FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OPENOFFICE.ORG CELEBRATES ITS 3RD ANNIVERSARY,

LAUNCHES GLOBAL SCHOOL INITIATIVE, “OOoEDU”

October 13, 2003 - OpenOffice.org today celebrates the 3rd anniversary of the founding of the open-source office suite development project by announcing a major drive called “OooEDU” aimed to bring OpenOffice.org ss1.1 office suite to students, schools and universities in all countries of the world.

Leading the OOoEDU initiative is Ian Lynch, an esteemed OpenOffice.org contributor with a life-long commitment to education and technology. He is based in the UK.

Says Lynch, "Many governments are concerned about the technological divide and the inequality caused by the cost of technology. At OpenOffice.org we believe in inclusion and we are determined to help as many students as possible gain access to the best technology at the lowest price. Eliminating software licensing costs is our way of making a contribution.”
Lynch adds, “Our main objective is to get as many students as possible using OpenOffice.org, whether at home or at school. Volunteers in countries around the world are providing OpenOffice.org 1.1 to their local schools free of charge on CD-ROM. Schools in the UK -- including Skipton Girls High School, a Specialist Engineering School for Girls sponsored by Rolls Royce -- are using this as an opportunity for global citizenship by getting students to burn OpenOffice.org 1.1 CDs for schools in areas of the world with no broadband access. This is good education, not just good economics. It has the potential to get pupils in contact across the world and generate greater international understanding."

For further information about how you can contribute to OOoEDU and help distribute OOo to students, http://marketing.openoffice.org/education/schools/

If OpenOffice.org 1.1 is not presently available in your language, you and your school can get involved by assisting in the localization (translation) of the software. For more information on localization of the OpenOffice.org suite,

http://l10n.openoffice.org/localization_responsibilities.html

Great Momentum

Every year, the project takes the opportunity upon its anniversary to announce total downloads. Today, OpenOffice.org has tracked over 20 million downloads in the life of the project.

"In just three short years, OpenOffice.org and StarOfficeTM software have experienced impressive user growths, proving the importance of open file formats and rising to become the leading alternatives in office productivity," said Curtis Sasaki, vice president of engineering, Desktop Solutions, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun is proud of the OOo community with its independent developers and contributors, as well as its own employees, who are dedicated to creating the best office suite available. Our alliance will continue to forge ahead, working to produce the most stable, compatible and open office productivity suites available."
About OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is the home of the open source project and its community of developers, users and marketers responsible for the ongoing development of the OpenOffice.org suite.
The mission of OpenOffice.org is to create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.
The OpenOffice.org office suite runs on FreeBSD, Windows
(98/ME/2000/XP), Linux (x86 & PowerPC), Mac OS X and the Solaris OS; while ports for other operating systems and hardware platforms are in various stages of development.
OpenOffice.org is written in C++ and has documented API's licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) open source licenses. The founder and sponsor of the OpenOffice.org project is Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun markets the StarOffice[tm] Office Suite that is based on the OpenOffice.org code.
For a press kit, see http://www.openoffice.org/about_us/1.1press_release.html.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Ian Lynch

OooEDU Lead

ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com

Sam Hiser
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead
swhiser@openoffice.org
(917) 375-8644
Erwin Tenhumberg
Product Marketing Manager, Desktop Solutions Group
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
erwin.tenhumberg@sun.com

Louis Suarez-Potts

Community Manager

OpenOffice.org

louis@openoffice.org

2003-09-29T22:51:47