JAPANESE RED CROSS SOCIETY｜Japan／Earthquake Donation

JAPANESE RED CROSS SOCIETY｜Japan／Earthquake　Donation

I, along with many of the OpenOffice.org and ODF communities have friends in Japan. News of their well-being is trickling in. But thousands lost their lives, and many, many more lost their homes, possessions, their ways of life. The 9.0 earthquake and the continuing nuclear catastrophe has global dimensions, and Japan should be lauded for accepting international support.

Please help. Everything is needed. The best and easiest way for those of us remote to help those on the ground is via the Red Cross, and I've put a link for donations at the top here.

Donate, please.

Temblor

Iwoke this morning to the horror of learning of the huge temblor that hit Honshu 14:46 local. That nothing can prepare for such a massive release of energy goes without saying. That the Japanese have yet done more than any other people to anticipate is to their credit! But so far likely hundreds have died, ad no doubt thousands injured, and millions horribly affected.

Among them I dread to think are my--our--friends from OOo. We, the Community working on OOo, are deeply concerned. Over the last ten years, the dedication and commitment shown by the Japanese OOo community has never flagged and always inspired.

However the rest of the global OOo community can help, let us know.

Authoring Interoperable ODF Documents

Authoring Interoperable ODF Documents

I work with Rob Weir on two Oasis TCs, the Adoption and OIC, and his comments, insight--writing--are invaluable. His latest post merits review.

Open-source software is actually more secure for health care IT, study suggests

Open-source software is actually more secure for health care IT, study suggests

Not new but yet more evidence.

WebODF

WebODF

So, I learned about this at CeBIT--more on that later--and think it's worth inquiry.

I invite the developer--or in the plural, developers--to consider collaborating with us, and with others to make the ODF mobile and actually relevant to this year and century.

Manila Standard Today -- Schools take the open road -- 2011/march/8

Manila Standard Today -- Schools take the open road -- 2011/march/8

This is great news. But it is, as with so many good news items coming from the Philippines, coming to me by accident. There is no formal apparatus--that is, reliable--for notifying us of significant OOo or ODF usage. When we do learn of things like this, we try to itemize them on our "Major OpenOffice.org Deployments," and I invite the schools in the Philippines to do that: it's a wiki.

I have long advocated and promoted the idea of regional groups which would, among other things, inform the rest of the OOo communities of actions like this. Why is this important? Because public and private sector organizations generally shy from taking bold actions until they learn of others' having done pretty much what they want, first. In short, they need case studies.

As well, the ecosystems developed by government deployments--schools, for instance--develop a new market that enables more companies' actions; risk, clearly, is diminished.