Google to Take 630 SOC Projects

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3609496

Google has announced that it will accept no fewer than a whopping 630 open source projects for this year's Summer of Code. The number is up from last year's 410 projects.

OpenOffice.org? Sure. Here you go!

OpenOffice.org Summer of Code Projects

Come on, Students!

Current Projects being worked on

Speak Out: ODF in France

This is important and you can help.

There is at present a public call in France for comments on a proposed reference set that would guarantee interoperability for documents throughout the government. [0] The idea here as elsewhere is to promote open standards and stop the waste proprietary formats impose. The OpenDocument format (ODF), which is now slated to be an ISO standard and is already an OASIS standard, has been proposed as the document standard by the French body. [1] But it is by *no means* a sure thing.

How can you help?

By commenting in the public space provided and by writing about it in blogs, articles, letters--anywhere that is public. We need people who are involved in promoting the ODF, which OpenOffice.org uses, to help publicize the importance of the French public sector using an already approved open standard like ODF and the free (gratis and open source) implementation in which it is embedded, OpenOffice.org. Massachusetts' decision to use ODF has galvanized the US and much of the world but in many ways this is just as important--and consequences even greater.

It is important because an open standard--one approved by impartial bodies and also implemented by many applications--removes vendor lock in and gives the user real freedom.

And it is further important to consider that the ODF is natively supported by at least one suite, OpenOffice.org: cost is no barrier to its use.

[0] http://www.adae.gouv.fr/article.php3?id_article=1064
[1] http://tinyurl.com/jsagd

You want: Référentiel général Interopérabilité Volet Technique in pdf on the right

-> http://tinyurl.com/hg8yc

The document is in French. On page 30, you have the rules referenced RIT0025, RIT0026, RIT0027


--
Louis Suarez-Potts
Community Manager
OpenOffice.org

African localisation wins at Stockholm

A little-known African localisation projected called KiLinux, which translated open source office suite OpenOffice.org into Swahili, scooped an award under the Education category.

The annual Stockholm Challenge rewards ICT projects that accelerate the use of information technology for the benefit of citizens and communities.

Director of Translate.org.za, Dwayne Bailey, says KiLinux's award signals a growing appreciation of the role localisation has to play in Africa. "It is very exciting for us to see localisation and open source software win such a prestigious award," says Bailey.

http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1005

Brazilian Portuguese Grammar Checker for OOo

aLouis Su¨¢rez-Potts interviewed Carlos Eduardo Dantas de Menezes whose group recently completed a grammar checker for OpenOffice.org. The project is called CoGrOO (Corretor Gramatical acoplavel ao OpenOffice).

I like the following part :)

Louis: How did you get involved in OpenOffice.org? And who is included in your team?

Carlos: I guess it's fair to cite all collaborators of project (I know it's boring, but I want all in the team to receive credit):
- Prof. Dr. Jorge Kinoshita, coordinator, technical manager, Grammar Checker server's programmer.
- Prof. Dr. La¨ªs Salvador, documentation manager, grammar rules writer.
- Prof. MSc. Carlos Menezes, technical analyst, GUI's programmer, installer's programmer.
- Sueli Uliano, linguist, grammar rules writer.
- William Colen Silva, Grammar Checker server's programmer.
- Marcos Oku, Grammar Checker server's programmer.
- F¨¢bio Gusukuma, Grammar Checker server's programmer.
- Marcelo Suzumura, Grammar Checker server's programmer, installer's programmer.
- F¨¢bio Blanco, GUI's programmer, installer's programmer.
- Edgard Lemos Jr., GUI's programmer.
- Bruno Sant'Anna, OOo interface programmer.

Details on CoGrOO?
Read the interview.

Interview: Carlos Eduardo Dantas de Menezes

Native OpenOffice.org in Nexenta OS

Alberto Escudero announced the release and integration of a native OpenOffice.org 2.0 in NexentaOS (alpha5) on his blog on May 16.

"NexentaOS is a complete GNU-based open source operating system built on top of the OpenSolaris kernel and runtime. The distribution uses SunOS kernel and a “rebuild/port” of most of the Ubuntu's userland packages. Yes!, Debian packaging system in a Open Solaris OS," he explained.

"The goal of this effort is to compile OpenOffice.org in a OpenSolaris environment like NexentaOS and investigate what will take to rebuild the software using GCC," he added.

Acceralate FreeBSD/AMD64 Port

Good news from FreeBSD OpenOffice.org porting team!

Maho Nakata's post to dev/AT/porting.openoffice.org on May 18th told us some great developments on FreeBSD/AMD64 porting efforts.

One is that Carlos Eduardo dontated a FreeBSD/AMD64 access for him.

"Hope it acceralates FreeBSD/amd64 port of OpenOffice.org. Huge inputs from OOo community esp. kendy for porting OOo to GNU/Linux amd64 make this tremendously easier," maho said.

Another one, "OOo+FreeBSD/AMD64 current status," is that Jung-uk Kim submitted a complete patch(es) to compile OOo for FreeBSD/amd64.

"We are now doing thorough investigations, and I'll create a cws for it. Some parts of patches had already been committed to ports cvs repo, but not yet complete," maho said.

OpenDocument Format now an ISO 26300 standard

1 May 2006: The International Standards Organisation has today approved a standard file format to be used worldwide for the storage of files produced by office software (word processor documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, etc.). For the first time in the history of computing, software users will be guaranteed that they will be able to use their data in any compliant software package, both now and in the future. The point of an open standard is that any compliant application can use it.
http://www.openoffice.org/press/iso_pr.html

Links on odf iso announcements

The internet only starts to catch on with the news about the ODF standardization by the ISO.
Here are some links about the ISO decision:
Andy Updegrove's blog
The ODF Alliance official Press Release
Charles-H.Schulz blog on the ISO decision
Erwin Tenhumberg's blog
CNet's article on the ISO decision

Germanophone project launches CampOpenOffice.org

Today, the Germanophone project announced its CampOpenOffice.org launch. CampOpenOffice.org is a weekend taking place from Saturday, August 12th, to Sunday, August 13th, in Diez in Germany, especially dedicated to youths and students from 16 to 27 years.

Several members of the Germanophone project offer four slots, where participants can learn more about a certain subject, about OpenOffice.org and the community - and they can take part in a real project! Slots are:

- QA and tests
- developing with OpenOffice.org
- databases with Base
- marketing on OpenOffice.org

The slots will be complemented by a nice weekend with lots of activities. CampOpenOffice.org is free, only a little symbolic fee will be taken. Applications start on May 3rd on the OpenOffice.org booth at LinuxTag in Wiesbaden, Germany.