“File format compatibility could prompt other public-sector CIOs to consider similar moves, said Murugan Pal, founder and chief technology officer of SpikeSource, which sells combinations of open-source products and support licenses.

"Two hundred years from now, organizations won't want to be paying software royalties just so they can read documents that were formatted in a variety of old formats," he said.

Even if OpenDocument isn't the prevailing format years from now, developers will be able to easily create tools that understand it, he said. "The moment a format is not owned commercially, anybody can create an interpreter to read that format," he added. ”

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=38621

Avanquest distributing StarOffice 8

“As part of the agreement, Avanquest will make StarOffice 8 software available to consumers throughout Europe, downloadable versions of StarOffice 8 software will be available through Avanquest Online stores in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the UK. Online shoppers in Italy, Spain and Portugal will be able to download the software from Avanquest Online by end-October, with the retail boxed version of StarOffice 8 also available through more than 5,000 retail outlets Europe-wide by the end of the month.”

http://sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=22927&hilite=

Why multi-party stewardship of the OpenDocument Format matters so much

“Given ODF's multi-party stewardship, the ODF standard is far more open to incorporating such changes than would be a single-party controlled format since that single party may have other offerings that are threatened by the enhancements. Although such conflicts of interest are not completely avoided by multi-party stewarded standards, their likelihood is significantly reduced by the transparency of the standards setting process.”

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2002

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

"Among various bugfixes and translation improvements, the KOffice 1.4.2 release further improves support for the OASIS OpenDocument file format and interoperability with OpenOffice.org."

http://dot.kde.org/1129013255/

ISO to review OpenDocument as a standard

"The committee will send the specification out to its members probably at the end of this month, and they will have five months to study and vote on it, according to ISO spokesman Roger Frost."

http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,105314,00.html

OASIS submits OpenDocument as standard

"OpenDocument will continue to be developed and maintained within OASIS, but the group is seeking the ISO standardization to make the document formats more accessible, according to an OASIS representative.

"We believe OpenDocument's approval by ISO/IEC JTC1…will serve as a gratifying endorsement, making OpenDocument even more accessible to adopters--particularly those implementing business solutions for governments--who look to ISO for assurance of long-term viability," said OASIS representative Carol Geyer."

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5892649.html

Microsoft 'must support OpenDocument'

"An OASIS spokeswoman said on Wednesday the public sector is making "great strides" in terms of user demand for OpenDocument.

Microsoft will be forced to offer support for OpenDocument if more organisations decide to use the file format, according to James Governor, an analyst at RedMonk.

"ODF [OpenDocument] is quite new, and it will take a while for demand to build. But I don't believe it will need 120,000 requests a month to change Microsoft's mind; just a few more high profile departures like Massachusetts," said Governor. "If Microsoft starts to lose customers because of a lack of ODF support they will offer a plug-in before you know it.""

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39226547,00.htm

141,624 PCs with OpenOffice.org in China

According to the following article OpenOffice.org will be on 141,624 PCs:

"Six PC makers, including Haier and Founder, announced yesterday that they have won contracts to provide a total of 141,624 PCs to the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education for an educational program called, "School-to-School Project." At the same time, Sun Wah Linux's Debian-based Chinese Operating System RAYS LX was also chosen as the operating system used in all 141,624 PCs."

According to the product website, RAYS LX contains OpenOffice.org.

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20051005183120307

AbiWord gets OpenDocument support from Nokia

"Support for the OpenDocument file format has been donated by INdT, Nokia's Technology Institute. Currently the OpenDocument import filter is basically complete, with support for styles, headers/footers, lists, image wrapping, text boxes, tables, footnotes/endnotes and tables of contents. OpenDocument export is planned as well and will be added during the 2.4.x series."

http://www.abiword.com/release-notes/2.4.0.phtml

Microsoft denies PDF support is a reaction to Massachusetts decision

"Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Microsoft Office product development group, had earlier stated that the company received 120,000 requests a month for the ability to produce PDFs from within Office.

In any case it seems unlikely that the ability to save Word or Excel documents as PDFs will sway the Massachusetts Information Technology Division, especially since Sun Microsystems' StarOffice and the open source OpenOffice.org project have supported the creation of PDFs since 2003, and also support OpenDocument."

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=2ABE5E3C-3814-4A02-A259-B27E49EC20FA

RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady about Sun, Google and OpenOffice.org

"And then there's OpenOffice.org. To me this is far and away the most interesting of the potential collaboration areas (with the possible exception of OpenSolaris, but that was not really discussed a great deal on either call unlike OpenOffice.org). One of the questions I was asked at least a dozen times between yesterday and today was what Google might bring to the table with respect to the Microsoft Office alternative so often in the news of late? Well, resources for one. A web version? Possible, but I think it'd be very different functionally than the current codebase - a lot simpler. While I'll leave that speculation for another time - as we'd be here a long time - I will say that even a tacit acknowledgement of OpenOffice.org as a credible platform from Google would be a big win for the project. If they can further it technically, all the better, but Google's got sufficient clout at this point to have value just as a marketing channel."

http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/001015.html

Here are some ways Google and Sun could work together

"Let's just say you are using StarOffice Impress, which is Sun's counterpart to PowerPoint. How about a Picasa icon? Or maybe even Google Earth, for import of geographical images of that empty landscape you want to build your plant at for a presentation you are showing to bankers and developers?

Or say you are writing a document in StarOffice Writer, Sun's counterpart to (sorry, you get only one guess), Microsoft Word. You want to know more about a given subject. You simply enter a search term in the Google toolbar within Writer, click,and your browser opens up in a new window with a list of search results.

Or, for that matter, you want to share that Impress spreadsheet with your colleague. Why not IM him or her by means of GoogleTalk button along the Impress toolbar?"

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/index.php?p=680

Lenovo bundles StarOffice

"Sun Microsystems and Lenovo have announced an agreement to bundle the StarOffice 8 desktop productivity suite in Lenovo’s latest ThinkPad R51e notebook."

http://computerworld.com.sg/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&articleid=2731&pubid=3&issueid=67

OpenOffice.org & Google's SOC

http://development.openoffice.org/summerprojects.html

eWeek: 1xExcellent plus 3xGood for StarOffice 8

A good StarOffice 8 review from eWeek:

"KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

CAPABILITY - Excellent

INTEROPERABILITY - Good

SCALABILITY - Good

MANAGEMENT - Good"

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1864224,00.asp

CRN: Five Stars for StarOffice 8

StarOffice 8 gets four and five stars in this CRN review:

"The verdict is in: StarOffice 8 is slowly, but surely, gaining steam on Microsoft Office 2003 as it climbs toward an 80 percent functionality equivalent. StarOffice’s new macro converter tool is finally solving the huge migration hurdle that customers need to transition from Office."

http://www.crn.com/sections/microsoft/microsoft.jhtml?articleId=171201631

September 2005

OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 announced

OpenOffice.org is proud to announce the immediate availability of the new 1.1.5 version of the award-winning open source office suite.

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

In addition to English, builds for Czech, Danish, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Turkish are immediately available with other localisations following shortly.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 introduces import support for documents, spreadsheets and presentations in OpenDocument format. The OpenDocument format is an XML based international office document standard approved by OASIS, the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. XML based, the OpenDocument format enables the free exchange of data between compliant software packages.

For full announcement please visit:

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=256

SISSL retired

On 2 September 2005 Sun Microsystems announced that it was retiring the Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL), an Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved software license. In recent weeks, the OSI, which authorises open-source licenses, has been discussing limiting license proliferation, so as to make the process of choosing a license easier for developers and companies. Sun's move is in support of that objective.

How does this move affect OpenOffice.org? As most know, OpenOffice.org code was launched under the dual banner of the SISSL and LGPL; licensees could choose which one they wanted to use, and nearly all have chosen the LGPL. Effective with the announcement that Sun is retiring the SISSL, however, OpenOffice.org will in the future only be licensed under the LGPL.

For users, the simplification means: no change. OpenOffice.org remains free to use, distribute, even sell. One can freely use it in commercial as well as government environments; nothing has changed.

For vendors, distributors, add-on and plug-in writers of OpenOffice.org: The LGPL allows for commercial distribution without affecting derived products in the same way as the GPL.

For developers and other contributors: As the code will be licensed only under the LGPL, modifications to the source must be published. (The SISSL did not require all changes to the source to be published.) As most OpenOffice.org contributors are already openly contributing to the community, we anticipate no problems. And for those who have been using the SISSL exclusively, we invite you to join us.

The OpenOffice.org Community Council

http://council.openoffice.org

//FAQs/license-change.html

Original announcement: //servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=255

Estonian Native-Lang project announced

The Native-Language Confederation is pleased to welcome a new member in its big family:

The Estonian Native-Language project, led by Ain Vagula and Peeter Russak. The Estonian Native-Lang project has a fairly impressive track record because it was active as a localization group long before it went to existence as a member of the NLC. A team composed currently of three main members, Ain Vagula, Peeter Russak and Marek Laane, has been involved in the localization work of Openoffice.org, ever since the 1.0.2. This team also developped dictionaries and distributes CD-Roms.

OpenOffice.org is making steady progress in the Baltic region, as shown by the interest of the Estonian government in getting CD-Roms including OOo in Estonian. Stay tuned, as the Estonian Native-Lang project is a small community that can achieve much for Openoffice.org!

http://et.openoffice.org

University of Toronto at Scarborough Standardizes on StarOffice for all Student Computing Resources

“Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc. today announced the University of Toronto at Scarborough (UTSC) has standardized on StarOffice(TM) office productivity software for all student computing resources. This ensures every student on campus has access to the leading office productivity suite for Linux, UNIX(R) and the most popular alternative for Windows-based computers. UTSC supports a mixed computing environment, and required an office productivity application that was available for all of its operating systems. Delivery of a standard, easy-to-use, and cost-effective application is central to UTSC's information technology mandate and was the key to its decision to migrate to StarOffice.”

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-27-2005/0004132492&EDATE=

Commonwealth of Massachusetts moves to open document formats

The big news for this month involves the decision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to move to open document formats, including that of the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0's OpenDocument format. This move has been given widespread acclaim with the move to a format which is open, free and unencumbered. A lot has been written about the move from praise, to rebuttals from Microsoft managers.

News of final decision:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5878869.html

OpenDocument format:

http://www.spreadopendocument.org/

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050130002908154

MP3 and Ogg of meeting with Massachusetts CIO:

http://www.softwaregarden.com/cgi-bin/oss-sig/wiki.pl?OpenFormatMeetingSept2005

Massachusetts Enterprise Technical Reference Model:http://www.mass.gov/portal/index.jsp?pageID=itdsubtopic&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Policies%2c+Standards+%26+Legal&L2=Enterprise+Architecture&L3=Enterprise+Technical+Reference+Model+-+Version+3.5&sid=Aitd

IBM response to decision:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog_comments.jspa?blog=384&entry=94431

The story as it developed throughout the month:

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/massachusetts-planning-move-to-open.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/massachusetts-open-document-policy.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/legal-worries-led-massachusetts-to.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/more-blog-commentary-on-massachusetts.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/more-massachusetts-news.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/opinion-zdnet-blogs-on-opendocument.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/opinion-what-has-microsoft-done-for.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/opinion-states-open-document-dispute.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/opinion-geriatric-microsoft-scuppered.html

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/massachusetts-moves-ahead-sans.html

OpenOffice.org distributed at state conference of lawyers

"About 350 lawyers and Law students we expected, but, in fact, over 750 came. It was a tremendous success. We distributed 750 CD«s with OpenOffice.org, and some other free softwares, and we demonstrated it in a datashow (projector) along with some information about its use. People got astonished and surprised."

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/dancer?entry=openoffice_org_distributed_at_state

"OpenOffice is great alternative to Microsoft"

The Chicago Sun-Times has an article by Andy Ihnatko on the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0, including favourable comparisons as an office suite as well as an overview of the OpenDocument format.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/worktech/cst-fin-andy22.html

"Plan by 13 Nations Urges Open Technology Standards"

Following on from the Massachusetts policy, 13 nations have put together a report to push for the adoption of open technology standards.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26093

http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/09/plan-by-13-nations-urges-open.html

Indonesia adopts the Java Desktop System (and StarOffice / OpenOffice.org) for its national open-source desktop

"Indonesia's Ministry of Research and Technology Thursday said it will implement a Java Desktop System (JDS) on Linux as a national-standard desktop, customed-designed for its own culture. This desktop software will be a major component of the new Indonesia Goes Open Source (IGOS) program that aims to help eliminate the "digital divide in the world's largest archipelago," the ministry and Sun Microsystems said in a joint announcement."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3370503002.html

http://www.igos.web.id/english/english.htm

OpenOffice.org Conference 2005 in Koper / Capodistria, Slovenia

http://ooocon-arnes.kiberpipa.org/media/

Raising the bar on patents and standards

"Great news for OpenDocument fans. The guy from Microsoft couldn't have known this, but we were already working on a move that raises the bar on what it means to create a truly open standard. Yesterday, Sun sent to OASIS a new statement concerning patents on the OpenDocument standard.

To decode this statement for you, it says that Sun promises not to enforce any patent in any country against any implementation of the OpenDocument format (ODF). That means that, unless you're intending to sue Sun in connection with ODF, you can use ODF with confidence and ignore the FUD."

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink?entry=raising_the_bar_on_patents

August 2005

OpenOffice.org announces version 2.0 public beta 2

"This beta release is made available in order to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production deployment at this stage."

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=252

NeoOffice gets $25,000 donation

"A very generous individual has stepped forward and given a US$25,000 donation to NeoOffice/J. This much needed donation plus the many small donations received over the last few months provides enough funds for me to work full time on upgrading NeoOffice/J to use Java 1.4.

Upgrading NeoOffice/J to Java 1.4 is one of the critical tasks that must be done in order for NeoOffice/J to run on Apple's upcoming Intel-based machines. With this donation, one of the three critical tasks for creating a Mac Intel verison of NeoOffice/J is now fully funded.

Not only do I want to thank our generous donor, but I would also like to thank the hundreds of people who have donated to NeoOffice/J. The many small donations that NeoOffice/J has received are important and, without them, working full time on NeoOffice/J would not be possible."

http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=97&mode=&order=0&thold=0

Linux pumps up fitness retailer's network, desktops

""Twenty percent of our employees are already running OpenOffice.org on Windows. Our first task was to train them on OpenOffice.org; then we will switch to Linux." Converting employees to OpenOffice.org brought formatting problems when converting files from Word format. "When people first used OpenOffice.org, the formatting was somewhat distorted," Scott says. "We sat down and worked out the differences with them. Now we have everyone first create their documents in OpenOffice.org." Other than that, the migration hasn't caused any problems. Says Scott, "It's been pretty easy.""

http://business.newsforge.com/business/05/07/22/1418204.shtml?tid=37

Kenosha Finds Big Savings in Linux

""For the most part, everybody is happy," says Schall, who adds that OpenOffice integrates smoothly with Microsoft Word and Excel documents.

A key benefit of using open source applications such as OpenOffice and the Firefox Latest News about Firefox Web browser is that they are platform independent, says Tig Kerkman, Kenosha's network administrator.

"So my users can download OpenOffice for free and use it at home on whatever hardware they have," he says."

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=37526

CheckStatus.net Switches To Open Source

""Of course there is a learning curve. It is something new and different, but after a few days most people feel like they've used it all along. OpenOffice.org has made it much easier with their OpenOffice suite. Last week we converted a law office over to OpenOffice and will be migrating them to Linux shortly.""

http://i-newswire.com/pr40322.html

http://checkstatus.net/

OpenOffice.org distributed at state conference of lawyers

"About 350 lawyers and Law students we expected, but, in fact, over 750 came. It was a tremendous success. We distributed 750 CD´s with OpenOffice.org, and some other free softwares, and we demonstrated it in a datashow (projector)along with some information about its use. People got astonished and surprised."

http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=20943

Massive Linux handout set for French schools

"Every student between the ages of 15 and 19 attending a school in Auvergne will be given a pack containing two CDs. The first CD contains free software for Microsoft Windows and Apple Computer's Mac OS X, including the OpenOffice.org office productivity application, the Firefox browser and the GIMP image editing application. The second CD is a Linux Live CD, allowing pupils to try the open source operating system without installing it. The Linux Live CD is based on Kaella, a French derivative of Knoppix."

http://news.com.com/Massive+Linux+handout+set+for+French+schools/2100-7344_3-5828644.html?tag=nefd.top

PC Magazine review OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta

"Unlike the slow, clunky original version, version 2.0 of this free productivity suite is surprisingly slick and highly compatible with Microsoft Office file formats. It even offers features not found in its expensive Microsoft counterpart."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1851001,00.asp

"OpenOffice.org 2.0 reviewed"

SearchEnterpriseLinux has an article reviewing the OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta,and gives it a good recommendation.

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1116763,00.html

FOSS word processors compared: OOo Writer, AbiWord, and KWord

OpenOffice.org receives most of the attention among free and open source (FOSS) office suites, but users shouldn't forget that free software includes at least two other word processors: AbiWord, part of a projected GNOME Office, and KWord, part of the KOffice suite. From their inception, both have been playing catch-up with OpenOffice.org's Writer. But now, after several years of development, AbiWord and KWord are both reaching early maturity. How do Writer, AbiWord, and KWord compare?

http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/08/16/2038242.shtml?tid=93&tid=150

Endorsement in the Chicago Tribune

"After all, www.OpenOffice.org alone gives us Writer, a word-processing module with every feature from spell check to fancy fonts, footnotes to frames that any ordinary family or student might need or want."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0508150274aug16,1,6710884.column?coll=chi-technology-nav&ctrack=1&cset=true

Support for OASISOpenDocument format in eZ publish

"eZ publish, the CMS developed by eZ systems, a new extension for to way communcation with the OASIS Open Document format is released. This is the format used in OpenOffice.org version 2 and KWord ammong other applications."

http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/08/02/1624208

Perl module for OASIS OpenDocument at CPAN

"The OpenDocument-compliant version of Perl OpenOffice::OODoc (2.003) is now available at CPAN.

The same API supports both the OOo 1.0 and the ODF. With some care, it's now possible to write programs that simultaneously deal with several documents with different formats."

http://search.cpan.org/dist/OpenOffice-OODoc

Juli 2005

OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 Release Candidate Is Here

"OpenOffice.org 1.1.5rc is ready for you to download now. It's a release candidate, meaning that it has bugs, and we would like for you to work with us in finding them and reporting them. It's easy and even fun. :-)

What's important about 1.1.5rc? It includes numerous bug fixes but just as important includes a filter for OpenDocument files, which is the type that OpenOffice.org 2.0 and the 1.9.x releases create. To download and file bug reports, follow the links below:

OpenOffice.org 1.1.5rc:
/download/1.1.5rc/index.html
QA Project:
http://qa.openoffice.org/

This release candidate arrives simultaneously in 11 languages. More languages will be available as the community creates them. Check with your Native Language Project for more information. It is also available for Linux, Solaris, and Windows.

/projects/native-lang.html

The OpenOffice.org Team"

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=250

BharateeyaOO.o with Linux For You Magazine

The July 2005 issue of Linux For You magazine (India) will be distributed with the Hindi version of OpenOffice.org that was recently released.

http://www.linuxforu.com/

New Community Contributor Representative

Laurent Godard is the new Community Contributor Represenative (CCR) winning with 53% of the total votes. The CCR represents the OpenOffice.org community of endusers, among others. To learn more of the Community Council, visit the Council site.

Congratulations Laurent, and thanks again to all nominees and participants!

http://council.openoffice.org/

OpenOffice.org's third international conference announced

"The conference is being organised by the Slovenian and Italian OOo project teams. The first part of the program will cover topics such as development and OpenOffice.org in education, for those interested in the community and the project itself, whereas the last part of the conference will be focused on the end-users and the use of OpenOffice.org in public administration and enterprises."

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/7321

Conference page:

http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2005/index.html

OpenOffice.org at city of about 100,000

"Schall says there were no major issues with the migration to Linux on either the server or the desktop. The city never used Microsoft Latest News about Microsoft on the desktop and so is in the process of transitioning from WordPerfect to OpenOffice.

"For the most part, everybody is happy," says Schall, who adds that OpenOffice integrates smoothly with Microsoft Word and Excel documents.

"So my users can download OpenOffice for free and use it at home on whatever hardware they have," he says."

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13000002WK6K

OpenOffice.org, FOSS, and the preservation of Gaelic

"By itself, the release of OpenOffice.org for Scots Gaelic is a small event within the communities of free and open source software (FOSS). It is only one of the more than 50 localizations available for OpenOffice.org 1.x. However, the release shows a potential for FOSS that is often overlooked, particularly by those for whom English is their native language. Specifically, FOSS has the potential to help resuscitate a declining language and thereby aid in revitalizing a disintegrating culture."

http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/06/28/2040202.shtml?tid=93&tid=130&tid=132

Vienna starts desktop Linux migration

"The city is currently running Microsoft Windows 2000 and Office 2000 on its 16,000 desktop PCs, but has identified 7,500 that could be migrated to the open source productivity application OpenOffice.org. Of these, 4,800 could also be migrated to the open source operating system Linux."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39207461,00.htm

OpenOffice.org at Australian community center

"With 65 user accounts and counting, The Hut's network now includes 10 Ubuntu workstations running GNOME, OpenOffice.org, Evolution, and Firefox, an application server, a gateway box, and a backup server. There is also a dual-boot workstation and two strictly Windows boxes that sit on the network but don't rely on the file server."

http://business.newsforge.com/business/05/07/14/1942237.shtml?tid=37

Schools ink deal for open source

"The Education Ministry has signed an 18-month software licensing deal with Novell New Zealand, the ministry's first deal to provide open source software to schools.

It includes Novell's SUSE distribution of the Linux desktop operating system."

...

"The SUSE Linux operating system is packaged with open source Internet browser Firefox and Microsoft Office rival OpenOffice."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3348057a28,00.html

New USB Flash Drive Sports Bootable OS, Office Apps

"The $149 Computer-On-a-Stick is a USB flash drive with a bootable onboard Linux operating system and open source office suite."

...

"The office suite, developed by OpenOffice.org, is compatible with the most common Microsoft Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook."

http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=166401966

Press Release:

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050722005199&newsLang=en

Additional reporting:

http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050723ComputerOnAStickWhatsNext.html

Novell showcases OES

"The desktop OS includes a number of office productivity tools and applications. The Novell edition of OpenOffice provides tools like word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package that handles native Microsoft Office file formats and can export files to Adobe PDF."

http://computerworld.com.sg/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&articleid=1902&pubid=3&issueid=56

OpenOffice.org instead of Works

"Corine has MS Works, but says it is not compatible with the more widely used Microsoft Word. She wants to know if there is a viable alternative that won't irritate her limited budget?

In the past I've suggested Open Office, at www.openoffice.org, as a reasonably compatible suite of programs that in many cases works as well as the hugely popular Microsoft product, though it is a little lean on extras.

There are converters available for MS Works, but users of Open Office do rave about its level of compatibility. Being free open-source software, it is a continuing development project based initially on the Sun Microsystems commercial product StarOffice."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10338051

[Beta Review] Openoffice.org 2

"With that in mind, there's no doubt version 2 is more than powerful enough for most home and business users and can certainly give Microsoft a run for its money, especially since it's free.

And for corporate users who need proper technical support (which isn't available with the free version), there's a retail version of the suite called Star Office. This costs $50 (£26.26 approx) and is supplied and supported by Sun Microsystems."

http://www.vnunet.com/personal-computer-world/software/2140229/openoffice-org

OpenOffice 2.0 Beta Review

"I have been exploring the use of free Open Source software as an alternative to Microsoft Software for quite some time now. I have been using Open Office for about 8 months now for my word processing needs. In a nutshell I am satisfied. Last week a new beta was released, I downloaded it as soon as it was made available, on first view, even though the key functionality in version 2.0 Beta remains largely intact, it promises dozens, possibly hundreds, of changes."

http://www.osjournal.com/content/119/Reviews/OpenOffice_2_0_Beta_Review/

KDE Plugin in the Official OpenOffice.org Packages

"A year and a half after launching the KDE.OpenOffice.org Integration Project, the KDE plugin with the Native Widget Framework has become part of the official OpenOffice.org development packages. Developer snapshot m118 is the first of the towards-2.0 milestones that contains it."

http://dot.kde.org/1122037183/

Xandros Business Desktop & StarOffice

"Over 1,000 businesses have taken up Xandros Inc's Enterprise Linux Challenge to try out its Business Desktop Linux operating system, according to the company, indicating strong potential demand for the

new product. ... The product includes Sun Microsystems Inc's StarOffice, Xandros Anti-Virus and Xandros Firewall security features, and a bundle is available with the xDMS Xandros Desktop Management Server for mass deployment."

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=64D13B18-A4ED-44C5-8CD4-EA126A9DA1F2

Valuable Data Requires Open Formats

"So I unzipped the OOo archive and checked the styles.xml file using xmlwf (checking to see if the XML was 'well-formed', which is step one of two on the road to correctness; the second hurdle is validity according to the schema). Sure enough, there was a duplicate element attribute at the line and column indicated in the cryptic OOo error message.

Edit it out, zip it back up, try again, and ... same error, different location. But after a couple of iterations the problem was fixed.

Sure, it was a pain, and sure, it should never have happened. But in an imperfect world, I'd much rather have my data in an accessible format that can be manipulated by many different tools than locked up in an undocumented, proprietary format."

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/7432

How Microsoft will try to get more money from Office users

"But likely to prove controversial is Microsoft intention to charge users an additional "premium" client access licenses (CAL) to use these higher-end versions of Office and Windows. Ballmer and other executives were light on specifics today, although in the Office market at least Microsoft seems to be going beyond its current high-end edition of Office Professional Edition, which is priced at $388.49 per copy.

...

"We will... introduce higher-value versions of existing products that really help us drive new growth and new value. We did that with the Professional edition of our Windows product, and it drove literally billions of dollars of revenue growth versus the home version," Ballmer said.

...

Microsoft's decision to introduce more SKUs and charge higher prices, though, will expose the company to more accusations from competitors that is gouging customers while IT budgets are tight. Sun Microsystems has been pushing StarOffice as a low-priced, subscription-based alternative to Office to help customers overcome the pricing issue."

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/07/28/microsoft_skus/

Taking the Lead in Security and Performance; New version of the TYPO3 Content Management System Released

"The powerful search engine now produces statistics about the terms entered. Editors can use this information to tailor their site to their visitors. The search engine also indexes new types of data, such as Microsoft Excel tables, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and OpenOffice.org documents."

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/7/emw262183.htm

Norway says yes to Open Source

"The Norwegian minister for modernisation (nice job title) says the government will no longer accept the use of proprietary formats.

Without mentioning Microsoft, or anyone else, directly, Morten Andreas Meyer said: ÒProprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government.””

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/28/norway_wants_os/

Microsoft looks to partners to force Office upgrades

Microsoft is investing $300m in Office marketing for fiscal 2006 and expanding the number of field sales people from 450 to more than 1,000 - Chris Capossela corporate vice president for the information worker product management group.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/07/08/_office_partners/

June 2005

OOoCon 2005 Call For Papers

"The third international OpenOffice.org Conference, OOoCon 2005, will be held in Koper-Capodistria, Slovenia, this year, from 28-30 September, and you are invited! Promoted this year as a joint effort by the Slovenian and Italian OpenOffice.org language projects, the conference provides the opportunity for the community to meet the developers, contributors, marketers, and others who are making OpenOffice.org one of the most important open-source projects and products today.

If you have been thinking about coding for OpenOffice.org and want tips, now is your chance; curious about OpenOffice.org's XML potential? Want to write extensions? Plug ins? Then come to the conference!

Indeed if you are not technically minded but want to join a great community come along and find out why so many people are switching to OpenOffice.org.

We have posted the call for papers (CFP) and are soliciting presentations from the general OpenOffice.org community (and then some) for papers concerning the development of OpenOffice.org to its marketing; from the global politics of free software to the technicalities of localizing OpenOffice.org.

To see all the tracks open and to obtain the template for submissions, as well as to request travel assistance, visit:

http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2005/cfp.html

250-word abstracts in English must be submitted to callforpapers@openoffice.org by 10 July 2005. We ask that you use our template for your abstract. It can be found on the CFP page.

For more information, visit the OOoCon 2005 pages:

http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2005/index.html

And to learn more about the lovely seaside city of Koper – Capodistria (a bilingual community), see:

http://www.slo-istra.com/koper/eng.asp

Cheers,

The OpenOffice.org Team"

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=246

NeoOffice/J 1.1 Released!

"Planamesa Software and the NeoOffice.org community are proud to introduce NeoOfficeš/J 1.1, a Mac OS X-native version of the OpenOffice.org office suite that includes Microsoft Office-compatible word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing applications.

“This release is the culmination of many thousands of volunteer hours,” said NeoOffice/J's creator and primary developer Patrick Luby. ÒAs a result of this tremendous effort, we have a very stable, full-featured office suite for Mac OS X that supports dozens of languages.”

NeoOfficeš/J 1.1 is available today as a free download from the Planamesa

Software website at http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/."

http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/

Uno Runtime Environment (URE) released

"Dear OpenOffice.org and UNO friends,

I am pleased to announce that a sponsor, who is preferring to stay anonymous, is supporting us to do the next step in modulizing the OpenOffice.org office suite and to make its component model available independently. That means, that we are going to factor out the highly requested

Universal Network Objects (UNO)

into its own

Uno Runtime Environment (URE)

The URE allows the usage of UNO independently of the OpenOffice.org productivity suite. UNO is OpenOffice.orgs underlying component model, allowing language agnostic and remote transparent development of add-ins, components and applications.

As UNO has already been designed with independence in mind, the URE is mainly about bundling the appropriate libraries, executables etc. into their own package. Please have a look at the URE proposal at

http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/draft/standalone_uno_1_0.html

respectively the UNO homepage at

http://udk.openoffice.org

for details. The URE is planned to be released with OOo 2.0. As OOo 2.0 is already advanced in its development, the plan is to adapt OOo to the URE with its next major (see //issues/show_bug.cgi?id=50467) release.

XPCom, Bonobo and Mono fans might want to give UNO a try and see if we can/want to bridge from one component model to another, to reach higher overall interoperability.

Distro packagers might want to provide the URE (and the OOo SDK) with their distro, not only as a prerequisite for past OOo 2.0 releases but to enable people to develop UNO components.

Porters might want to port the URE, which is mainly a packaging task, to their favorite platform.

Please send feedback to dev@udk.openoffice.org, respectively to Stephan Bergmann (sb@openoffice.org, UDK co-lead) or Kay Ramme (kr@openoffice.org, UDK lead)."

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=245

Opening of an Eurasian Languages Native-Lang Group

"The Native-Lang Confederation announces the creation of the Eurasian Languages Group. This group comes as an answer to the needs of several projects to share their ressources, information, and ease communication between them and the greater OpenOffice.org community.

As a result,

the Russian (http://ru.openoffice.org)
the Turkish (http://tr.openoffice.org)
the Georgian (http://ka.openoffice.org)
the Azeri (http://az.openoffice.org)
the Ukrainian (http://ua.openoffice.org)

native-lang projects form this new group. Rail Aliev, co-lead of the Russian and Turkish projects, will coordinate the technical & localization efforts. While there's no clear marketing coordinator, the Eurasian Languages Group intends to increase its marketing activities and its awareness inside the OpenOffice.org community.

More Eurasian projects can be added to this list in the future. This is why the Group would like to invite the existing Armenian and Persian Native-Lang projects to join them. Later on, any native-lang project representing Slavian, Turkic, Altaic and Mongolian languages and cultures will be able to join this group.

As part of its mission, the Eurasian Native-Lang Group will have to

coordinate localization efforts and developments
mutualize and help the projects with the localized builds'QA.
speed up the adoption of OpenOffice.org on a local basis and help
coordinate its promotion
coordinate documentation writing
communicate with the other projects of OOo and the native-lang confederation
ease the communication between the Eurasian native-lang projects

Best Regards,

Charles-H. Schulz,

Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation,

OpenOffice.org"

http://native-lang.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=5263

Once more OpenOffice.org and Open Source Softwares on CDs in India

"At New Delhi on 20th June, Hindi Free Software CD will be launched. And so will be OpenOffice.org in Hindi.

Venue: Vigyan Bhavan

Once again we are talking about 3 million CDs but this time in Hindi. So what are the other OS softwares going in? This time we are including FireFox, Gaim and Columba all localized to Hindi. Apart from that we are also packaging Transliterator addon to OpenOffice.org which supports transliteration from English to 5 Indian Languages.

I will be there at launch. Will come back and update you.

Please feel free to give this mail as much circulation as possible."

http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=20519

Sun Microsystems' Donation of StarOffice(TM) Suite To Be Distributed Through Gifts In Kind International

"Sun Microsystems and Gifts In Kind International, the world's leading charity in the field of product philanthropy, announced today a new global donation program, to provide StarOffice(TM) suite to eligible nonprofit and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the US and countries around the world. StarOffice is the world's leading office productivity software suite on the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS) and Linux, and the leading alternative office suite on Windows."

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/06-06-2005/0003818288&EDATE=

Linux and other OSS helps connect rural African villages

"Each Communications Station features an inexpensive and durable PC with Linux and KDE, OpenOffice.org, and an unspecified web-browser. Also, of course, each station has a telephone. In part because of the open source Asterisk PBX system, villagers can now make and receive calls for the first time --including free calls between the connected villages."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7710415162.html

Indian OpenOffice roll-out continues

"Last month, ZDNet UK reported that the Indian government would distribute 3.5m free CDs containing Tamil Language versions of open source applications, including the Firefox browser and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite. Within a month the project had received requests for 85,000 CDs, thousands of downloads from its Web site, and had attracted the attention of the President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39205447,00.htm

Free Indian Language Software is Hot!

"In a high profile ceremony, Smt. Sonia Gandhi, Chairman of the National Advisory Council of India, and Thiru Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology released a free CD of software containing Hindi language tools and fonts based on open source software in New Delhi this week. To the rousing applause of the audience, Thiru Maran asserted that this freely available office suite is in every way the equal of Microsoft Office."

http://www.technetra.com/News/free_indian_language_software_is_hot_html

Additional reporting:

Linux For You magazine: http://www.linuxforu.com/

LT Scotland Introduces Gaelic Version of Office Applications Software

"Learning and Teaching Scotland (LT Scotland) launched a groundbreaking Gaelic version of Open Office today (2 June 2005) at the A' Chuisle conference in Aviemore. The software has user interfaces and features similar to other office suites but for the first time ever the language is entirely in Gaelic."

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/news/press.asp?newsid=396

OpenOffice.org Gaelic homepage:

http://gd.openoffice.org/

Additional reporting:

http://www.ngfl.gov.uk/news.jsp?sec=5&cat=99&res=86963

http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3026

Trying OpenOffice

"I have a recommendation. A friend of mine who is majoring in computer science recently turned me on to OpenOffice.org. It is a free office suite by Sun Microsystems meant to compete with Microsoft Office. It has a word processor and spreadsheet, presentation and database software that effectively compete with their equivalents in Office. It is Mac and PC compatible and will open most other types of word processing software files. It will also work with any e-mail program automatically attaching the file you are working on to the message. It is also available in multiple languages, can be downloaded for free at Openoffice.org or a cd ordered at the website for a nominal cost."

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=83087

Italian lawyers in love with open source

"GL-OS is preparing to release Italian legal forms in OpenDocument format, and plans to offer custom CD-ROMs. The group is studying how to become official OOo Community Distributors. The to-do list also includes training classes (especially for OpenOffice.org) and conferences about FOSS and the forensic world. The longest-term goal is the utilization of FOSS to access both legal databases and the Processo Civile Telematico, the Italian project that is attempting to reduce as much as possible the amount of paper circulating in any given trial. Once it is implemented, all requests to the court and other documents will be written and directly filed in encrypted XML format, signed with smart cards."

http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/05/06/15/1924206.shtml?tid=147&tid=132

RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady on the OASIS OpenDocument format

"On some level these arguments fly in the face of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mindset that seems to be prevalent within Microsoft divisions that have generated quarter after quarter after quarter of sustained revenue growth, but I think that that mindset is going to have to change in a world that's increasingly driven by macro trends like open source and open standards. Are we at the tipping point in the office format equation was a question I debated with a vendor yesterday, and the answer, in my mind, is not yet. But the Open Document Format is still young, and I do think it ultimately has the power to fundamentally alter the context of discussions around office productivity software.

Microsoft can be proactive and aggressively compete on that basis now, or they can ignore the demands of governments and ISVs abroad. I know what I'd choose."

http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000732.html

XML, one format to rule them all

"Interoperability will be greatly improved, since the new XML format will be supported by three of the most important and utilized applications from MS Office.

But the ones to benefit the most from this format will be Open Office and StarOffice, which due to Microsoft's policy not to charge any sum of money for Open XML Format will be able to offer much easier support for the documents created with MS Office."

http://news.softpedia.com/news/XML-one-format-to-rule-them-all-2570.shtml

Sun Donates StarOffice to Non-Profits

"Sun is giving the gift of StarOffice to nonprofit and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United States and internationally. The software will be distributed through a partnership with Gifts In Kind International."

http://www.betanews.com/article/Sun_Donates_StarOffice_to_NonProfits/1118687222

Coming Soon: MS Office Alternatives for Mac

"Major milestones were recently announced for two Mac OS X-compatible software suites that could provide an alternative to the near-ubiquitous Microsoft Office. The free NeoOffice/J, an open-source software development project created by Patrick Luby and Edward Peterlin, has reached its "first stable release," and South Korea-based Haansoft has announced that it will ship a Mac OS X version of its ThinkFree Office 3.0 suite close on the heels of the July release of the Windows version."

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1830588,00.asp

Additional reporting:

http://www.techworld.com/applications/news/index.cfm?NewsID=3919&Page=1&pagePos=11

May 2005

OpenDocument Format Formally Approved

"On 1 May the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee approved as a standard the OpenDocument file format, which OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta uses. OASIS is the primary body for e-business standards. As an OASIS open standard, any office application may use the format; vendor lock in to a proprietary format is not possible."

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office

Members Approve OpenDocument as OASIS Standard

"XML doesn't always mean open. You can hide a lot in a file format. OpenDocument represents an opportunity to ensure truly open file formats for productivity applications, which is why it will receive the enthusiastic support of public sector steering organizations on a global basis," commented James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk. "The participation of enterprises in vertical industries, such as aerospace, will also ensure adoption in the private sector. One key to success will be the royalty free status of the spec; there are no financial penalties associated with developing to it."

[...]

"IBM recognizes the importance of a standards-based document format. Use of open, non-proprietary formats will facilitate seamless collaboration between vendors, customers and partners and ensure the maintenance of corporate and government knowledge," said Karla Norsworthy, vice president, Software Standards, IBM. "IBM supports the OASIS OpenDocument formats, and we believe the standardization is a major accomplishment in an important area."

"Sun believes in the power of open standards to enhance business productivity and to stimulate innovation by preserving the intellectual property rights of content creators," said Tim Bray, Technology Director at Sun Microsystems. "Sun is a founding member of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee, and Sun's StarOffice 8 productivity suite, based on the OpenOffice.org project, uses OpenDocument as its default file format."

http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis_news_05_23_05.php

Azeri Native-Lang project announced

"Azeri Native-Lang project opened:OpenOffice.org welcomes a new member in its family, the Azeri

native-lang project. Led by Emin Huseynov, this project is very active in Azerbaidjan, working with several organizations and NGOs and spreading OpenOffice.org in several administrations.

We wish good luck to the Azeri Native-Lang project!

Charles Schulz,

Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation,

OpenOffice.org"

Polish Native-Lang Group announced

"The Native-Lang Confederation of OpenOffice.org greets today a long-awaited member. The Polish Native-Lang project (http://pl.openoffice.org), led by Adam Dereszkiewicz, gathers all the local polish initiatives and communities in one single and efficient project designed to spread OpenOffice.org in Polish language. OpenOffice.org in Polish will help accelerate the adoption of Free/Open Source Software in Poland, a country standing as one of the liveliest areas for the development of the Free and Open Source Software.

We wish good luck to Adam and his team.

Charles-H. Schulz,

Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation,

OpenOffice.org"

Detroit high school opens its desktops

"In 2003, John Hansknecht, the director of technology at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy, had a tough decision to make. The school had about a hundred older computers running Microsoft Office 97 and Windows NT, and some kind of upgrade was clearly required. It would have been an easy decision to simply upgrade to Microsoft Office 2000, but that would have required replacing all the computers with more powerful systems -- a large expenditure which could be better spent on other technology needs. Hansknecht had a better idea: OpenOffice.org."

http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/05/18/1944227.shtml?tid=130&tid=93

Sun signs StarOffice agreement for 4,000 Irish schools

"The NCTE, which is an agency of Ireland's Department of Education and Science, has signed a master distribution agreement with Santa Clara, California-based Sun through which it will provide Sun's StarOffice 7 to 3,200 primary school and 720 secondary schools across the country."

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=FFF7AC2B-4012-4C44-A78E-9E6CE7F6EBCD

Additional reporting:

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single4835

Open Source Software in Schools

"A project report evaluating the use of open source software (OSS) within a small number of schools will be published on Friday, 13 May 2005 by Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency).

The project report from the study "Open Source Software in Schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs" demonstrates that although the implementation of OSS in schools needs careful planning and support, the use of OSS can offer a cost-effective alternative to proprietary software."

http://www.becta.org.uk/corporate/press_out.cfm?id=4681

Full report:

http://www.becta.org.uk/corporate/publications/documents/BEC5606_Full_report18.pdf

Open source makes school appointment

"Becta, the Government's lead agency for ICT in education, is set to release a new report which will say that schools could save significant sums by switching to open source software, eGov monitor can report.

The landmark report will show that OSS can be implemented successfully in schools and present documented examples of cost savings from its use."

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/04/25/open_source_school/

Local authorities keen on open source

"Roughly half of the UK's local authorities are planning to increase their use of open source software over the next three years, according to a Socitm survey

Cost, security and dissatisfaction with Microsoft will drive almost two-thirds of local authorities to increase their use of open source software over the next three years, according to new research."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39197835,00.htm

Birmingham begins major open source pilot

"The council the largest in Europe will move 1,500 desktops and all the associated back-end servers in its library service to Linux and other open source software including OpenOffice and Firefox. The year-long trial will be backed by government money, and include a final, neutral assessment of the value of the move. Public terminals in libraries will be shifted to Linux, as well as office systems in the library service."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39198699,00.htm

Bristol ready to put open source on 3,500 desktops

"The roll-out will take a year to complete. "People have been concerned that we are getting rid of Windows, which is not true. When we go into offices and show them the product, we see them relaxing," Beckett said."

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=138630&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID=6&liChannelID=1&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1

Italian Automobile Club selects StarOffice (Italian articles only)

According to the following articles, the software will be installed on more than 3,200 seats:

http://it.sun.com/pressmedia/comunicati_stampa_05/sunflash050905b.html

http://www.cwi.it/showPage.php?template=articoli&id=13001

Elite forces' health department trims operating costs

"The Arabic-enabled nature of Sun's StarOffice productivity suite, as well as the significantly more affordable investment level for the Sun desktop solution, were cited as the major causes for the switch. 'SANG-HA's hospitals and health utilities are among the best in the region. We have adopted a strategic IT plan, which will contribute to the development of health services provided to the patients. Infrastructure development is a major focus area for us, and the ability to use Sun's Arabic-enabled StarOffice suite and lower operational costs and is making a major impact on SANG-HA's bottom line,' says Dr Majid Al Tuwaijri, executive director for information systems and informatics at SANG-HA"

http://www.itp.net/news/details.php?id=15060&category=

Tamil Language Open Source Tools & Apps Released in Chennai

"In Chennai, on April 15th, marking the Tamil New Year, India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) showed off its latest efforts to help close India's digital divide. A complete bundle of open source computer software including the localized Tamil version of OpenOffice.org was released. Hundreds of computer fonts and tools in Tamil were given away amid great fanfare and political and media excitement."

http://www.technetra.com/News/tamil_openoffice_html

Additional reporting:

http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/16/stories/2005041600292200.htm

Millions in India to get OpenOffice

"The government has started distributing CDs containing Tamil-language versions of various open source applications, including the Firefox browser, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite and the Columba email client. It plans to freely distribute 3.5 million copies of the CD to Tamil speakers worldwide, according to R.K.V.S. Raman, a researcher at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, an organisation involved in the production of the CD."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39199972,00.htm

StarOffice 8: Sun's Office Suite Takes on Microsoft

"Sun's product, StarOffice, has not yet stolen significant market share from Microsoft Office, but if its latest beta release (which we look at here), is any indication, Sun's taking its push into the market seriously."

http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/news/article.php/3501431

Product review, OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta

"As a long time user of OpenOffice.org back to the days when it was called StarOffice 5.2, I watched the development process with great interest over the years. As soon as the beta for 2.0 became available I grabbed it eagerly. Since then I've downloaded several updates and kept more or less up to date with the latest releases. Here are my findings."

http://htmlfixit.com/?p=619

Review: OpenOffice a Strong Competitor

"The latest version of the free OpenOffice suite promises to be a strong competitor to Microsoft Office. It's still in the "beta," or unfinished, stage, but it's already a good alternative for people who aren't heavy users. And you can't argue with the price."

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163103695&tid=5979

Lesson number one: get rid of Microsoft

"The report shows, for example, that these schools spend less than half of what their Microsoft-enthralled contemporaries have to fork out on IT support. Other benefits include lower expenditure on software licensing, and computers that have to be upgraded less frequently because they no longer dance to the beat of Microsoft's drum. The headline in the Times Educational Supplement said it all: 'Ditching Microsoft could save millions.'"

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1483969,00.htm

Ditching Microsoft can save millions

"In a report to be published next week, obtained by The TES, Becta will highlight schools which have turned to free software instead of the market leaders products. Becta does not name Microsoft in its analysis. But almost all schools use some of the companys products."

http://www.tes.co.uk/2094985

OO.o 2.0 pioneers new standard

"The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) announced its approval of OpenOffice.org's XML-based file format, Open Document Format for Office Applications, as a new standard. An article at eWEEK.com, explains what this means for the world in general, and for OpenOffice users in particular."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5688133549.html

Additional reporting:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1819239,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=24314FB0-65A5-4D4D-B1A7-C45E5A03BBA3

A Standard Set For The Office

"Officials at the non-profit standards body OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) announced Monday its approval of the OpenDocuments 1.0 specification as a standard.

The ratification puts OASIS' seal of approval on a single XML-based file format for text, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents -- an area dominated by Microsoft and its popular Office suite."

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3507111

Additional reporting:

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/2005052323053132

http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1002046.php/OASIS_approves_OpenOffice_2.0_file_format

OpenOffice.org File Viewer

"OpenOffice.org File Viewer or OOoView. A Java-based OpenOffice.org file viewer, this was created by Ms. Christine Bejerasco, Mr. Cipriano Consolacion Jr., and Ms. Raquel Tarroza (supervised by yours truly) as a requirement in earning their degree in Computer Science.

The first version only supported OpenOffice.org version 1.0 file formats. It was recently upgraded to support version 1.1.x file formats and the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0 file formats.

OOoView source is now available at http://oooview.dev.java.net."

http://www.mb.com.ph/TECH2005051634852.html

http://oooview.dev.java.net

April 2005

OpenOffice.org Conference 2005 - Please vote for the location!

"Dear OpenOffice.org user,

Every year, members of the OpenOffice.org community gather at the official international OpenOffice.org Conference, or OOoCon. The purpose of this conference is to allow members of the community to meet face-to-face in a convivial environment, in order to share coding tips, plans, technology; information, strategies, methods, and success stories, with the aim of building a more successful community project and product.

Koper, Slovenia and Lyon, France have been proposed as locations for the OpenOffice.org Conference 2005. Please go to the following web page to submit a vote for your favorite location:

http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/ooocon2005/proposal.html

The deadline is April 30, 2005. The chosen location will be announced shortly after that date. In order to be able to participate in the voting you must be a registered members of the OpenOffice.org site.

Thank you very much and best regards,

The OpenOffice.org Conference Team"

http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/ooocon2005/proposal.html

Original posting:

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=241

NeoOffice/J Donates Code

NeoOffice/J is an independent project building a Java-powered Aqua-fied Mac OS X port of OpenOffice.org. Its donation resolves numerous bugs. Thanks! We look forward to further collaboration.

Donation message:

http://porting.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=15387

NeoOffice/J Project:

http://trinity.neooffice.org/

Albanian Native-Lang project announced

I would like to announce the opening of the Albanian Native-Lang project (sq) led by Mr. Shkumbin Saneja. OpenOffice.org is now available in Albanian, an ancient culture and language of Southern Europe.

This project have increased the interest about Open Source applications, in Albanian language speaking areas. As there is no other office suite in Albanian, there are good chances that OpenOffice.org will take the leading role.

Good luck for the Albanian native-lang project and hopefully we'll be hearing from OpenOffice.org and other FOSS deployments in Albania soon!

You can visit the Albanian project page here: http://sq.openoffice.org

Charles-H. Schulz,

Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation,

OpenOffice.org

Spreading OpenOffice Tamil

I would like to tell you about a great and perhaps an unprecendented thing that has happened to OpenOffice.org.

On April 15th 2005 the IT Minister of the country dedicated OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 in Tamil to the Nation and brought it out as a CD. This CD will be distributed free to those who request for it.

Apart from OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 in Tamil , the CD also contained open type fonts, Firefox browser , email-client, OCR tools and speel checkers all for Tamil Language.

In the coming months the ministry plans to distribute about 3 million copies of this CD to Tamilians all over the world.

Already about 50,000 copies of CD have been produced and are being distributed.

So atleast among Tamil Speaking people, we would soon see everybody using OpenOffice.org instead of proprietary softwares.

Apart from this I also had an opportunity to demo OpenOffice.org in a TV interview for a Tamil News Channel called "SUN NEWS"

This interview will be telecasted on the "SUN NEWS" Channel on Sunday 24/04/05 at 17:30pm (Indian Standard Time) .

So big time for OpenOffice.org among Tamilians. Let us celebrate the moment."

[Raman, Project co-ordinator for BharateeyaOO.o Project

(http://www.ncb.ernet.in/bharateeyaoo)]

Original posting:

http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=20240

StarOffice at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL)

"Deployments of Sun's Grid technology announced in 2004 spanned industries ranging from government to financial services to education. Notable wins included the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), the Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Leicester, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, University of Nottingham, and several others.

Sun and INL teamed on a solution that includes more than 230 Sun Fire V20z servers powered by AMD Opteron processors, and more than 12 Terabytes of Sun StorEdge(TM) 6320 storage, the Solaris 10 operating system, Sun Java(TM) Enterprise System and Java development software, Sun Grid Engine Enterprise Edition, Sun's StarOffice(TM) 7.0 office productivity platform, as well as advanced on-site training and support from Sun's Services division. The cluster's full-throttle computing power ranks the INL datacenter as one of the world's top supercomputing sites."

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050426/sftu070.html?.v=7

Small college saves big with OpenOffice.org and Linux

Duncan remains pleased with the results of his creativity. "This puts us in control of our tech resources, instead of relying on some third party. It's kind of a scary to say there's some company out there telling me I'm going to buy a new computer every two years. We've doubled the number of computers we have available to us with the cost-savings of OpenOffice.org versus Microsoft Office. We've made available open access to labs and cyber cafs using hardware that others would have just thrown away.

"OpenOffice.org made a lot of that possible."

http://business.newsforge.com/business/05/03/30/2033252.shtml?tid=37&tid=132&tid=2

Why UK's Access Devices cooked up its own embedded open source OS

"Access Devices, founded in 2001, is a digital video equipment designer and manufacturer in the United Kingdom. With the help of open source software consulting company Sirius, Access moved entirely from Windows desktops to Linux and OpenOffice.org. Then, after CEO Anthony Walton discovered how far Linux and other open source software had come in terms of quality and viability, he decided to commit to open source in a different way."

http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/04/14/2123248

StarOffice at the City of Marghera

"The City of Marghera, Venice Municipality (Italy) -- The City of Marghera (Venice municipality), in cooperation with Sun Microsystems Italy, realized an IT laboratory for Marghera citizens, the Internet Center "Marghera digitale". The IT infrastructure, designed and implemented by Sun Microsystems Italy, includes more than 30 Sun Ray(TM) clients, three servers and a software environment with StarOffice(TM) software & the Sun Java Desktop System."

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050426/sftu067.html?.v=7

MIP Holdings moves most users to open source

"Fortunately, the open source alternatives proved to be fully functional, stable and reliable solutions that were not difficult for users to adapt to. In extreme situations, power users may need more than these alternatives offer, but these users are rare. MIP therefore embarked on an upgrade project installing OpenOffice on its workstations.

The roll-out went smoothly, again, with no users finding they could not complete their daily tasks on the new software. Firth says some of the functions in OpenOffice are accessible via different keystrokes or mouse clicks, but these changes are easily overcome with a little coaching. "The savings on licence fees is enormous," he notes. "But most importantly, we are saving money without sacrificing productivity or limiting user functionality.""

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/enterprise/2005/0504080908.asp?A=ENA&S=Enterprise%20Architecture&O=FPIN

4,000 StarOffice licenses at SANG-HA

"As a sign of its progressive approach to utilizing the latest technology to provide first class medical services, SANG-HA recently deployed 1,500 SunRay thin client desktop systems, in addition to purchasing 4,000 StarOffice licenses, in order to refresh its IT technology strategy. In addition to SANG-HA, Sun counts Saudi Aramco, STC, and SAMBA as key customers in the Kingdom."

http://www.ameinfo.com/58111.html

State govt logs on to cost-cutting drive

"In the past few months, OpenOffice, a free downloadable package of commonly-used applications like spreadsheets, word processing and email, has become the official choice for thousands of desktops across the state, and is expected to save the exchequer about Rs 90 crore in licence fees. Recently, the Maharashtra police headquarters too plumped for free operating system GNU/Linux with OpenOffice. That's not all. Already, the election office is using a bi-lingual voter-list search system developed by free software activists, while corporate open sourcers like Red Hat are providing software for the government's treasury management, citizens' facility centres and land record management."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1081589.cms

Thailand: The case for open source software

"To counter the compatability issue, Sipa, Nectec and Sun Microsystems Thailand are now working to make OpenOffice 2.0 _ an open source office suite _ a standard program. In the past, there have been various office software suites, including Pladao, OfficeTLE and OpenOffice, which according to Mr Clark can create confusion.

Sipa, Nectec and Sun Microsystems are now merging some parts of Pladao and OfficeTLE into OpenOffice 2.0."

http://www.bangkokpost.com/300305_Database/30Mar2005_data51.php

DHBs to test open source alternative to Windows and Office

"First, the DHBs will pilot an open source desktop environment, being put together by Steve Rayner, CIO of Wanganui DHB, to assess how many users it will serve adequately. Rayner plans to support two categories of user: "power users" with Microsoft desktop software, and "regular clinical users" with Novell Enterprise Desktop, OpenOffice.org and GroupWise running on Suse Linux."

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/0/39A5FAC6A45E8FB2CC256FDA00319B5C?OpenDocument&pub=Computerworld

NZ open source trial attracts gov't attention

"The Wanganui pilot will seek to establish how many users there are with just basic computing needs and whether it is possible to meet those with a non-Microsoft environment. It will be based on Suse Linux and OpenOffice.org."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1561121703;fp;16;fpid;0

OpenOffice 2.0 to break down walls to adoption

"Industry experts who have taken a look at the OpenOffice.org 2.0 said new database functionality included with the open source personal productivity suite will go a long way toward making the system a viable alternative to Microsoft Office -- especially in the all important small and medium-sized business (SMB) market."

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1073674,00.html

First Look: OpenOffice.org 2.0 Looks Good

"In addition to Base, the database app, OpenOffice.org 2.0 includes a word processor, a spreadsheet application, a presentation program, an app for creating mathematical formulas, and a nifty drawing program much more powerful and fun than Microsoft's Paint. The beta version is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac machines."

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,120154,00.asp

Download some of the best software money can't buy

"Don't want to deal with the hassles of incompatible files? No problem - OpenOffice.org can create, open, edit, and save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Plus, it's available for multiple platforms, including Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

This is an outstanding solution for college students, home offices, and pretty much anyone who wants Microsoft Office-caliber functionality without the sticker shock."

http://hometownlife.com/WestBloomfield/News.asp?pageType=StoryCurrent&StoryArchiveID=94436&StoryID=10661&Section=At%20Home&OnlineSection=At%20Home&SectionPubDate=Thursday,%20March%2031,%202005&RefDate=3/31/2005

OpenOffice is a decent alternative

"Don't take that to mean I've explored every nook and cranny of the 2.0 beta. However, I've looked at enough to know that users should consider using it over paying out cash for Microsoft Office, a software that's gotten fatter and fatter."

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/business/11197462.htm

Ask Slashdot: OpenOffice vs. MS Office for Education?

"I work in a large high school district where there will be some discussion on whether or not to purchase another term of 'Software Assurance' for MS Office licenses on thousands of computers. This seems to be an ideal opportunity to promote an alternative such as OpenOffice. It will not be an easy sell, even though OpenOffice should more than satisfy all curricular needs and save the district lots of money; like many other districts we have political and cultural 'challenges'. So, I ask you, have you been successful in moving your education or business organization from MS Office to OpenOffice? What were the pros and cons from your migration? What advice do you have in selling this to tech coordinators and administrators who are not enlightened by Open Source?"

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/20/1753225&tid=146&tid=102&tid=201&tid=4

IBM Certifies OpenDocument Successful Implementation

"Formal statement: IBM Corporation certifies that it is successfully using the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) 1.0 specification consistently with the OASIS IPR Policy. -- Nathaniel Borenstein, Distinguished Engineer and Open Standards Strategist, IBM Corporation"

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200503/msg00020.html

OASIS Members to vote on OpenDocument XML Format

"OASIS organizational members are asked to vote on four specifications that have been submitted for consideration as OASIS Standards. The ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM) v3.0 and ebXML Registry Services and Protocols (RS) v3.0 offer a method for defining and managing interoperable registries and repositories. OpenDocument provides an XML-based file format specification for office applications."

http://xml.sys-con.com/read/77288.htm

Gentoo update for openoffice

"Gentoo has issued updates for openoffice. These fix a vulnerability,which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system."

http://secunia.com/advisories/14983/

March 2005

OpenOffice.org Announces Version 2.0 Public Beta

4 MARCH, 2005 - 08H00 UTC

The OpenOffice.org project is pleased to announce that the first public beta release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 is now available for download.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta is immediately available in English for Windows, GNU/Linux and Solaris. Additional platforms and localisations for Brazilian Portuguese, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Turkish, amongst others, will follow shortly.

The release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta coincides with the Danish LinuxForum 2005 and with the Open Source Days in Turkey. Both events demonstrate the gaining power of open source and especially the force for change OpenOffice.org 2.0 represents. We are honoured to be included in these important events.

This beta release is the result of many months work in expanding the functionality, performance and compatibility of the office suite. This intense effort has yielded impressive results including the addition of a new database module, implementation of the OASIS OpenDocument XML file format and a host of other new features and capabilities.

The public beta release is made available in order to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate this new major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production deployment at this stage.

Beta Availability

The beta version and it's source code can be downloaded from

/download/2.0beta/index.html

Feature Guide

A more detailed guide to the features can be found at

//dev_docs/features/2.0/index.html.

Error and Bug Reporting

Users of the OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta release are encouraged to join the

OpenOffice.org project and report any bugs, issues or errors at

http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/project_issues.html.

For ongoing updates regarding beta releases of OpenOffice.org 2.0,

please subscribe to the OpenOffice.org Announce mailing list at

//mail_list.html#general.

First Native-Lang Group has been launched

"I would like to announce that the first Native-Language Group has been launched. To those who are wondering "what is a native-language group?", it can be summed up as a group of several native-lang

projects (see: http://native-lang.openoffice.org) willing to help each others and coordinate their actions.

The first native-language group is the Indic Native-Language Group, composed of the following communities:

the Hindi native-lang project (http://hi.openoffice.org)
the Tamil native-lang project (http://ta.openoffice.org)
the Bengali native-lang project (http://bn.openoffice.org)
the Malayalam native-lang project (http://ml.openoffice.org)
the Telugu native-lang project (http://te.openoffice.org)
the Gujarati native-lang project (http://gu.openoffice.org)

More Indic projects can be added to this list in the future. As part of its mission, the Indic native-lang group will have to

coordinate localization efforts and developments
mutualize and help the projects with the localized builds'QA.
speed up the adoption of OpenOffice.org on a local basis and help coordinate its promotion
coordinate documentation writing
communicate with the other projects of OOo and the native-lang confederation
ease the communication between the Indic native-lang projects

This group comes as an answer for the native-lang projects to avoid the "walled garden" effect that some projects have to face, while at the mean time help these projects who lack ressources and time to develop and build themselves. Expect more groups to come in a near future.

I would also like to congratulate Vijay Kumar and Rajesh Rajan for their newly appointed positions as the Group coordinators. Meanwhile, the rights and deeds of the native-lang projects' leads remain unchanged.

Regards,

Charles-H. Schulz,

Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation,

OpenOffice.org"

Linux in Business and Governments: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

"At least 80,000 PCs will be concerned by the migration before the end of the year. In a first step, 35,000 PCs will be equipped by OpenOffice.org before the summer. OpenOffice will be used, as Microsoft Office, for the rapports and statements, but will offer more services than Word and Excel.

The National Gendarmerie has announced that the migration, the technical support and the personnel training will be managed without any external help.

It is expected to save 2 million euro by year through this migration."

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1121&Itemid=0&limit=1&limitstart=0

The case for open source software

Sipa, Nectec and Sun Microsystems are now merging some parts of Pladao and OfficeTLE into OpenOffice 2.0. "

http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/30Mar2005_data51.php

Availability of OpenOffice.org & Staroffice Indexer for Google Dekstop Search

"Allow Google Desktop Search to index all OpenOffice.org and StarOffice 6 or later files, including text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and templates. Supported file types are SXC, STC, SXD, STD, SXI, STI, SXW, SXG, and STW."

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/indextheopenoffice.html

http://www.trivex.net/

OpenOffice.org Beta 2.0: Trouble for Microsoft

"OpenOffice has many features, but one of the most significant features for first time users has to be the crossover between the various modules. The knowledge gained in Writers easily transferred to Calc and vice-versa. This makes working with OpenOffice.org very comfortable, even more so than Microsoft Office.

OpenOffice has reached the stage of being able to competently and comfortably replace Microsoft Office as your main office suite. Consider the fact that it is free, and yet manages to beat Microsoft Office at it's own game; it's a compliment in itself. The only thing that you have to do now is wait for the final version of OpenOffice 2.0 to begin your journey to the world of Open Source. If you are impatient to begin, grab the beta and dive right in. The water's fine."

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1073

First look: OpenOffice.org version 2.0 beta

"OpenOffice.org has always been conservative with version numbers. Enough minor releases have boasted enough new features that the current release could easily be 3.0 or 4.0 instead of 1.1.4. Given this record, it's hardly surprising that version 2.0, for which beta code is set to be unveiled very shortly, amounts to a major rewrite of the software. Although key functionality remains largely intact, version 2.0 promises dozens, possibly hundreds, of changes. Many times during our testing of the pre-beta release, we felt we could almost have been looking at an entirely new piece of software."

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/02/25/209222

A first look at OpenOffice.org 2.0

"It is not too bold to say that OpenOffice.org 2.0 will usher in a new era of functionality, reliability, compatibility and ease of use. The extensive changes and enhancements which are to be included in the upcoming release are all the evidence needed to justify this assertion.

For those who are impatient and unwilling to wait for the final release, today sees the public availability of the first beta version of OpenOffice.org 2.0. This beta is not for the faint of heart, and should not be considered as reliable or be used in a production environment."

http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=420

Illuminata analyst on OpenOffice.org

"Illuminata analyst Gordon Hoff said that Microsoft must convince customers that Longhorn will offer more than incremental improvements. "We're reaching the point where, without more substantive changes -- more frankly disruptive changes -- improvements are more and more incremental. So something like OpenOffice can increasingly be the functional equivalent of what Microsoft does.""

http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3493416

MS Office meets its match

"However, I'm not here to tell you how easy the install process is or how well OpenOffice performs in terms of speed compared with Microsoft Office.

Instead, I'm here to tell you that it has just about all the same main features Microsoft Office has and comes at absolutely no cost."

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2005/2/22/prodit/10176856&sec=prodit

February 2005

Winner, OpenOffice.org 2.0 Splashscreen competition

"All,

Thousands of OpenOffice.org community members participated in the voting for the OpenOffice.org 2.0 splashscreen. People could vote for their favourite three choices from the eleven splashscreens shortlisted form over 340 submissions from 103 artists and designers.

We are pleased to announce that Brendan Wheelan was the outright winner with his splashscreen design:

//editorial/bwhelan.html

Brendan, a professional programmer, has since worked with the development team to finalise the artwork to be included in OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta, including the splashscreen, about box and installer graphics.

The splashscreen competition not only provided a successful splashscreen, but created awareness of the OpenOffice.org Art Project (http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/) that is responsible for the creation and maintenance of graphics and art pieces for the OpenOffice.org community.

Thank you to all the artists who participated in the splashscreen competition. We look forward to any other ways you may wish to contribute to the OpenOffice.org Art Project.

Congratulations Brendan, and a big thank you also to all the community members who participated in voting for the splashscreen.

Regards

Jacqueline McNally

Lead, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project"

L.A. mulls open source

"Three Los Angeles council members want the city to switch to an open-source platform to save millions of dollars in software costs.

Council members Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greul and Jack Weiss introduced a motion yesterday asking the city's Information Technology Agency about a transition from proprietary software licenses to open-source platforms and programs. The money saved could be used to hire more police personnel, the council members said."

http://www.fcw.com/geb/articles/2005/0131/web-lalinux-02-03-05.asp

LA Investigates Open Source To Cut Costs

"For example, Kamensky said city officials could save US$5.2 million by switching to OpenOffice, an open-source desktop Trade in your old desktops, laptops and servers and get great deals on HP technology. computer suite that includes word processor and spreadsheet programs, rather than purchasing a Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft Office product at $200 per license for 26,000 desktops. The savings would go to a special fund to hire more employees for the police department, a major focus for city officials right now, he added."

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/LA-Investigates-Open-Source-To-Cut-Costs-40828.html

LinuxWorld preview: Open source rules, SCO fades and apps abound

"Steven Thompson, CTO of building products corporation Omega Products International, is implementing SuSE Linux, in a departmentally-phased approach and only buying new software that is Web-based and certified with a Mozilla/Firefox client. "We are switching the entire company over to OpenOffice this year, [and] 45% of desktops have been switched to date," he said."

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1052513,00.html

Sun Microsystems Hosts Annual Worldwide Education And Research Conference

"During the event, Mayor Newsom will announce an alliance between the city of San Francisco and Sun that will offer free access to Sun's StarOffice(TM) productivity suite software to all students and teachers throughout the city. More than 200,000 students in all public and private K-12, community colleges and universities, and more than 5,000 teachers in these same institutions, will be able to benefit from the word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database capabilities of StarOffice. The value of this alliance is estimated to be more than $5,000,000. For a limited time, students and teachers in the city of San Francisco can download the free software by registering at http://www.sun.com/edu/edusoft."

Vienna takes the boldest step of all - asking the users

"Some of that revolutionary yet pragmatic spirit can still be found in the city's IT department. Rather than mandate a switch to Linux and OpenOffice.org (OOo), the department is letting the people decide. They have a choice between Microsoft Office or OOo on Windows, or they can move to Linux and OOo. IT will support any choice but will charge more for the Microsoft alternatives -- and will train those who want to make the switch."

http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39185491,00.htm

7,000 OpenOffice.org users at Indian bank

"One of Indias most savvy IT users, HDFC Bank, has deployed Linux as the platform for two applicationsa proxy server and PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). The bank has been using OpenOffice on more than 7,000 desktops for about two years. It has also deployed Linux-based desktops for the use of its outbound telemarketing team."

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20050228/opensource01.shtml

Banking on Indian ISVs

"Microsofts intention to create Office for Banks is part of the companys efforts to thwart the success of alternative office suites available from vendors such as Sun Microsystems (StarOffice) and C K Technologies (Shakti Office) in the banking space. HDFC Bank uses StarOffice while Bank of Baroda uses Shakti Office."

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20050228/market01.shtml

2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards

The polls are closed and the results are in for the 2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. I'd like to congratulate each and every nominee. Winners will be receiving an email in the next 48 hours or so and will be able to pick their award up at LinuxWorld. We'll also be sending out small logo's that can be put up.

Browser of the Year - Firefox (77.12%)

Distribution of the Year - Slackware (19.36%)

LiveCD Distribution of the Year - Knoppix (57.69%)

Database of the Year - MySQL (53.51%)

Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (58.25%)

Window Manager of the Year - Fluxbox (31.14%)

>> Office Suite of the Year - OpenOffice.org (84.85%)

>> Word Processor of the Year - oowriter (63.75%)

>> Spreadsheet of the Year - oocalc (57.57%)

Audio Multimedia Application of the Year - XMMS (45.83%)

Video Multimedia Application of the Year - mplayer (49.85%)

Security App of the Year - nmap (37.14%)

Hardening App of the Year - SELinux (68.65%)

Editor of the Year - vi/vim (36.37%)

Web Development Editor of the Year - Quanta (50.88%)

IDE of the Year - Kdevelop (37.77%)

Mail Client of the Year - Thunderbird (47.60%)

Open Source Game of the Year - Frozen Bubble (25.52%)

Commercial Game of the Year - UT2004 (38.86%)

Windows on Linux App of the Year - Wine (42.59%)

File Manager of the Year - Konqueror (30.59%)

Messaging App of the Year - Gaim (56.00%)

Graphics App of the Year - GIMP (72.82%)

MTA of the Year - PostFix (45.57%)

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/t286716.html

OpenOffice.org database application: A first look review

"This story will discuss the OpenOffice.org Base and how it can be used in your business. I'll touch on the similarities (plus differences) with the OpenOffice.org database program and Access. I'll continue with a little commentary on migration issues. We'll finish up by building a basic contact database, a form, a query, and a report using the wizards. If you are already an OpenOffice.org believer, you can just skip down to the "build a quick database application" section to see how it works."

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1758245

Microsoft Office is too dangerous to leave with users

"Just as eliminating MSN Messenger and replacing MS-Outlook with Thunderbird (or presently Evolution) improves your corporate security, so does replacing MS-Office with OpenOffice.org or another office suite.

Careful planning will avoid rubbing your users up the wrong way. Any change produces resistance, and by minimising the changes (converting beloved templates, making conditions under the new suite better, sending copies home especially with people who only have MS-Works or MS-Word there etc) you can maximise acceptance.

Make OpenOffice the default or only office suite on new installs. Use it yourself, for everything; train your technical people up on it so they become used to using and installing it by default and your other users will see the "elites" using it.

Since OpenOffice is now available to more than 10% of all desktops and the file format is about to become a European standard, it is now more socially reasonable to send office documents in the OASIS format adopted by OpenOffice."

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/31395/

The Future Is Open: What OpenDocument Is And Why You Should Care

"Quiz: Complete the sentence,"OpenDocument is ..."

(a) An open, XML-based file format.

(b) An open standard, supported by the OASIS and ISO standards groups.

(d) A top prospect for an official format for the European Commission.

(e) Our best chance to fight vendor lock-in associated with proprietary formats.

(f) All of the above.

The correct answer is (f) All of the above."

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050130002908154

Analyst: MS Office Formats Not Open

"Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox has blasted recent media reports that claim Microsoft has opened up its Office file formats."

"Wilcox explained that Eric Kriss, Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance, simply announced that the Commonwealth had modified its position on open formats. "Under the change, Microsoft Office file formats could be considered open by the Commonwealth, depending on the terms of usage.""

http://www.betanews.com/article/Analyst_MS_Office_Formats_Not_Open/1107211516

StarOffice 8 goes beta

"Sun released a beta version of office productivity application StarOffice 8 on Thursday, which it says provides improved compatibility with Microsoft Office files and a new database front-end tool.

StarOffice already allows users to open and save Microsoft Office files, but a lack of full interoperability has caused problems for users migrating from MS Office. Sun claims that StarOffice 8" significantly improves" the compatability between StarOffice and MS Office files, according to a PDF available on Sun's Web site.

...

The database front-end tool in StarOffice, StarOffice Base, has been "totally re-designed" to make it easier for users to create forms, queries and reports, according to Sun. Stephen O'Grady, senior analyst at RedMonk, said the database is a useful feature in StarOffice and is likely to compete with Microsoft Access."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39188480,00.htm

Additional reporting:

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/56577

New Sun StarOffice 8.0 Beta Looks a Lot Like Microsoft Office 2003

"Chief among these improvements, in my opinion, is its new look and feel, which is modeled after Office 2003. That's right; despite some rough edges (the StarOffice 8.0 beta still has the insane and control-heavy configuration dialog boxes that earlier releases used), the product does a credible job of emulating the latest version of Microsoft's product. And those rough edges are all that separates this otherwise impressive product from its much more expensive competition. If Sun can fix the dialog boxes, the product will be a winner. For the free beta download, visit Sun's Web site."

http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/45460/windowspaulthurrott_45460.html

StarOffice 8 beta set to debut

"StarOffice, which shares a code base with the open-source OpenOffice application suite, will feature enhanced compatibility with Microsoft Office, including importation of password-protected documents and a database module much more like Microsoft's own Access."

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/news.aspx?CIaNID=17846

January 2005

OOoCon 2005 - Call for Location

"Dear OpenOffice.org community members,

After Hamburg in 2003 and Berlin in 2004, we are searching for the perfect location for the OpenOffice.org Conference in 2005.

We are collecting applications from teams who are willing to organize OOoCon 2005 in locations outside Germany.

Interested teams should send their applications to the mailing list conference@marketing.openoffice.org in the following format:

Key Question

In 200 words or less, answer this question:
Why is your location and the date you propose the best for the OOoCon 2005?

Your application MUST INCLUDE:

Location (country, city, conference center/university)
Proposed Date(s)
Team Lead (main contact person)
Team Members (all members should be willing and able to commit at least 3 hours per day to planning the conference during the last two weeks before OOoCon 2005)
Local events that are taking place in parallel (or right before/after)
Special visa or entry requirements, e.g. vaccinations

Your application COULD INCLUDE:

Large local OpenOffice.org deployments (for user keynotes and success stories)
Names of local OpenOffice.org developers (for developer sessions)
Names of local OpenOffice.org vendors/partners (potential sponsors)
Travel costs (e.g. flight costs from the following cities: London, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Sydney, New York, Hamburg, Dublin, San Francisco, South Africa, Tokyo)
Accomodation costs (youth hostel, hotel)

According to the OOoCon 2004 attendee survey, proposed locations should meet the following requirements as much as possible (order by priority):

attract the largest number of community contributers
be near enough to allow a large number of Sun's OpenOffice.org developers, who are in Hamburg, to attend
low accomodation costs
cheap flight and train tickets
the conference venue is for free
alignment with large IT event (e.g. CeBIT, Systems, Comdex)
strong local OpenOffice.org community
strong sponsor support

The deadline for submissions is January 23, 2005. Shortly after that date we will publish the applications at http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/ and call for votes.

Information about the last two OpenOffice.org Conferences can be found at:

Thank you and best regards,

The OpenOffice.org Conference Team"

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=230

OOo version (1.9.71s1) on Mac OSX (X11/Mac OSX 10.3.4)

After some progress, I'm very pleased to announce I have for the first time started an OOo version (1.9.71s1 here) on Mac OSX (X11/Mac OSX 10.3.4)!

The first try wasn't very beautyfull, because I've made the first start with only openoffice-core....I have put some snapshots here:

http://eric.bachard.free.fr/mac/MacOSX_m71s1/

But with Florian Heckl tip about the packaging , I finally obtained a full 1.9.71-1 version on Mac OSX, as .pkg packages!

About the build, the process is complete, excepted for binfilter***

So, I couldn't resist to put some other screenshots here :

http://eric.bachard.free.fr/mac/MacOSX_m71s1/png/

in.png format (following Kazunari Hirano's advice ) more easy to use for everyone.

Sure, a lot of work is to do before a completely functional (stable over all) version of OpenOffice.org2.0 can be used on Mac OSX, but whith this, an enormous progress is done!

This work is not only my work, but the result of help and sharing of knowledge by/with a lot of people like Kevin Hendricks, Pavel Janik, Rene Engelhard, Eric Hoch (of course), Torsten (b_osi), Maho Nakata, Jim Watson, Florian Heckl and all the others.

Sorry for the one I forgot the names. And many thank's to Sun for all.

I sincerily hope this "proof of concept" will concince that

*it is possible !*

So, what about the Next Step ? (not a play on words :-) ) ... change the look and feel of OOo, transforming this great software in a "real" Mac OSX application ?

With best regards,

Eric Bachard, for the French OpenOffice.org project

OpenOffice.org 1.9m71 package for FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE

"Dear all,

OOo 1.9m71 has been ported to FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE.

English version of binary package is available at:

http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.jp/waooo/12904/OOo_1.9m71_FreeBSD53Intel_install_en-US.tbz

---

Our efforts has also been committed to FreeBSD's ports.
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/editors/openoffice-2.0-devel/
Now almost all of the patches has #iz.
(//issues/show_bug.cgi?id=40187)
Language packs are in preparation and testing.

---

Please refer this page for details:

http://porting.openoffice.org/freebsd/

---

Huge thanks to: Pavel Janik, and Kris Kennaway

Additional contributors. thank you very much for all:

daichi, Eric Bachard, kan, lofi, Martin Hollmichel,

nork, obrien, Sander Vesik, sem, and Stefan Taxhet

All the best,

-- NAKATA, Maho"

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=releases&msgNo=8249

Venezuela opts for Linux

"The Venezuelan president has decreed that the public administration will switch over to use open source software over the next two years

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said this week that the country's public administration will switch to open source software over the next two years, according to reports."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39182957,00.htm

Enlaces To Install Linux in Chile Schools

"The Edulinux system works on a client-server model, where PCs in the network work just as terminals and all applications run from a central server. PCs in the network can operate productivity tools such as OpenOffice and Internet browser Mozilla, all compatible with Microsoft Office."

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/40330001422084057.html

Linux gets warm reception in Chile

"Nearly 10,000 computers in Chilean schools will be turned into thin clients running Linux and applications such as OpenOffice.org and Mozilla."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39183940,00.htm

EU's Open Source Observatory - Open Office in Naestved Municipality, Denmark

"The migration to an open source solution, in a Citrix environment, didnt encounter any problem. A growing number of pilot users are already using Open Office and the deadline for migrating the entire organisation is set to 1 February 2005. Mr Anders Krabbe Moeller, the IT Coordinator of the city, is confident we will meet the deadline as the Citrix environment makes technical roll out relatively easy."

http://europa.eu.int/ida/en/document/3658

Official Police migration

"French Police (Gendarmerie) has officially announced this morning on our list the migration of all the department to OOo (it was signed yesterday).

That mean, that today they are migrating 35 OOO users (beginning on March on the 2.0 or the available release of it), 80 000 at the beginning of the summer and the last part at the end of year. At the beginning of 2006, the entire police will use OOo :)

There will be 2 communications about this migration : one during Solutions Linux :

http://www.solutionslinux.fr/fr/conferences_detail.php?id_conference=17

the second during OOoDay :

http://fr.sun.com/societe/agenda/oooday/"

http://native-lang.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=com&msgNo=816

French police find open source arresting

"Up to 80,000 PCs from the Gendarmerie Nationale could be involved in one of the largest migrations to OpenOffice.org to date French police are planning to switch from Microsoft Office to open source productivity suite OpenOffice.org, a spokesman confirmed on Wednesday."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39184699,00.htm

Vienna to softly embrace Linux

"Of its 16,000 desktop PCs, Vienna has identified 7,500 that could be migrated to OpenOffice.org, of which 4,800 could migrate to Linux, according to Gillich. The IT department is offering to install OpenOffice.org or Linux free of charge on PCs and will charge departments less money if they run these open source applications rather than running Microsoft Office or Windows. Users that make the change will be offered support, but not full training, said Gillich."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39185440,00.htm

Viennese authority to push ahead with Linux plans

"Vienna's Municipal Authority is pushing ahead with plans to provide Linux as a desktop alternative to Windows for thousands of employees this year, according to an official."

"Wienux, as the Vienna Linux system has now been named, is based on Debian using the Linux operating system kernel version 2.6.9-1, the Firefox Web browser and KDE 3.3 as the graphical user interface, Lutz said at the Open Source Business Conference 2005 in Vienna. The system includes OpenOffice version 1.1.3, the open-source version of Sun's commercial StarOffice suite, originally developed in Germany."

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=3013

StarOffice 7 Office Suite Momentum Scales New Heights

" Singapore 18 January 2005 - Sun Microsystems, Inc.s StarOffice 7 Office Suite saw an increase in take up rates between November and December of 2004 in Singapore. Local sales of StarOffice 7 office suite retail packs and corporate licenses increased by 45% and 75% respectively.

With recent changes to local legislation, software non-compliance can result in criminal penalties. Infringement of this act happens through under-licensing or with the use of unauthorised or pirated software in a business environment. This shift has been a catalyst for various organizations to rethink their choice of office productivity software to ensure that they do not contravene the new rulings. Many have stated that they are looking for more cost effective alternatives. According to a survey conducted by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, it revealed that 64.8% of 115 respondents suggested the need to lower the financial costs of software acquisition and ownership in response to adhering to this law."

http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=484&cid=4

UN project publishes free primer on open source software in education

"Last August, the United Nations-funded UNDP-APDIP International Open Source Network (IOSN) published the "User Guide to Using the Linux Desktop", a guide that introduces computer neophytes to Internet access and applications such as email and browsers, managing files and folders, and how to use the OpenOffice.org suite."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2077548596.html

OpenOffice Prepares to Grow

"One of the most remarkable novelties of version 2.0 will be the integration of the open source database engine HSQL. This addition fills a gap that OpenOffice had in comparison to its commercial competitors, StarOffice and MS Office: the former, based on the same code as OpenOffice, includes Software AG's database Adabas; the latter comes with Access."

http://www.tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4801

December 2004

OpenOffice.org Regional Conference North America

"The inaugural OpenOffice.org Regional Conference North America (OOo RegiCon North America) will be held 9 February 2005, Del Mar Fairgrounds in San Diego, CA.

OOo RegiCon is hosted by the Desktop Linux Summit (DLS) and gets the DLS underway on 9 February at 1200 midday.

Registration for OOo RegiCon is included in the ticket for DLS and early bird registration closes 7 January 2005."

http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/regicon/

linux.conf.au OpenOffice.org Miniconf

The inaugural linux.conf.au OpenOffice.org Mini-conference will be held on Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th April 2005, two days prior to the official LCA 2005 conference at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

LCA 2005 runs from Wednesday 20th to Saturday 23rd April 2005, and covers all things Linux presented by Linux and open-source software developers and users. The OpenOffice.org Miniconf is for presentations more specific to the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite.

The call for participation is now open. Seminar presentations, case studies and tutorials ranging from 10 minutes to three hours (including questions) will be accepted by Friday 4th Feb 2005.

/.nz/miniconf/cfp.php

OpenOffice.org goes Swahili

"Developers have released the first version of OpenOffice.org in the East African language of Swahili, having overcome translation and infrastructure difficulties."

...

"The initial release of Jambo OpenOffice, which follows four months work, is a test version. This initial version will only work on the Linux operating system, but the final release, which is due in February 2005, will also work on Windows."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39179058,00.htm

Download here:

http://www.kilinux.org/

Additional reporting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4078753.stm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/07/jambo_openoffice_swahili/

OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 Is Here

OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 is ready for download. It is our new stable release and replaces OpenOffice.org 1.1.3. OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 is free for all to use and distribute. For versions in your language, check with your native-language project.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.4
/download/1.1.4/index.html
Native-Language Confederation
/projects/native-lang.html

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=227

Libertarian Linux goes mainstream

"The open-source software used by the city of Northglenn includes Samba, a file-sharing and printing software; the Firefox and Mozilla Web browsers; OpenOffice, which matches Microsoft Office; and Gimp, which is similar to Adobe Photoshop.

These open-source programs can run on top of Windows, which many Northglenn workers are still reluctant to replace with Linux. "They tend to be comfortable with what they know," said Northglenn information technology manager Jim Reiss. "You can only handle so much change at one time.""

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2577377,00.html

Wal-Mart debuts $498 Linux laptop

"Walmart.com and Linspire on Monday unveiled a Linux-based laptop priced at $498.

The computer, dubbed Balance, comes loaded with the Linspire operating system and the OpenOffice.org office suite, the companies said."

http://news.com.com/Wal-Mart+debuts+498+Linux+laptop/2100-1044_3-5498006.html

IT for free

"Beaumont Hospital in Dublin already had a mix of 22 Linux servers and 14 Windows servers when it began deploying StarOffice desktop applications software and SuSE Mail to its 1,000 desktops in 2002. Although the presentation module lacked some of PowerPoint's finer features, it found functionality was "fully adequate for most users". Interoperability was "not seen as a major issue for most business purposes"."

http://www.infoconomy.com/pages/strategy-column/group100524.adp

Dutch MPs fume over £100m Microsoft contract

"However, this is thought to be a move to open-source software, encouraged by Vendrik's motion. A survey undertaken last year by the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) suggested that open source is making gains in the Dutch public sector, and awareness of it was increasing. The survey was however commissioned by the OSOSS (Open Standards and Open Source Software).

And the town of Haarlem has reportedly already moved over 2,000 desktops over to OpenOffice in order to save on its 500,000 euro software licence costs. Reports suggest that training and migration cost Haarlem burghers 50,000 euros (about £35,000), representing a saving of about 90 per cent over an upgrade to Microsoft Office 2000."

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=2801

Dutch govt ends exclusive MS upgrade talks

"The Dutch government has abandoned its negotiations with Microsoft over an ambitious plan to upgrade more than 260,000 workstations and servers."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/23/ms_holland_talks_off/

Africa Proving To Be Next Frontier for Free and Open Software

"Thiessen said that each school in the Shuttleworth program arranges a monthly open day where educators explain open-source software to the community, showcase certain packages such as openoffice.org, and provide copies of software for their use and distribution."

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Africa-Proving-To-Be-Next-Frontier-for-Free-and-Open-Software-38727.html

DVA shops for open source Office

"CONTINUING its recent tradition of being a pioneer of new technology within the Federal Government, the Department of Veterans' Affairs is to investigate open source alternatives to the Microsoft Office productivity suite used within the department."

...

"Potential suppliers would need to indicate how they would supply such complex functionality where it was specifically required, such as in spreadsheet, the Department says. Other issues to be addressed would include document compatibility, archival and management, changeover and integration options and compatibility with existing anti-virus and security tools. Potential suppliers would also need to detail the system resource requirements of any package being offered, using either Office 97 or Office 2003 as benchmarks."

http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/development/webservices/story/0,10801,97898,00.html

De Bortoli Wines gets a taste of Linux

""You have to invest in people," he said. "For example, our IT staff have undertaken the Red Hat Linux essentials training, and we are in the process of ongoing OpenOffice.org training for the organisation."

[...]

De Bortoli has 350 staff overall, which expands to about 450 during grape harvesting. Its IT department is based in Bilbul and has five full-time staff and several key external consultants."

http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1058410056;fp;4;fpid;2

NSW exam board tests Open Office

"NSW school curriculum administrator the Office of the Board of Studies has started trialling the OpenOffice.org office suite amid its strategy to move more applications - including examinations - to a Web-based architecture."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;907826517;fp;16;fpid;0

Linux Makes Headway in Primary Education

""Linux is only now beginning to be ready for use in a general purpose lab. At the rate things like OpenOffice and Gnome and KDE are progressing, it will be fully ready for the general purpose lab within a year," teacher and project coordinator Jeff Elkner wrote in an assessment of his school's experience."

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Linux-Makes-Headway-in-Primary-Education-38733.html

Roundtable: City of Haarlem and OpenOffice.org

"Early in November it was announced that the municipal offices of the Dutch city of Haarlem, the capital of North Holland, had migrated to OpenOffice.org. Nederlands Language Project Lead Simon Brouwer and Co-Lead Arthur Buijs met with the persons responsible on 24 November 2004 and discussed the move, motives for it, and effects. The following article is extracted from notes taken at that meeting. Questions were agreed upon by Louis Suarez-Potts, Simon Brouwer, and Arthur Buijs."

//editorial/roundtable_haarlem.html

OpenOffice 2.0 preview released

"THE SUN-SPONSORED OpenOffice.org project based on open sourced StarOffice code has released a preview of the upcoming OpenOffice 2.0 product. This version touts better MS-Office loading and parsing, strict XML compliant output, a new database program that mimics Microsoft's Access, and much more. It's available for 32-bit Windows, Linux (x86), Sun Solaris x86, and the traditional Solaris for Sparc. We used this opportunity to take this pre-release "version 1.9.65", which will end up being 2.0, for a quick spin."

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20293

OpenOffice 2.0 Nears Beta Testing

"OpenOffice.org 2.0, the open-source office suite sponsored by Sun Microsystems Inc., is getting closer to reality.

The latest prebeta edition, OpenOffice.org Snapshot Build 1.9.m65 (680_m65), is feature-complete and reveals an office suite that includes a personal DBMS (database management system) and improved Microsoft Office file compatibility."

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1744354,00.asp

November 2004

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 with KDE integration

"OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 with KDE integration is now available for download. It also features a lot of other improvements over the stock OOo (including the GNOME integration bits; but do not be afraid, it does not link against Gtk+ in KDE, and vice versa), because it is built from the ooo-build codebase."

http://dot.kde.org/1101482981/

Third-Annual Desktop Linux Summit Expands to Include Mozilla and OpenOffice.org Focus

"SAN DIEGO, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Now in its third year, the annual Desktop Linux Summit has added an extra day, expanding its focus to include discussions of open source leaders Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. A two-day event in prior years, the Summit is now three days and will be held February 9-11, 2005 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in San Diego."

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/11-04-2004/0002355559&EDATE=

For more information see

http://www.desktoplinuxsummit.org

New web site for the Czech and Slovak OpenOffice.org users

"Since yesterday we just have started the new OpenOffice.cz web site for the Czech and Slovak OpenOffice.org users. Our goal is to spread OpenOffice.org in our country and help users with their problems. We are going to support SME sector as well.

Robert Vojta - OpenOffice.cz manager"

http://www.OpenOffice.cz/

Basque localisation of OpenOffice.org 1.1.3

"Finally OOo 1.1.3 Basque builds are in the net, as you can see in those

links:

(en) http://eu.openoffice.org/softwarea/about_downloads.html

(eu) http://eu.openoffice.org/softwarea/jeitsi_buruz.html

and of course in

http://ooo.euskalgnu.org"

[on behalf of the Basque Native-Lang Project and the Basque Localization team]

Announcing the OpenOffice.org Esperanto Native Language Project

"We are proud to announce the launch of the Esperanto Native Language Project of OpenOffice.org. The project's website is http://eo.openoffice.org/index.html and contains information in Esperanto about the project and about OpenOffice.org in general. Additionally we have forums and email lists available for users and interested parties.

We are targeting a complete Esperanto build a few months following the expected arrival of OpenOffice.org 2.0 in the Spring of 2005.

Esperanto speakers and organizations are encouraged to visit the website and help us grow the Esperanto OpenOffice.org Community!

Respectfully,

Joey STANFORD, Tim MORLEY, and rest of the Esperanto Translation Team."

http://eo.openoffice.org/index.html

New User Guide

A new User Guide, written in plain language, is available from the Documentation Project, with a troubleshooting section for common problems.

http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/

Bristol City Council ditches MS for StarOffice

"Bristol City Council expects to save £1.4m over the next five years by switching to StarOffice desktop applications.

The council sees the move as part of an ongoing drive to meet the government's requirements for improved efficiency in the public sector as set out in the Gershon Review.

The council plans over 5,000 users from the authority's existing mixture of Corel Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Office software to Sun Microsystems' integrated StarOffice 7 suite."

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=135099&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID=1&liChannelID=1&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1

Additional reporting:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39171155,00.htm

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19285

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=5AD88DF3-B288-431F-98C5-B4DC34B48990

UK tech specialist school pioneers open source switch

"Using OSS packages such as OpenOffice, MySQL and The Gimp had advantages over using proprietary software because the school didn't need to worry about licensing issues connected with pupils running the software at home. Support for Windows-based legacy software that had no direct OSS equivalent was also needed."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/19/oss_school_switch/

Case study:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/linux_case_study_orwell_high_school.html

Linux-based Scottish force continues its commitment to open-source

"Central Scotland police is already a big open-source user with Linux servers, Linux-based email clients and Sun's StarOffice software. Dick said desktop Linux is currently also being evaluated but is still at an "early stage"."

http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39125661,00.htm

100,000 desktops to OpenOffice

"Among other speakers, Christian Hardy from the French ministry of finance presented the large migration of over 100,000 desktops to OpenOffice, the free software alternative to Microsoft Office, across the national French Administration."

http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/04/11/19/148236.shtml?tid=138

OOo distributed by El Mundo

"The Spanish magazine, El Mundo, will be distributing 11 CDs with a mixture of open/closed, free/non-free software. CD2 and CD9 include OOo, the former as part of Guadalinux, the latter standalone but with a tutorial. The set is being marketed as the definitive collection of the best programs in the world 2005."

http://www.elmundo.es/promociones/mpm/

Africa Becoming Vast Frontier for Free and Open Software

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Africa-Becoming-Vast-Frontier-for-Free-and-Open-Software-38025.html

Singapore Dumps Microsoft, Goes Open Source

"The Defense Ministry of Singapore, the latest government agency to spurn Microsoft for open source, said this week that it's turning to the OpenOffice application suite rather than updating Microsoft Office."

http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/50900190

Additional reporting:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39171012,00.htm

OpenOffice is voted Best Value-for-Money Software by the most popular computer newspaper in Singapore

"Why it's hot: It's free but it lets you work as if you are using Microsoft Office, which costs hundreds of dollars.

Downloadable from www.openoffice.org, the software lets you type your reports, create presentation slides and chart out your accounts.

Though the formatting in some files may look out of sorts when opened in Microsoft Office, most of the time, simply-laid-out documents work fine.

Open Office gets our vote for being the best value-for-money product - actually best value for no money."

(Online registration required)

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/sub/digital_life/story/0,5597,284079,00.html

Japan gives OK to Sun desktop suite

"Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has endorsed Sun's Java Desktop System as an approved product for future bids, a Sun representative said Wednesday. The ministry is undergoing an evaluation of its current desktop software but has not yet committed to deploying JDS, the representative said.

JDS is a suite of open-source office desktop programs that includes the Linux operating system and the company's open-source StarOffice suite. Sun also sells versions of JDS for its Solaris operating system, and individual components, such as the browser and StarOffice, also run on Windows."

http://news.com.com/Japan+gives+OK+to+Sun+desktop+suite/2100-7344_3-5446812.html

Additional reporting:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041110/sfw092_1.html

http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39125837,00.htm

ITWeb : Microsoft price increase opens door for Open Office

"The price hike in Microsoft Office Suite may push small and medium enterprises (SMEs) into the open source camp as the business software equivalent, Open Office, becomes more cost-effective, say market pundits.

SMEs will shoulder the burden of Microsoft's price hike for its Office Suite software that came into effect from 1 November."

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/software/2004/0411031145.asp?S=Business%20Applications&A=BAP&O=FRGN

Sun Desktop goes back to school

"JDS, which features the open source StarOffice desktop productivity suite, will be tested for issues including security, integration, printer compatibility and accessibility of the interface by five institutions serving 2,000 students. JDS made it onto open source verification program after beating 10 rival desktop packages."

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=47CB1AFF-A63C-431E-BFE1-0A33158AE577

Munich's Linux plans attract international attention

"The planned migration of 14,000 desktops in the City of Munich to Linux has attracted attention from as far away as Japan and Australia - and so far all they've switched over is the browser"

...

"The next step for LiMux is the migration from Microsoft Office 97 and 2000 to OpenOffice, and from Windows NT 4.0 to Linux, which is due to start in the New Year. Hofmann hopes that by the middle of 2005 the first department will be running OpenOffice, in parallel with Microsoft Office. The first departments to be migrated will be those whose users are willing and which have less issues with bespoke applications and macros, according to Hoffman."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39171380,00.htm

CollabNet Helps OpenOffice.org Surpass 170,000 Registered Members

"BRISBANE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 10/27/2004 -- CollabNet, the leading provider of on demand distributed software development solutions and host to the OpenOffice.org community, today announced it has helped OpenOffice.org surpass its 170,000 registered member mark, further solidifying its place as the world's most successful corporate-initiated and sponsored open-source project."

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=75016

EC announces Open Standards Definition

http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/04/11/19/148236.shtml?tid=138

PC Pro: Product Reviews: Labs: Office suites: OpenOffice 1.1.2

"RATING: ******

[...]

As we've pointed out, there are a few shortcomings, but with a dedicated following in the development community it won't be long before they're ironed out. In the meantime, the fact it's a free download is enough for us to brush them to one side and fully endorse OpenOffice over and above Microsoft Office 2003 for both home and corporate use (see Sun StarOffice 7)."

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/64884/openoffice-112.html

KDE and the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards

"There was also some bad news for the KOffice team which didn't make the top three in "Favorite Office Program" or a mention in the editorial on the category. As you might guess, OpenOffice.org came in a clear first and miles ahead of the competition. AbiWord took second place followed by StarOffice."

http://dot.kde.org/1099004959/

European commission defines open standards

"At the Open Standards and Libre Software in Government conference, several EU governments announced national open source and free software efforts, urging governments to adopt open source strategies for increased efficiency, interoperability and reduced costs. During the Dutch sponsored conference, the European Commission formally announced its definition of Open Standards."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3877409046.html

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/EU-Governments-Gather-To-Promote-Open-Source-38324.html

IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Respond to TAC Recommendation on Open Document Exchange Format

"According to IDA's summary, Sun Microsystems, "the provider of Open Office who has been instrumental in the process of standardising the Open Office XML document format in OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), welcomed the recommendations and said it would encourage the adoption of the OASIS format as an ISO standard. It also announced that it would shortly release filters providing import and export capabilities to other formats, making them also available for other software vendors.""

http://www.xmlmania.com/news_article_1696-IBM-Microsoft-and-Sun-Respond-to-TAC-Recommendation-on-Open-Document-Exchange-Format.php

European Union may soon endorse the Open Office file format

"Bottomline: Sun scored a nice one today, thanks to some very talented and discrete people inside it, and thanks to the Valoris consulting group. IBM joins the ball. Heh, it's never too late... And what about MS? well, after they've acknowledged that their file formats were "a bit proprietary", they're now left alone in the morning sun."

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/26419/

EU - Major software vendors ready to implement policy recommendations

"SUN, the provider of Open Office who has been instrumental in the process of standardising the Open Office XML document format in OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), welcomed the recommendations and said it would encourage the adoption of the OASIS format as an ISO standard. It also announced that it would shortly release filters providing import and export capabilities to other formats, making them also available for other software vendors.

IBM responded to the recommendation stating that they have informed OASIS of their intention to join the relevant technical committee and that they already have products which comply with the existing OASIS draft specification on Open Office XML format."

http://europa.eu.int/ida/en/document/3463

Additional commentary:

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink/20041115#ignoring_the_elephant

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/dancer/20041115#what_has_ibm_to_do

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7246039020.html

MS Office 12's Competition: Its Older Versions and Linux Suites

"For example, he pointed to an ad hoc survey taken at a recent Gartner conference, where about 15 percent of enterprise customers reported using Office 97, even though the software has been orphaned by Microsoft and suffers from a growing list of security issues.

"To Microsoft's dismay, Office 97 didn't stop working when they stopped supporting it," Silver said. "Since Office 2000, companies have moved very slowly to upgrade, although Office 2003 has an appeal for mobile workers."

According to Silver, about 45 percent of larger enterprises are still using Office 2000, with less than 10 percent using the current Office 2003. He expects a greater shift to Office 2003 in 2005.

Silver said more interest in StarOffice and OpenOffice could be sparked when customers now running Office 2000 decide to upgrade. He also suggested that enterprises will be more interested when their existing Software Assurance contracts expire.

"In the Longhorn time frame, when older versions look really old, that will be an opportunity for Sun or OpenOffice.org to pick up some market share," he said. "

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1711271,00.asp

Additional reporting:

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1711072,00.asp

Germans seek savings through Linux

"By comparison, Heinz Huber Internationale Spedition GmbH & Co. is pursuing a less pervasive open source approach, although the company says that it, too, is saving plenty of money. The 38-person logistics company has deployed Linux in its servers and installed open source applications, including StarOffice, on Windows-based clients."

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/1027linux-ger.html

Government starts to embrace open-source

"One long-standing critic of Microsoft, Eddie Bleasdale, of consultancy Netproject, welcomed the announcement. "I am glad that government is jumping on the bandwagon." But he said making decisions on the total cost of onwership is "fraught with difficulty". "Coming up with a generic cost model is not meaningful." Decisions, he said, should be made on "what is best for your long-term future and this usually means you have control of your IT infrastructure and are no longer dependent on your supplier." "

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/egovernment/story/0,12767,1337817,00.html

UK government report gives nod to open source

"Following a year-long pilot program to study the viability of using Open Source Software across central government departments and the public sector, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) today published its report. The group's findings urged governments to consider open source when implementing new systems or refreshing hardware."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5013620917.html

Additional reporting:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/28/ogc_oss_pilot_report/

October 2004

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 announced

"OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 is ready for immediate download. It is our new stable release and replaces OpenOffice.org 1.1.2. OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 is free to use and distribute by all. At the moment, some languages, including English, are ready. As the month progresses, more languages will be available. Check with your Native-Language project for updates.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3
/download/1.1.3/index.html
Native-Language Confederation
/projects/native-lang.html

The build includes many bug fixes but no new features. Please read our release notes to learn more.

Release Notes to OpenOffice.org 1.1.3
/download/1.1.3/release_notes_1.1.3.html

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 is ready for use by businesses, enterprises, governments and individuals, and offers near-perfect compatibility with legacy proprietary office suites such as Microsoft Office.

It represents one of the last stages before our next major evolution, to OpenOffice.org 2.0.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be ready for general use in March 2005. Early versions--pre-Alpha versions--are ready for download now. They are not meant for daily use but are meant to give a taste of things to come.

To download the early developer version of OpenOffice.org 2.0, visit our 680 page.

680
/download/680/”

//servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=219

Bulgarian Native-Lang Project Announced

"OpenOffice.org is proud to announce the opening of the Bulgarian Native-Lang project, led by Mr Hristo Hristov. The Bugarian project will address the growing needs of the Bulgarian users of OpenOffice.org and grow its community, after having completed the localization in Bulgarian.

The Bulgarian Native-Lang Project (http://bg.openoffice.org) is also the project that has been the fastest to be set up (no more than two days), up and running.

Building the Bulgarian community also marks an important milestone for OpenOffice.org in the Balkanese area.

We wish the greatest success to Mr Hristov and his team.

Charles-H. Schulz,

Lead of the Native-Lang

Confederation,

OpenOffice.org"

OpenOffice.org development boosted by Arab and Israeli collaboration

"The Hebrew and Arabic OpenOffice.org teams have cooperated on local versions of the open-source productivity application, which celebrated its fourth birthday on Wednesday

Similarities between the Arabic and Hebrew languages have enabled groups of Israeli and Arab developers to assist each other in solving common problems developing local versions of OpenOffice.org software."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39170349,00.htm

OpenOffice.org now available at CompUSA and TigerDirect.com

"Flexiety Software Company is now selling OpenOffice.org for Windows with support at 25 CompUSA stores in Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Texas. The company expects to have OpenOffice.org available in all CompUSA stores by 2006."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6869512239.html

Bristol ponders switch to StarOffice

"Bristol City Council may move up to 5,000 of its desktop computers to StarOffice next year. The move could save an estimated £1.4m over five years, a council spokeswoman said on Friday."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39171155,00.htm

Migration at Dover Grammar School for Boys

'Case study here with practical information about how to move to OOo on Linux thin clients.'

http://www.schoolforge.org.uk/index.php/Dover_Grammar_School_for_Boys

Sun signs Interface for Opteron dealer push

"Sun Microsystems UK has signed up Birmingham-based distie Interface Solutions to wholesale Sun servers, desktops and workstations."

...

"Gary Nugent, iForce partner and mid-market director at Sun, said the deal gave the company, access to "new markets in regions across the UK, bringing a great opportunity for growth and the chance to expand the Sun offering of Linux and StarOffice into previously untouched markets."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/04/sun_signs_interface/

UK tech specialist school pioneers open source switch

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/19/oss_school_switch/

Case study:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/linux_case_study_orwell_high_school.html

Germans claim Linux lowers costs

"The greatest cost saving opportunities that Soreon Research found were in the adoption of a variety of office applications on work-stations. Over three-years, a 2000-seat organisation would save around 525,000 with office applications, 57,000 with servers, 32,000 with content management systems and 21,000 with databases. For a 1,000,000 budget, the use of OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office would provide a 20 per cent cost advantage."

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19006

OpenOffice.org at the City of Bergen, Norway

"The City of Bergen, in Norway, is also due to migrate desktops in its 100 schools, which have 32,000 students and pupils."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39171012,00.htm

Sun Microsystems Launches Sun Technology and Academic Resources Initiative (STAR) to Reduce Cost and Complexity for Education IT Community

"Continuing its mission to provide access to technology and technical resources for higher education and K-12 schools and research institutions, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced the Sun(SM) Technology and Academic Resources (STAR) initiative. STAR brings together several strategic programs that can reduce the cost and complexity of managing network systems for the education IT community."

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/09-27-2004/0002259028&EDATE=

Open approach offers Mindef more choice

"The Ministry of Defence (Mindef) has installed the OpenOffice productivity suite on 5,000 new desktop computers. This move is aimed at giving employees in the ministry an additional choice in productivity software. It will also help Mindef make 'significant' savings in terms of capital costs (see box story on page 6)."

http://computertimes.asiaone.com.sg/news/story/0,5104,2868,00.html

Singapore government switches to OpenOffice.org

"With the ministry operating around 20,000 PCs, the decision to move to open-source software on the desktop is among the biggest by any government agency, according to Bloomberg News.

[...]

OpenOffice.org is available all four of Singapore's official languages: English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, according to the native language section of the OpenOffice.org site. Office 2003 is only available in English and Chinese, according to the Microsoft Web site."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39171012,00.htm

NSW opens door to Linux offers

"THE NSW Department of Commerce has released its eagerly anticipated Linux tender, calling for a panel of suppliers to provide enterprise-level software and services for government agencies.

The contract, reportedly worth $40 million, is seen as a major step forward for open source lobbyists, as it requests suppliers to provide Linux software for both desktop and server environments."

"n keeping with the NSW governments push for openness within its IT environment, the tender document states submissions can be lodged in file formats that can be read by OpenOffice.org/StarOffice Write and Microsoft Word."

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10916500%5E15344%5E%5Enbv%5E15306-15321,00.html

An Open Road

"Years later, the RTA explored use of alternative desktops with the rollout of Sun Microsystems Java Terminals for staff at the organization's 140 registries. It recently installed Sun StarOffice on more than 300 desktops to assess its suitability as a replacement for Microsoft Office. All projects were conceived and executed in-house by an IT organization whose more than 200 IT staff service some 6600 employees and maintain more than 800 applications."

http://www.cio.com.au/index.php/id;439031820;fp;4;fpid;21

Open for Business - The 2004 OfB Choice Awards

"Best Office Suite: OpenOffice.org 1.1.1 OpenOffice.org remains the only serious contender to replace Microsoft Office on Windows or GNU/Linux desktops. There are some competitors, such as Abiword on Windows and GNU/Linux as well as Corel WordPerfect Office on Windows; OpenOffice.org seems to have a unique hold on progress toward offering comprehensive compatibility with Microsoft Office in an interface that should minimize adjustment time for users migrating to it."

http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330

Review: OpenOffice.org 1.9 m54

"The latest snapshot at the moment of writing is 1.9m54, and while there is still a long way to go till the final release of OpenOffice.org 2.0, it gives a fairly good idea of what users can expect to see in the next major release of OOo."

http://www.pcstuff.dk/articles/ooo19m54/index.html

Open Office XML May Satisfy ISO

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

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3414101

Weblog:

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/09/24/SmartEC

Slashdot story:

http://it.slashdot.org/it/04/09/27/1111202.shtml?tid=117&tid=102&tid=1&tid=218