.1.1 is ready fordownload.

It incorporates numerous bug fixes and is cleaner than RC1.However, we are asking you, the community, to make sure that thereare no outstanding issues remaining.

Therefore, please download RC3 and test it. If you find any bugsor regressions, file an issue describing it. To learn how to file anissue, visit our QA Project:

This build is so far in English.'

Source: Louis Suarez-Potts

OOo 1.1 Portuguese Native-Lang translation

The N-L Portuguese team released the OpenOffice.org 1.1 inPortuguese.

For about about 4 months we've worked in the glossary and on theHUGE GSI file of OOo1.1. We've faced some problemas with the build,mostly because of the Windows build and some template problems, thatOlivier Hallot from the PT-BR Team helped us solve it. For him, onebig hug for the important and essential help.

Also, the QA released 3 public RC's, on which the last one, hadbeen downloaded in 3 days, 2.000 times for Windows and 400 for Linux.

More information can be found here (in Portuguese):

Source: Louis Suarez-Potts

FontOOo 1.0

'Please find here the official announcement of FontOOo 1.0

Based on DicOOo principle, this tool let you install free fontsinto OOo (no system installation is performed).

You'll find FontOOo at: http://oooconv.free.fr/fontooo

This is an official call for testers and translators in the samespirit as DicOOo.

For contributing to your native lang translation, please refer toissue

Please note also that german team is preparing an HowTo.

Thanks to all translators and hard workers. Especially

Kevin Hendricks, Rolf Meyer and Christian Markgraf'

Source: Laurent Godard

OOo Education Mascot Competition

There is a competition to choose the OOo Education mascot!!

It only takes a few seconds to vote, and the mascot will help inpublicing OOo to schools.

Vote here:

Microsoft Is Facing Long-Term Adjustment

'Forrester's Schadler said his research team recentlyinterviewed officials of 140 major North American companies abouttheir software plans. Of those, 65 are using open-sourceapplications, and 20 are planning to.

And 12 of the 140 are using an open-source competitor of Office,known as OpenOffice, while eight are planning to.'

City of Haarlem moving to OpenOffice.org

The city of Haarlem (approx. 150.000 inhabitants) is about tomigrate from Office97 to OpenOffice.

More information can be found on:

Singapore Ministry of Education and Argonne National Laboratory TurnTo Java(TM) Enterprise System for Dramatic Cost Savings

'Coupled with the growing worldwide adoption of Sun'sStarOffice(TM) productivity suite, now in use by millions of studentsand faculty in more than 165,000 school districts, higher educationinstitutions and ministries of education in 21 countries, thecompelling advantage of Sun's software solutions is gaining afoothold in the education market. The rapid adoption of StarOffice isfulfilling Sun's vision to equip students and teachers worldwide withaccess to low-cost office productivity software based on open sourcetechnology.'

City of Lille considering migration to OpenOffice.org

The City of Lille is requesting proposals for the creation of anOpenOffice.org migration study. French web page:

French Officials Eye Open-Source Apps

'The French government will install open source software onthe desktop as part of Project ADELE, a plan to computerize much ofthe country's administration by 2007, a government official says.'

Haryana goes the open-source way with Sun

'He said the Haryana government had decided to adopt thesoftware because of the 'monopolistic and whimsical behaviour adoptedby Microsoft for its Office software.'

ICICI OneSource Dumps Microsoft Office For Sun

[N.B. 1 lak = 100,000. Therefore 72 lakh = 7.2 million. Thecurrency used is rupees]

'ICICI OneSource, a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)services provider, has undertaken a bold move of switching itsdesktops from Microsoft Office to Sun’s StarOffice 7, saving awhopping Rs 72 lakh in the bargain.'

'Regarding the obvious compatibility qualms that first timeusers have - as Microsoft Office is by far the established standardused worldwide – Prashanth said, “There are many, but sofar we have faced a few with respect to Word and Excel formats whenadvanced features are employed.”'

'Apart from its lower price, another advantage of StarOffice7 over Microsoft Office is its cross-platform support. Where Office2003 will run only on Windows 2000 and XP, StarOffice 7 supportsWindows 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP, as well as Linux and Solaris. Thesoftware offers functionality to enable export to PDF, and theMacromedia Flash format, and supports 10 languages.'

BharateeyaOO.o Gives Open Office a 'Desi' Push

'BharateeyaOO.o (BharateeyaOpenOffice.org), a projectinitiated by Bangalore-based Centre for Development of AdvancedComputing (CDAC) - formerly known as NCST – has gainedsignificant headway in making OpenOffice accessible to regionallanguage users in India.

The group - founded about two and a half years back – has aprimary objective to internationalize and localize OpenOffice, Sun’sOpen Source initiative.'

'The team incorporated Complex Text Layout (CTL) support forIndian Languages into OpenOffice, and Kannada and Telgu versions ofthe software are next on the agenda.'

Localisation effort at:

Story at:

Namibian OSS workshop produces Kiswahili dictionary

'Kiswahili speakers can now spellcheck documents in their ownlanguage. A group of developers taking part in the Africa Sourcejoined forces - and resources - to develop the first-ever Kiswahilidictionary.'

'During a series of workshops and a skills sharing session atthe Africa Source gathering, Githeko and Bailey worked on cleaning upthe wordlist and preparing it to create the Kiswahili dictionary.During one of the mid-week sessions the final dictionary was createdand released to the world of OpenOffice.org users.'

German distributor sells more than a million copies of Sun'sStarOficce

'Sun Microsystems says that German OEM software distributorMarkement has sold more than one million copies of Sun's StarOffice.The milestone marks more that 40 million copies distributed to date,and puts StarOffice and its open source counterpart, OpenOffice.org,'as one of the most popular choices among consumers, enterprisesand governments worldwide,' according to the company.'

'Markement, based in Stuttgart, Germany, sells StarOfficeboth as a standalone program and as part of its popular PCSuiteoffice bundle. This German productivity package also includesCorelDraw Essentials, Norton Anti-Virus 2004 and Marco PoloTravelRouting Europe 2004, a European travel-planning program.'

Additional reporting:

OpenOffice.org Magazine

'As I've mentioned before, an OpenOffice.org magazine(one-shot only, not periodical) will be out here in Turkey onSaturday, this week. It mentions OpenOffice.org's most wantedfeatures, along with other practical tutorials about Writer, Calc,Impress, Draw, HTML and Math.

You may want to see the cover page onhttp://www.gorkemcetin.com/kapak.jpgfor informational purposes. It's in Turkish however.'

Source: Görkem Çetin

OpenOffice debuts bizdev community

'The OpenOffice project has created an online meeting placefor developers, consultants and business users of the OpenOffice andSun's StarOffice office suites.

Covering both OpenOffice and Sun's StarOffice thebizdev.openoffice.org site aims build a network and provide a meetingplace between all those hoping to develop and use alternatives toMicrosoft's Office. As a first step the bizdev group has opened adirectory of consultants who specialise in open source officeproducts. The group also allows members to set up their own mailinglists to generate sales leads and possible partnerships.'

Pravakta Plug-in for OpenOffice.org 1.1 Writer

The Matrubhasha group at CDAC (Formerly NCST) Bangalore India hasbeen working on building Speech Synthesis products for IndianLanguages.

Pravakta is a speech plug-in that has been developed recently forOpenOffice.org 1.1 Writer.

Pravakta can be downloaded from:

Source: R.K.V.S.Raman (leader of Matrubhasha group at CDAC

Bangalore India)

XML Matters: XML for word processors

'Free software and XML document formats are a naturalpairing. The inherent readability of XML just makes interchange andformat specification easier, and the wide availability of XMLlibraries makes creation of new tools simple. Moreover, looking atthese word processor formats has really helped me to see themodularity benefits of namespaces -- when done correctly, namespacescan leverage the work done by many groups of independent developers.

However, XML itself only goes so far. For example, Microsoft isalso moving towards an XML format for future versions of MS Word; butin contrast to the openness of the OASIS/OpenOffice.org or AbiWordformats, Microsoft is surrounding its format with patentapplications, and putting a veil of secrecy around the formatvariations (plus it uses cryptic tag and attribute names rather thanself-documenting ones).

XML by itself does not really mean open, but fortunately, thedevelopers of KOffice, AbiWord, and OpenOffice.org have done agenerally wonderful job of obtaining openness with XML (albeit, thewild world of community development still leaves occasional impedancemismatches in, for example, DTDs).'

Microsoft releases OpenOffice.org 1.1 Competitive Guide

Why You Should Choose MS Office Over OO.org

Microsoft displays fear, uncertainty, and doubt towardOpenOffice.org

Microsoft FUD Machine Aims at OpenOffice.org

Comments/opinions reg. the OpenOffice.org 1.1 Competitive Guide

'1. Ease of Use

Due to OpenOffice.org's similarity to Microsoft Office most peopledon't need a lot of retraining. Besides, there is a huge focus onusability for the next major release. On the other hand,OpenOffice.org has some superior tools and concepts like the built-inone-click PDF export, the Navigator and the Stylist.

Recently a German computer magazine tested different wordprocessors and came to the conclusion that OpenOffice.org andStarOffice are superior with respect to the creation of longdocuments like a diploma thesis.

With respect to database support, OpenOffice.org provides apowerful database frontend that can be used with many differentdatabase systems in the backend. Besides, in many cases the migrationto a new desktop platform also turned out to be a good time toconsolidate the huge number of hard to maintain local MS Accessdatabases into one web based platform that uses a secure andperformant server database in the backend.

2. Tailored Solutions

Due to the fact that the source code of OpenOffice.org isavailable for everybody and that the file format for all applicationsis an open XML file format it is possible to create very tailoredsolutions based on OpenOffice.org. A list of companies that havealready created innovative solutions based on OpenOffice.org can befound on the OpenOffice.org developer web page at

http://development.openoffice.org/.

Integrations and integration prototypes from SAP, FileNet,Software AG and others were demo'd at CeBIT (Hannover, Germany) lastweek.

3. Support When Needed

Support for OpenOffice.org is available from large globalcompanies as well as a huge and fast growing number of small localcompanies.

A list of companies providing support can be found at

/support/index.htmlz.B. StarOffice.

4. Better and Faster Work

Due to the fact that OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are used atmany schools and universities less people need retraining simplybecause they have used OpenOffice.org or StarOffice right from the beginning. At the same time more and more software vendors are integrating their products with OpenOffice.org in order to simplifycollaboration. In addition, OpenOffice.org is available on all

major desktop platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris. This includes the open XML file format support.

5. Seamless Information Exchange

Not only does OpenOffice.org have quickly-improving import andexport filters for Microsoft Office, it also supports the creation ofpopular exchange formats like PDF and Flash out of the box. Inaddition, OpenOffice.org is available for many operating systems andlanguages. Recipients of an OpenOffice.org file can simply downloadthe latest version of the software for free in order to open and editthe document. Thus, nobody is forced to buy expensive software.

For e-mail based collaboration and calendaring a growing list ofproducts is available including Mozilla, Evolution, Eudora, Glow andothers. On the server side there is again the choice between freeopen source tools like OpenGroupware.org and commercial products likethe groupware products from Sun Microsystems and Novell.

6. Easier Deployment and Maintenance

OpenOffice.org allows an unattended installation via scripts(so-called 'reponse files'). In addition multiple vendorsprovide deployment and mangement solutions for their OpenOffice.orgbased products. A few examples are the StarOffice ConfigurationManager and the Sun Control Station as well as Novell's Red Carpet.In order to minimize migration costs different companies includingSCAI and Sun Microsystems are working on migration tools.

7. Security

The virus issues of the last few months have clearly shown thatalmost exclusively systems with Windows and MS Office were affected.Although no operating system can guarantee invulnerability regardingvirusses, the combination of OpenOffice.org and a non-Windowsoperating systems has proven to be very secure.

8. Investment You Can Trust

The OpenOffice.org file format is the basis of the OASIS Open XMLFile Format which will be used as the default file format in futureversions of OpenOffice.org. Therefore, the file format is controlledby a standards body instead of a single vendor. In addition, theavailablity of the source code in connection with strong supportthrough the OpenOffice.org community and companies like SunMicrosystems ensure ongoing innovation and improvement.'

Source: Stephanie Berger, stephi.berger@gmx.net

Microsoft Is Facing Long-Term Adjustment

'Forrester's Schadler said his research team recentlyinterviewed officials of 140 major North American companies abouttheir software plans. Of those, 65 are using open-sourceapplications, and 20 are planning to.

And 12 of the 140 are using an open-source competitor of Office,known as OpenOffice, while eight are planning to.'

Third package announced for PC Gemilang project

'The Energy, Communications and Multimedia Ministry and theAssociation of the Computer and Multimedia Industry of Malaysia(Pikom) have announced a third package for their PC Gemilangprogramme, which seeks to make available affordable PCs to theMalaysian public.'

'The PC Gemilang project, which officially kicks off nextMonday, was announced earlier this month with two models: An RM988(US$260) PC running a Linux-based operating system and bundled withthe OpenOffice productivity suite; and an RM1,147 (US$302) desktopwith the Bahasa Malaysia version of the Microsoft Windows XPoperating system and Works Suite 2004.'

StarOffice takes on Microsoft

'Some pundits, including Gartner Dataquest’s MichaelSilver, say that one key to the success of StarOffice 7--nowavailable in Linux, Windows and Solaris flavors--is its open XML filestructure. Many widely available XML tools--from Sun or not-- can beused to edit files. Plus, it has an inexpensive price tag. Thosefactors together, he told internetnews.com, could translate into a10% chunk taken from Microsoft’s currentdominance in the marketsegment.'

LinuxSaves Big Money

'Pittsburgh-based Maronda Homes now runs desktop applicationson its 550 PCs with OpenOffice, Linux software downloaded off the Webfrom www.openoffice.org.'

'The basic idea is that running OpenOffice is cheaper, andover time the desktop applications will develop,' says MarkPiccolo, Maronda's director of management information systems.'

HP Starts Pushing Desktop Linux

'The company is working on a new desktop kit based on the 2.6Linux kernel that will offer a choice of KDE 3.2, Gnome 2.4 or thehouse-brand MandrakeGalaxy 2 desktop environments as well asOpenOffice 1.1.'

Novell to offer users a Windows experience on a Linux desktop

'The office productivity package is derived from the opensource Openoffice software.

Gaines said Novell's plan was to allow users to exchangeinformation easily with Microsoft Office and Exchange.'

'He said the Ximian Openoffice suite allows users to exchangedocuments with MS Office. For instance, Powerpoint slides can be runand edited on the Ximian system.'

Life after Microsoft - One firm's complete conversion to open source

'After a run-in with Microsoft and the BSA, Sterling Ballconverted all his company's operations to open-source software. Heexplains why he'll ever go back to Redmond's products'

'But since jettisoning all of Microsoft products three yearsago, Ernie Ball has also gained notoriety as a company that dumpedmost of its proprietary software -- and still lived to tell thetale.'

'Ball's IT crew settled on a potpourri of open-sourcesoftware -- Red Hat's version of Linux, the OpenOffice office suite,Mozilla's Web browser -- plus a few proprietary applications thatcouldn't be duplicated by open source.'

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020472,39115887-2,00.htm

Lao Native-Lang Project announced

'We have the pleasure to announce the opening of the LaoNative-Lang project (http://lo.openoffice.org), led by Mr. AnousakSouphavanh. Thanks to the work of his team, OpenOffice.org hasextended its reach up to Laos, a small and beautiful country,birthplace of a magnificient and antique culture.'

Source: Charles-H. Schulz, Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation

Arabic & Hebrew Projects announced

'Today we have the pleasure to announce the opening of theArabic and Hebrew Native-Lang projects. The Arabic Project(http://ar.openoffice.org) is led by Mr Khayat and backed by theArabeyes free-software community, an important player and supporterof free software and OpenOffice.org in the Arabic world. The Hebrewproject has been created by Tkos, an Israeli company who is also incharge of localizing OpenOffice.org and StarOffice but who managed toset up a real and lively community of users, developers andmarketers.

These two projects show the growing influence of OpenOffice.org inthe Middle-East and we are delighted that such prestigious culturesand people have adopted OpenOffice.org as their free and openproductivity suite .

Source: Charles-H. Schulz, Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation

Misc Native-Lang Project News

On Saturday the 7th of February, the Native-Lang Confederation hasseen four new projects' proposals who have all been accepted in duetime and are currently in setup phase:

Sale Of Business Form

-The Armenian native-lang project

-The Hungarian native-lang project

-The Norwegian native-lang project

-The Sango native-lang project (from Central Africa).

This day has marked the highest growth rate for the Native-LangConfederation and brings potentially ten of thousands ofOpenOffice.org users and hundreds of volunteers to our community.

Source: Charles-H. Schulz, Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation

JapaneseAnnouncement

The Japanese Language Project have launched a web-based messageboard for help regarding OpenOffice.org. The system is also linkedto a mailing list providing further options for access. Moreinformation at the Japanese Language Project:http://ja.openoffice.org/

Courtesy of Takaaki Higuchi (www.linux.or.jp,www.freestandards.org, sun.co.jp)

ISOannouncment

There is a new OpenOffice.org ISO available for download. Themain changes are to the MacOS X version, where both 1.0.3 and 1.1.0versions are now included. It can be found in the /contrib/iso/1.1.0of any OOo download mirror. Go to // to finddownload sites.

Courtesy of Alex Fisher, co-lead CD-ROM project

Linux and OpenOffice.org at the City of Paris

According to the article below the system integrator Unilog gotthe task to create a report for the government that eveluates theusage of Linux and OpenOffice.org on the 17,000 PC's at the City ofParis. The French government is envisaging to migrate 5-15% of allPC's to open source technologies.

Indian insurance company shifts 10,000 desktops to StarOffice

'India's second largest insurer, United India InsuranceCompany, is moving 10,000 desktops to Sun Microsystems' office suiteStarOffice.

A media release from Sun quoted UIIC's IT assistant generalmanager S.M. Victor John as saying the insurer had selectedStarOffice 7 software because it matched the company's technicalspecifications and was competitively priced.'

'A Sun spokesperson said the 10,000 desktops being replacedwere running mostly Office 95. 'One of the reasons why UIICchose StarOffice is due to cost savings. StarOffice only costsanywhere from $25-$60 for enterprises while Microsoft Office sellstheir Office suite for hundreds of dollars,' the spokespersonsaid.

'StarOffice's functionality and compatibility to MicrosoftOffice was also a major factor in the decision as well asmulti-platform support - Linux, Solaris, Windows - for greaterflexibility and choice.'

Aust users back desktop Linux

'A newly-conducted survey of Australian and New Zealand techusers has lent weight to Linux' desktop prospects, with more thanthree-quarters of respondents saying it will improve its strength inthe area.

The survey -- conducted by tech expert Graeme Philipson inFebruary -- found that almost two-thirds (61.3 percent) believed theopen-source operating system would get 'a little' strongeron the desktop, while 22.5 percent said it would get 'a lot'stronger.

[...]

Smith attributes the popularity of Linux in business use to themanagement and security advantages a company has when using thesystem, making it the main alternative to proprietary operatingsystems.

'On Linux a company or organisation has full control overtheir IT' said Smith, adding: 'There are practically noLinux viruses to be worried about and any patches are developedincredibly fast and available immediately'. '

Apache Forrest Support for OpenOffice.org

'Forrest is an XML standards-oriented project documentationframework based on Apache Cocoon, providing XSLT stylesheets andschemas, images and other resources. Forrest uses these to render theXML source content into a website via command-line, robot, or adynamic web application.'

'Apache Forrest supports OpenOffice.org 1.1 Writer documentsas source documents. Generally every OpenOffice.org Writer documentcan be used as source file but if you want support for all elementsthe documentv12.dtd supports you have to use template names which aresupported during the transformation process.'

OpenOffice.org Flash Intro

'Finally got around to applying the [GNU Free DocumentationLicense (FDL)] to the OOo 1.1 Flash intro, so everyone who has FlashMX 2004 can now make their own versions (translated, etc).

At some point we should create a nice description page, but wehaven't done that just yet.

The source Flash file for the OOo 1.1 Intro is here:

A Flash intro generated from it is here:

Those URLS should all be on one line, but may have wrapped due totext

formatting.

Hope this helps the native lang teams especially. Would someonealso be

ok to let them know about this, as I'm not on any of their mailing

list(s) just yet? '

(Source: marketing@openoffice.apache.org)

20% for OpenOffice.org

'However, an upstart open-source productivity suite also madea strong showing this year among our readers. Twenty percent of ourreaders proclaimed OpenOffice 1.1 as the top small businessproductivity suite, which just goes to show that smaller companiesare also open to the idea of Linux on the desktop. Available for freeto Windows, Linux, and Mac users, all the open-source community asksis that programmers pass along any improvements they make to thesource code. (Read our review.)'

StarOffice 7 review by PC Magazine

'Can Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 7 supplant Microsoft Officeon your desktop? With previous versions being slow and buggy, you'dprobably answer no. But the speed, power, and simplicity of thelatest version—combined with its minuscule price ($79.95direct)—may change your mind. It's certainly worth a look forbudget-constrained government or enterprise buyers, as well as smallbusinesses and individual users who need to buy an office suite withtheir own money. And attention education buyers: Sun will send youthe software for just the cost of the media and shipping.'

English Documenation for Perl/OODoc Module available

'Perl/OODoc modules provide an object-oriented interface forreading and editing of OpenOffice.org documents by Perl programswithout having to use OpenOffice.org or StarOfficeTM directly.

Their objective is to offer programmers a concise and reasonablyhigh-level language, allowing the manipulation of document objectswithout having to know the details of data representation used inOpenOffice.org files or of XML programming interfaces.'

http://www.genicorp.fr/devel/oodoc/

Opening Open Formats with XSLT

'In Jon Udell's keynote speech at the conference, hementioned that the only Microsoft Office 2003 application that wouldlack an XML output option was the mail program, but he forgot anotherone, PowerPoint. I was looking forward to some sort of Save As XMLfeature in PowerPoint so that I could create the kind of speakernotes that I like from XML versions of PowerPoint presentations, andit looks like I won't get this ability for a while, at least notdirectly from Microsoft.

I decided to try it with OpenOffice, the free, open source,multi-platform office application suite. Once I saw the XML that itsslide presentation program created, it took me less time to write astylesheet that did exactly what I wanted than it took to downloadOpenOffice over the conference hotel's T1 line.'

Microsoft's Office XML lags on Mac

'Microsoft is readying a new version of Office for Macintoshfor release in the first half of 2004 — one which doesn’tsupport many of the much-touted XML features of its Windows cousin,Office 2003.'

StarOffice 7 available for Solaris x86

'Sun Microsystems, Inc., (Nasdaq: SUNW - News) the creatorand leading advocate of Java(TM) technology, today announced that itsStarOffice(TM) 7 software, an open-source based, comprehensive,multi-platform office productivity suite, is available immediatelyfor the growing enterprise-class Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS)x86 Platform Edition. Customers seeking a proven, alternative desktopsolution can now benefit from the familiar UNIX® environment andthe reliable, highly available, scalable and predictable Solaris OSon their x86 systems.'

KDE integrates OpenOffice.org

'In this interview, Jan Holesovsky, author and leader of theKDE.OpenOffice.org project, now employed by SUSE, gives us a glimpseof what to expect in terms of OpenOffice.org integration on your KDEdesktop.'

Sun Lends Support to OpenOffice.org

'Sun Microsystems now offers Sun Software Support services toopenoffice.org customers. According to Chris van Niekerk, regionalsupport manager, Sun Microsystems SA, this move enhances thecompany's current support for the StarOffice productivity suite, andprovides customers with additional choice and opportunity to reducecosts.'

Star Can Save Millions; But Look Before You Leap

'Speaking to CXOtoday, K.P. Unnikrishnan, country head –marketing, Sun Microsystems India, said, 'For an enterprise,with lets say 100 desktops, Star Office 7 would cost around Rs 4,680per license, as against Rs 14,000 per license for Microsoft Office2003.'

In CIO lingo, this would translate into a budgetary saving ofapproximately 65 %, as Sun’s office suite costs roughly 1/3 rdof its Microsoft counterpart. '

Texan city runs 'nonemotional' Linux pilot

'For the Linux desktop, Austin technicians are 'justtrying to make it actually function in our world,' Collins said,but OpenOffice has made it further. It's running on about 30 Windowscomputers, including Collins' own, and he plans to expand the test tomore sophisticated computer users soon.

'I forgot I was using it... everything I need to do I cando,' Collins said, though he noted that he chiefly needs onlybasic features.

Austin has about 6,000 Windows computers, 5,200 of which arecovered by a Microsoft enterprise software support agreement thatexpires at the end of 2004, Collins said. That agreement cost morethan $3m.

It's likely that by using OpenOffice on his own department'scomputers, he will be able to move about 100 Microsoft Officelicences to other computer users who need it without having to payextra, he said.'

Sun touts contract with Office Depot

'Office Depot also will use a number of Sun services formanaging its information technology resources. The retailer has alsoagreed to sells Sun's StarOffice productivity software in itsstores.'

Norwegian soon to become a native language project!

The Norwegian translation project (www.openofficeorg.no) will soonstart the process of becoming a native language project. Withimpressive speed OpenOffice.org has been translated into the twoofficial Norwegian languages.

Version 1.1 is available for Windows, while the Linux version willprobably be completed early in March.

There is a rapidly growing interest in OpenOfficeorg.no. TheWindows versions of OpenOffice.org 1.0 and 1.1 have been downloaded26 000 times so far. In February, one of Norway's largest countycouncils will distribute OpenOffice.org to all their high schoolstudents. Also, several textbooks and user manuals have been written.

The Ministry of Education and Research has donated NOK 300 000(the equivalent of 2000 man-hours) for further translation of thehelp functions. Israel snubs Microsoft, moves to open-source software

'For its part, the Israeli government has also decided toencourage the development of lower-priced alternatives to Microsoftapplications to encourage computer use across Israel, Cohen said. 'Wehave worked with Sun and IBM on designing a Hebrew version ofOpenOffice software and distributing it as an alternative to Office.It depends on the government office, but the government is now usingOffice, Linux and the OpenOffice software.'

OpenOffice is free, open-source office software that wasoriginally based on StarOffice from Sun Microsystems Inc.

The adoption of OpenOffice by the government has already raisedinterest in the software among Israelis, including those who normallyaren't interested in technology, said Shoshannah Forbes, who works asa software tester for OpenOffice.org, the organization that developsthe open-source program.

Microsoft software is very expensive in Israel, and interest inOpenOffice is such that Forbes has been asked about it by completestrangers in her local video store, she said. 'I was asked whereI worked, and when I said I worked for OpenOffice, everyone wasasking about it. It's been all over the press here.' '

Kinko and OpenOffice.org

'While I was helping out a friend with her Linux install sherelated to me how OOo 'saved her bacon' recently.

She had been working on a brochure for a local library that neededto be printed in a number of different languages including chinese,hindi, and arabic. She had prepared the document in Word and tookthe file to Kinko's (a copy shop) for printing. They did not havethe fonts to print out the non-western characters. She rushed backto her house and opened up the document in OpenOffice.org 1.1. Withsome minor reformatting she saved the file as a PDF which she tookback to Kinko's. They were able to complete the printing job fromthe pdf.

I've asked her to write this up and submit it to OOo as atestimonial. Where or whom should it go to?

PS - She likes OOo and uses Calc and the dbase function to helprun her business. She uses Word only because she needed a goodthesaurus, which OOo lacks. If the thesaurus was better she'd stopusing Word altogether. If she didn't need to use Word she said shewouldn't need to use Windows either.

PPS - For those who don't know, the term 'saving one's bacon'has nothing to do with hogs or pork products.'

Source: OpenOffice.org mailing list marketing@openoffice.apache.org

Government open source deployments you don't hear about

' I know of at least a dozen goverment open sourcedeployments I have been begged not to write about, not in the spymovie, 'If I tell you I'll have to kill you!' sense, butbecause the people responsible for them worry that excess publicitymight kill their efforts to run their agencies' computers with themost reliable and cost-effective software they can find.'

2003 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners Announced

Office Suite of the Year -- OpenOffice.org (79.51%)

Word Processor of the Year -- swriter (OpenOffice.org) (66.86%)

Spreadsheet of the Year -- scalc (OpenOffice.org) (54.30%)

OSNews 2003 Awards -- Our Favorites This Year

'Most profound application of the year: I am torn betweenPhotoshop CS and OpenOffice.org (while not as full featured as MSOffice or even Star Office, it is free and so that compensates.)'

2003 OSDir Editor's Choice Award

OpenOffice.org was awarded the Editor's Choice Award for Best ofMac & Windows, and Best overall Desktop App

Product of the Year 2003

The swiss magazine Infoweek.ch chooses OpenOffice.org 1.1 as theproduct of the year 2003 in the category 'Office Software'.

OpenOffice.org got a new 'face'

The OpenOffice.org website has changed its look and is now easierto use and navigate. We would like to thank the volunteer websiteteam for their work, in particular, Project Co-Lead Kay Schenk andchief designer Cristian Driga; and, in no particular order, Ed Buck,John McCreesh, Akshay Dayal, G. Roderick Singleton, JacquelineMcNally, and Louis Suarez-Potts. If things are bad, join the websiteproject and help fix it. ;-)

Russian Native-Lang Project Announced

'The Native-Lang family has the pleasure to welcome itslatest newcomer, the Russian Native-Lang Project. Led by Anatoly A.Yakushin and Rail Aliev, this project was also created by the peopleof AltLinux in Russia. The Russian Project is very important to OOonot only because of its symbolic meaning but also because of thenumber of Russian speaking people worldwide who already useOpenOffice.org or are potential users of the suite.'

Sun Microsystems launches enterprise support for OpenOffice.org

'Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), founder and primarysponsor of the open-source project OpenOffice.org, today announced it will offer Sun(SM) Software Support services to OpenOffice.orgcustomers. Ranked as a leading provider of online support services bySummit Strategies, Inc., Boston, Mass., Sun Services delivers provensolutions with presence in more than 126 countries. This moveenhances Sun's current support for the StarOffice(TM) productivitysuite, provides customers additional choice and opportunity to reducecosts, and underscores Sun's deep commitment to open-source andstandards-based software.'

Scripting Framework is Available

'The Scripting Framework is available for evaluation from thelatest OpenOffice.org Developer build at

The main highlights are

• Scripting Framework available in build ( no need for separate install )

• Support for JavaScript, Beanshell,Java, OpenOffice.org BASIC

• Sample scripts in for supported languages.

• Ability to assign macros/scripts written in these languages from Tools/Config dialogs.

• Ability to assign events to the scripts/macros written in above languages from dialogs, forms, hyperlinks, objects graphics etc ( ala existing functionality from Office Basic ).'

AOL ships PCs with OpenOffice.org based office suite

'The AOL PC comes with Microsoft Windows XP Home, but thefirst screen users see is an AOL-designed interface called the AOLDesktop. The PC also comes with an office productivity softwarepackage called AOL Office Powered by Sun, which is the StarOfficesoftware suite developed by Sun Microsystems.'

OpenOffice.org reduces the invoice of the police officers

The Ministry of the Interior gathers approximately 100000 workingstations dispersed on all the territory and in very diversestructures from police stations to prefectures.

It is into 2000 that the Ministry began an evaluation of thesoftware. Its absence of licence and especially its exemption frompayment revealed it like a true opportunity for a deployment on alarge scale.

In 2002, 15000 stations were deployed, primarily in the policestations. The suite is available on Cds and also in free remoteloading on the Intranet. Christophe Cazin, engineer with the missionstrategy and systems of control, announce besides that the remoteloadings do not stop!

The technical support is ensured by internal forums, an Intranet,the OpenOffice.org site and its mailings lists. Christophe Cazinconsiders a deployment on 30000 stations within one year.

French Article: http://www.01net.com/article/222242.html

Retirement Pension Tool for Excel AND OpenOffice.org

'... About a month ago, a council worker asked for some helpon our mailing list about an online tool to calculate retirementpension. This tool is distributed by our Ministry of civil servicesonly on excel format and he needs it in OOo file format because hehas migrated on OOo. Half an hour later, the community has helped himto convert the tool.

[...]

This thread has been reported to ADAE (Agency in charge withelectronic usage in ministry)(thanks to Christophe Cazin but hush!)and a month later :

the tool is proposed in OOo file format and a link to download OOo....'

[Source: Sophie Gautier]

UK’s Office of Government Commerce evaluating Sun Java DesktopSystem

'The five-year purchasing deal with the UK’s Office ofGovernment Commerce will begin with compatibility trials for JavaDesktop which, if successful, would mean up to 500,000 UK civilservants gradually being shifted away from Windows software to Sun’slow-cost open-source alternative.'

More money for patients through OpenOffice.org and Linux

'NHS director general of IT Richard Granger, said in astatement: 'Our evaluation of the Java Desktop System holds thepromise of allowing a greater share of NHS funding to flow directlytowards improved levels of Patient Service. If this solution were toprove effective we could save the NHS and the Taxpayer many millionsof pounds whilst at the same time using rich and innovative softwaretechnology.'

Schoolweb Targets 40 Institutions

'The project is a collaborative effort by Uconnect, theMinistry of Education and Sports, MTN and One2Net, and internationalpartners Hewlett Packard, Advanced Interactive and Sun Microsystems.Advanced Interactive of Canada designed the SchoolWeb system forCanadian schools and modified it for Uganda.

[...]

Once installed and running, SchoolWeb becomes a fast andinteractive learning resource centre. The SchoolWeb server comeswith:

Open source software OpenOffice, programmes for website design,graphics, video streaming, a dictionary and database programmes.'

New Linux distribution 'Impi' including OpenOffice.org

'Most developers in the 'first world'countries have no idea of the conditions on our continent. Waitingaround for a foreign developer or company to give us something thatwe need, merely echoes the legacy of colonialism. We need to disposeof that mindset,' said Ross Addis in an e-mail interview.

[...]

Another unique feature of Impi Linux is that it will eventuallyhave translations of South Africa's 11 official languages. ButUgandans and other Africans should not lose hope. Impi Linux is aboutchoice. Get a free download from www.impi.org.za and modify it tosuit you. So, is there hope for a version in Luganda or Swahili? 'Ofcourse. We will also be looking at adding the various Africanlanguages,' he said.'

Israeli employment agency switches to OpenOffice.org

'First out of the door is the Israeli employment agency,which will replace 550 out of 700 users with OpenOffice. The contractrepresents a hardware win for IBM. Some 150 staff will stay onMicrosoft Office. For now, all the switchers will remain on Windows,running the Win32 version of the software libre equivalent ofMicrosoft Office.'

Sun lands 500,000 desktop Linux deal

'Signed in conjunction with the newly established ChinaStandard Software Company, a consortium of Chinesegovernment-supported firms, the deal could eventually stretch to 500million desktops, which McNealy said was the Chinese government'saim.

[...]

McNealy said Sun would be pushing to win more governments over toits StarOffice range. 'We're calling on every IT ministry on theplanet. Stay tuned,' he added.'

Government plans to distribute computers to 5,000 schools nationwide

'We are trying step by step to eliminate Microsoft,'said Nguyen Trung Quynh of Vietnam's Ministry of Science andTechnology. Quynh and other government tech officials want Vietnam tobe on the cutting edge of an international movement to embraceopen-source software -- products that can be downloaded from theInternet for free and perform the same tasks as Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) Windows or Office.

[...]

'We can't totally sweep out Microsoft,' Quynh said. 'Butwe hope that new users will start using open source.'

Before Vietnamese versions of OpenOffice and Linux were developed,open source was just an abstraction here, said Carrasco-Munoz. 'Nowyou dump this CD on your computer, you install it, you reboot.Bye-bye Microsoft!'

Microsoft Loses to Linux in Thailand Struggle

'In the second quarter of 2003, just 40 percent of alldesktop PCs shipped in Thailand had a licensed copy of Windowsinstalled, an all-time low that likely will dip even further.

[...]

While some buyers still will install pirated copies of Microsoft'ssoftware, Gartner estimates that 70 percent of Thai consumers willstick with Linux, citing freely available software, lower prices andlack of knowledge among first-time PC owners.'

Sewing machine giant Janome adopts OpenOffice.org

'Janome has migrated some of its PCs away from MicrosoftOffice in favour of the free OpenOffice.org office suite saving thecompany around $8000 in licence fees, according to IT administratorScott Langford.

After hearing about OpenOffice.org from a colleague, Langforddownloaded version 1.0.2 of the office suite and installed it on 10of the 30 PCs running Microsoft Windows.

[...]

Although Janome’s Australian operations are small, it hassome 60 per cent of the domestic sewing machine market.Internationally, the company has offices in eight countries and morethan 3000 employees.'

Victorian government evaluates OpenOffice.org and StarOffice

Victorian Government spokeswoman Michelle Crawley says the statewill 'investigate interesting alternatives to Microsoft Office'such as OpenOffice and Sun Microsystems' close cousin, StarOffice.

Study: Save up to 25% with open source technologies

According to the German study by Soreon mentioned in the articlebelow, companies can save up to 25% from a TCO perspective if theyuse open source alternatives.

The Sun Java Desktop System (SJDS) is the winner for largerenterprises, closely followed by non-integrated OpenOffice.orgsolutions. For medium businesses SJDS and OpenOffice.org both cansave about 14% compared to Microsoft technologies. For smallbusinesses it does not really matter, because costs for support andtraining are higher than the licensing costs.

API@OOoNewsletter

'This month the OOo API project started publishing a monthlynewsletter which is posted at the 1st of each month to summarizeissues from the previous month.'

Sun Java Desktop System ISV/Developer Early Adopter Program

ISVs and developers interested in the Sun Java Desktop Systemshould register for the Early Adopter Program atsun.com/partners/javadesktopsystem.

OpenOffice.org Market Share Analysis

'The document includes some data from past OpenOffice.orgnewsletters and press articles.

If your company is using OpenOffice.org, even if it is a smallcompany, let me/us know! We can include just the number of seats +the industry type, or even mention the name, if we get yourpermission to do so! The same is true for schools and universitiesthat have deployed OpenOffice.org, StarOffice or another OOoderivative.'

Denmark urges government support for open source

'However, the report recognised that establishing a existingalternative or a new format would be an uphill battle, given thatMicrosoft Office cannot read OpenOffice documents or other formats.The Board recommended that Denmark begin a series of trials to testthe feasibility of introducing open-source software such asOpenOffice.'

International Forwarding Agent Heinz Huber

According to the German article below the international forwardingagent Heinz Huber deployed StarOffice although the logistics companyhas to exchange documents with about 60 partners.

Midsize German firms say ja to Linux

'The potentially lower cost of deploying and maintainingopen-source software like Linux and OpenOffice 'is clearly whatprompted us to seek an alternative to Microsoft,' Kloppstecksaid. 'And I know many other small and medium-size companies inGermany are dropping Microsoft for the same reason.'

OpenOffice.org 1.1 at Italian Schools

Within the frame of the ' Linux Day 2003 ' event, DIDASCA - TheFirst Italian Cyber School for Lifelong Learning - will deliver forfree 12,000 copies of the CDROMs containing the OpenOffice.org 1.1suite to as many Italian schools.

Israel slams the door on Microsoft

'The de facto suspension means no upgrades for the duration,at a time when Microsoft is looking to roll out its Office 2003upgrade; and the Ministry is said to be examining OpenOffice as analternative.'

Life Insurance Corporation wants to switch to OpenOffice.org

According to a German article an Indian insurance company isswitching, too. Life Insurance Corporation of India will switch toLinux and OpenOffice.org.

The German article can be found at

This seems to be related to the following older article

Vietnam embracing open-source products

'The main open-source tools are Linux -- a free alternativeto the Windows operating system -- and OpenOffice, a free alternativeto Microsoft Office, with word processing and spreadsheet programs.Two Vietnamese companies have recently developed Vietnamese versionsof both, and the country's two biggest computer assemblers arealready loading open source onto all their new machines.

``We can't totally sweep out Microsoft,' Quynh said. ``But wehope that new users will start using open source.'

Before Vietnamese versions of OpenOffice and Linux were developed,open source was just an abstraction here, said Carrasco-Munoz. ``Nowyou dump this CD on your computer, you install it, you reboot.Bye-bye Microsoft!''

Australia's history archived in OpenOffice.org

'Australia's history will be viewed digitally in theOpenOffice.org office suite as part of plans to preserve the qualityand accessibility of government documents.

[...]

'Open source is really, really important to us because overtime it means we can retain data presentation,' said Davis.

'Cross platform development is really important, because wecan't say you must have a Windows machine to access this file [in thearchives]. Who knows what platform most people will be using in 30years time? So if you have a Linux machine, for example, you shouldhave equal access.'

Sun shines on NSW government desktops

'According to Sun, six NSW government departments are alreadyin the early phases of testing or deploying the software. Thedepartments range in size from 200 up to a 'few thousand'staff representing an estimated 30,000 seats, said May.

[...]

Sun's alternative office productivity suite StarOffice -- basedheavily on its less-tamed open source cousin OpenOffice -- is acentral component in Sun's desktop operating system Java DesktopSuite.'

Free Sale Of Business Contract

The IDA Open Source Migration Guidelines

'The IDA Open Source Migration Guidelines provide practicaland detailed recommendations on how to migrate to Open SourceSoftware (OSS)-based office applications, calendaring, e-mail andother standard applications. They have been developed with guidancefrom public sector IT experts from Denmark, Finland, Italy, Germany,Malta, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. The relevance andreadability of the Migration Guidelines were validated with the helpof the regional authorities of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.

These guidelines have been designed to help public administratorsdecide whether a migration to OSS should be undertaken and describe,in broad technical terms, how such a migration could be carried out.They are based on practical experience of a limited number ofpublicly available case studies, and cover a wide range of managementand technical concerns.'

Download the IDA Open Source Migration Guidelines

Download the Comparative Spreadsheet

Migration Guide by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior

A week ago the European Commission released its MigrationGuidelines. Now a Migration Guide has just been released in Englishby the German Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Guide wasoriginally published in German in July 2003 but is now also availableis English.

The report is a very valuable tool for anybody planning to migratefrom a Microsoft world to the open world of Open Source and OpenStandards incl. OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.

These reports are clear signs of the very strong movement all overEurope toward a new desktop. Use this new report in your efforts topromote open source technologies!

The full report ( pdf, 414 pages!) is available in English here:

OpenOffice.org XML Essentials

J. David Eisenberg is currently writing a new book about theOpenOffice.org XML file format. A draft of the book is accessible viathe link provided below.

XML Interoperability Test

'Interoperability Test and XML Evaluation of StarOfficeWriter 6.0 and Office Word 2003 Beta 2'

Office 2003/StarOffice Migration Survey - Germany

The popular weekly German computer magazine Computerwocheconducted an online survey in October 2003. Everybody was able toparticipate and thus the data does not necessarily reflect thereality, but it's still interesting.

The question they asked were:

'Is your company planning to switch to Office 2003/OfficeSystem in the foreseeable future?'

[' Wird Ihr Unternehmen in absehbarer Zeit auf Office 2003/Office System migrieren?']

We will switch to StarOffice/OOo 55.0 % 552

Yes, we will switch from version 95/97 2.3 % 23

Yes, we will switch from version 2000/XP 11.7 % 117

No 31.0 % 311

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Total 1003

Office 2003/StarOffice Migration Survey – Switzerland

The following data is from a survey on as swiss web page:

Will you update to Office 2003 or StarOffice 7?

Yes, planning update to Office 2003 17 %

Yes, planning update to StarOffice 7 16 %

Waiting for first Office 2003 experiences 9 %

Waiting for first StarOffice 7 experiences 10 %

No update plans 45 %

Don't know 3 %

So far (November 4, 2003) 344 people have participated in thequick poll.