Take Test Drive Keep Car

Did you know that 'Microsoft today announced the opening of a "test drive" so that people can see what Microsoft Office 2007 might look like when it finally goes on sale'?

I didn't know that. I have learned from Press Release - for immediate release, OpenOffice.org challenges Microsoft's Office "Test Drive" post by John McCreesh, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead.

http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=291

It goes, "The OpenOffice.org Community invites potential upgraders to go one better - download the full OpenOffice.org 2 office suite today for a test drive, and if you like it, use it free for as long as you like. It's the ultimate no-strings-attached test drive - if you enjoy the test drive, keep the car!"

OpenOffice.org, I enjoy 2.0.3 RC7 QA testing now and I will keep it for a while.

It continues, "As office software becomes a commodity product, Microsoft has been forced to make significant changes to the 'look and feel' of MS-Office 2007. Because of this, analysts now agree that migrating to Microsoft Office 2007 will be a major upheaval with a significant cost impact."

OpenOffice.org, Upgrading 2.0.3 to 2.0.4 is easy and costs nothing.

Then it says, "Unlike changing to Microsoft Office 2007, changing to OpenOffice.org 2 does not require learning how to use office software all over again. Indeed, reports have shown migration to OpenOffice.org 2 is 90% cheaper than migrating to Microsoft Office 2007."

Then I know what you choose.

For more information and references to the reports, please see http://why.openoffice.org and you'll know what you do, "Take a Test Drive - Keep the Car!"

Danish Parliament (Folketinget) decides on Open Standards

http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/5646

The Danish Parliament (Folketinget) has recently decided: Parliament imposes on the government a duty to ensure that the public sector's use of IT, including use of software, is based on open standards.

The Government should adopt and maintain a set of open standards at the latest by 1 January 2008, or as soon as technically possible, which can serve as an inspiration for the rest of the public sector. Open standards should thereafter be part of the basis for the public sector's development and procurement of IT software with the object of promoting competition.

The Government should ensure that all digital information and data that the public sector exchanges with citizens, companies and institutions, is available in open standards-based formats.

OpenOffice.org Site Infrastructure Being Upgraded

http://www.openoffice.org/editorial/first_broffice_meeting_200606.html

Innovation, collaboration and results. In its first National Meeting, on June 2, 2006 through a video conference link connecting over 20 Brazilian states and Canada, the BrOffice.org project showed once more the power of collaborative work.

The First National BrOffice.org Meeting opened a new chapter in the history of Free Software events in Brazil. The virtual meeting had the support of over 1000 people throughout the country integrating the several local BrOffice.org communities and allowing for the interaction of participants.

The meeting was also a victory for the community. The vast majority of the organizers of the video conference links were participants in Free Software user and developer groups. For many of these volunteers, directly participating in the BrOffice.org project, the moment is one of evaluating results and, soon after, of hands on to make true the commitments made with the users, confirming the success of this First National BrOffice.org Meeting.

http://www.openoffice.org.br/?q=first_brazilian_meeting

Builds for FreeBSD/amd64

On June 14 to the releases/AT/openoffice.org Maho Nakata announced that OpenOffice.org 2.0.3rc5 packages for FreeBSD/amd64 were uploaded to the site.

If you have a amd64 machine and get FreeBSD installed, try the following installation set, Uno Runtime Environment and Software Development Kit.

OOo_2.0.3rc5_FreeBSD61X86_64_SDK.tar.bz2
OOo_2.0.3rc5_FreeBSD61X86_64_URE.tar.bz2
OOo_2.0.3rc5_FreeBSD61X86_64_install_en-US.tbz

md5sums for them, here you go:
dd9abcaf26b5ad996eb3019667a2b7d4 OOo_2.0.3rc5_FreeBSD61X86_64_SDK.tar.bz2
efd53645738ee32875f2d60d7d1a8158 OOo_2.0.3rc5_FreeBSD61X86_64_URE.tar.bz2
72585b105760f7dbfa95913b576a1987 OOo_2.0.3rc5_FreeBSD61X86_64_install_en-US.tbz

He pointed out some critical issues for the build.
"Use KDE instead of GTK," and "XIM must be killed."

"We thank very much to Jung-uk Kim, who worked very hard for this port," he said.

If you use it, please feedback to their team:
http://porting.openoffice.org/freebsd/

First Brazilian Meeting

http://www.openoffice.org/editorial/first_broffice_meeting_200606.html

Innovation, collaboration and results. In its first National Meeting, on June 2, 2006 through a video conference link connecting over 20 Brazilian states and Canada, the BrOffice.org project showed once more the power of collaborative work.

The First National BrOffice.org Meeting opened a new chapter in the history of Free Software events in Brazil. The virtual meeting had the support of over 1000 people throughout the country integrating the several local BrOffice.org communities and allowing for the interaction of participants.

The meeting was also a victory for the community. The vast majority of the organizers of the video conference links were participants in Free Software user and developer groups. For many of these volunteers, directly participating in the BrOffice.org project, the moment is one of evaluating results and, soon after, of hands on to make true the commitments made with the users, confirming the success of this First National BrOffice.org Meeting.

http://www.openoffice.org.br/?q=first_brazilian_meeting

Conclusion: This is not a virus, even not a proof of concept

Thank you very much, the Kaspersky Labs analyst and other virus naming companies experts for finding it and calling it "virus," "proof of concenpt," "Virus.StarOffice.Stardust.a," "SBasic.Stardust.A!int," "XML_DUSTAR.A," "StarDust.intd," whatever.
Thank you, we learned a lot about viruses, macro viruses and proof of concept viruses.

We love to see Our conclusions, opinions and OOoDust.

1. OpenOffice.org Team's announcement and conclusion:
"it is not even a virus" "users should never accept files from unknown sources"

2. David Fraser's conclusion:
"this is all nothing to be afraid of"

3. Pavel Janik's conclusion:
"just remove it from your system"

4. Malte Timmermann's conclusion:
"This is not a virus, even not a proof of concept"

5. John McCreesh's conclusion:
"if we are relying on these 'anti-virus experts' to protect the IT industry from viruses, then the sooner everyone moves to open-source software the better. At least then we can judge who the real experts are"

6. Pavel Janik's opinion:
"the blogger from Kaspersky simply should have contacted OpenOffice.org security team first, not only because it is "standard way" to report security issues to vendors but it could also prevent everyone from this faux pas"

7. Laurent Godard's "proof of nothing," OOoDust
"OpenOffice.org project has a structure for reporting any suspicious behaviour, so feel free to contact us"

OpenOffice.org security team: http://www.openoffice.org/security/