Open Source Action (and more)

2010-06-04

OpenOffice 3.2.1 fixes bugs, updates logo - The H Open Source: News and Features

Of course this is a rather recondite way for me to inform the interested of the latest stable release.... but I also like H-Online. In my own case, I run OOo 3.3 (yes, that's right) on Mac OS X. Latest build courtesy of Nakata-san and Good-Day hosting, is M79. And I then lard the meat with lots of extensions. I confess I love downloading extensions and playing with them---same with my Firefox, Thunderbird, Chrome, and look forward, of course, for Safari's adoption of the model.

One thing I'm involved in is the ODF: I'm a member of the two public advocacy TCs there, the Adoption and OIC (interoperability) committees, and strive there to promote ODF among developers. The interesting there is cultivating such a developer cadre: the group so interested would not be quite the same as a classic developer. What's more, it's position within the Foss firmament is shaded, even more so than the usual. But the technology is not difficult and the payoff, especially now, as OOo gains tens of millions of users monthly (we have more than 350M downloads, at the least), there is more of an apparent market.

Indeed, the market for ODF implementations is huge. ODF is a file format, by the way; it cannot really exist as anything useful independent of the implementation which makes it usable and thus useful. OOo is an implementation, and in fact it is the best one.

Others are to a degree based on the OOo technology. But their degree of departure from the basic code does affect their fluid usage of extensions and the like.

2010-05-31

BBC News - Open source marks a new era for African independence

OpenOffice.org was invited to present at IDLELO, and I very much regret that we could not make it, as the African situation is both interesting and pressing. However, the funding arrangements were difficult to come by--it's expensive to go there and put on a show--and the organizers were unable to subsidize our presence there. But the opportunities are limitless, especially as governments in Africa turn to Foss and see the possibilities. Right now, of course, we have the South African government offices quite interested in OOo and its proprietary version. But Africa is large, very large, and only Foss can offer what its people need today and tomorrow. Africa has a future and it is the Africans' to write, using OOo as the pen, ink, paper.

2010-05-28

Vodacom unveils low-cost Linux netbook | TechCentral

This is great news, and I wish the effort described here the best! It indicates a *regional* and local strength and desire for Foss and OOo in particular. We see this, too, in Brazil, Spain, and throughout other European polities.

OOo is strong because local communities have taken upon themselves the tasks of localization, porting, distribution: engaging in the acts constituting Free and Open Source Software production. They are producers, that is, not simply consumers. Our community and strength grows as these add to the composite community making up OpenOffice.org.

And meanwhile, the application matures. Our monolithic architecture (always being refactored) makes it difficult for casual contribution to the core--all the code would necessarily have to be checked for unintended consequences, to give a hint--but our focus on developing the extensions architecture makes it indeed quite possible and even fun for such casual additions. So, just like Firefox, OOo can be expanded, new features added, capability extended through extensions. These are immensely popular, and their popularity is increasing as more millions download and use OOo in all languages.

Even Hungarian. This year, with pride and excitement, we hold our annual conference in Budapest. Why there? Because the Hungarian team submitted the bid that received the most votes and it received those because it was the best. So for this 10th anniversary of the Project, for this significant year, we find ourselves deeply honoured by the dedication of the Hungarian community: Thanks.

OOoCon begins 31 August and lasts several days. We invite you all to join us there.

See http://conference.services.openoffice.org/index.php/ooocon/2010

TR: Ministry of Justice and law courts consider open source desktop —

TR: Ministry of Justice and law courts consider open source desktop —: "'We are already using OpenOffice on all of the desktops. We began using OpenOffice in 2007 and it has helped us to save billions.'"

Cool. But OOo also has professional support, services. Oh, btw, we all probably need to thank Turkish Language Lead Görkem Çetin for his tireless work in leading the localization effort to Turkish. I had the great pleasure (literally) of spending several days in Istanbul several years ago, at a conference. I, like many, came to love Istanbul and rank it as one of the most wonderful cities I've ever had the great good fortune of visiting, and I owe the great portion of my fond memories to Görkem's unrelenting and unstinting hospitality and generosity. My thanks.

2010-05-25

Hancom to lose government office monopoly

This is important news. The crucial paragraph:

"The National Assembly Research Service (NARS), a parliamentary unit that provides policy research and analysis for legislators, now claims that government organizations should be required to use software products that support open standards. The idea is to eventually allow government documents to be created, read and edited by a wider variety of office applications run on any type of computer operating system, NARS said."

But let's continue:

"``It's critical that government documents are preserved and available for access for a long period of time, and it's dangerous for this to solely hang on Hancom's existence as a business,'' said a NARS official.

``The closed nature of HWP also brings inconvenience when collaborating with people in other countries and producing documents. The government has been virtually mandating the use of HWP, and this has hurt market competition as well as technology neutrality.''

"NARS soon plans to release an official report to suggest all electronic government documents, including word processed documents, spreadsheets, charts and presentations, be represented by software designed in open document format (ODF), the global industry standard for open file styles."

Supposedly, according to an Hancom spokesperson, "``ODF is supported on Hancom Office 2010, which was released last year." But I do wonder what "supported" means here; as well, as the article points out,

"It wasn't until last year that Hancom started supporting ODF for its office applications, and much of the software used at government offices are older versions of HWP, making it harder for search engines to detect the content."

Support is not enough; full implementation is required, as is an interoperability path. These are lacking, it seems.