Northern Netherlands Municipality of

The northern Netherlands municipality of Groningen has opted to drop
Microsoft Office and switch to OpenOffice.org, saving a total of
€330,000 [US$418,500] annually

OOoCon Lyon Programme Announced

OpenOffice.org publishes the Programme for its Annual Conference

The annual OpenOffice.org Conference will be held in Lyons, France from September 11th-13th. The organising committee has now completed the difficult task of selecting the best of the proposals for papers, and the provisional Conference Programme is now on-line at http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/schedule.html

Conference highlights include keynote speakers from Novell and Google, and a panel discussion with representatives from Sun Microsystems, IBM, and OpenOffice.org. Over the three days, the conference streams cover topics of interest to developers and users, newcomers and veterans alike. There will be a particular focus on this year on OpenOffice.org and Open Document Format (ODF), following ODF's ratification as the international standard for office documents (ISO/IEC 26300).

The organisers have not forgotten the social side, making the most of the location in Lyons, the gastronomical heart of France. Last year's conference achieved rave reviews from attenders both for the conference content and the superb atmosphere - the organisers aim to raise the standard again this year.

It is still possible to register for attendance at the Conference. To register, please go to http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/registration.html

The Conference is also an excellent opportunity to present corporate messages through sponsorship of the event - see http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/sponsorship.html

The OpenOffice.org Conference Team look forward to meeting you in Lyon!

ODF proposed to become Malaysian Standard by year-end 2006

http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2006/07/odf_proposed_to.html

Hasannudin Saidin, Manager, Government Programs at IBM Malaysia Sdn Bhd, blogged on July 18, "Today, Yoon Kit and I, together with another fellow blogger here, Ditesh, each of us representing different organizations, were part of another historic SIRIM TC4 meeting, because the meeting now unanimously voted YES to proceed with the "project" for ODF (now ISO/IEC 26300) to be made a Malaysian Standard (acronym "MS")."

"The project now will proceed to the next step of approval from the higher-level committee in SIRIM that TC4 is under, i.e. Industry Standards Committee Group "G" (or ISC G), after which there is a public comment period from September to October 2006. ISC G will look at any comments after that and raise it to the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation for sign-off to become an MS. So, I expect ODF to become MS 26300 by year-end 2006."

French Ministry of defence report leak

The OpenOffice.org Team Response To The French Ministry of Defence Report Leak.

2006-07-20

There has been comment in the media about a report on a French language website: "Le ministère de la Défense met OpenOffice à l'index"

The ZDNet article claims to describe the proceedings of a confidential meeting within the French public administration. It is not appropriate for the OpenOffice.org community to comment on a leak from a private meeting. However, one of the people mentioned in the article, Eric Filiol, has posted two replies to the online article clarifying the purpose of the research and correcting some of the incorrect conclusions in the original article.

The OpenOffice.org office suite is being widely adopted within the French public administration, and the OpenOffice.org community has been working closely with the departments involved. OpenOffice.org is pleased that its source code is being scrutinised by the most important and respected department of security in France.

If security vulnerabilities are suspected, there is a well defined procedure within the IT industry for reporting, analysing, and resolving any issues, which aims to minimise any public announcement (and the resulting creation of exploits) until fixes are available.

The OpenOffice.org community confirms it regards security as of the highest importance and will react immediately to any security issues reported by the French public adminstration or other competent bodies or individuals.

Asian CJK Group Announced

On the 17th of July 2006, the Chinese, Japanese and Korean native-language projects of OpenOffice.org have decided to join forces to form the Asian CJK Native-Language Group of OpenOffice.org. Kazunari Hirano will act as the communications & technical coordinator of the group.

This group will allow these three projects to share experiences on common L10N and I18N issues and pool some ressources such as the work on some parts of QA. In the mean time, this group will also foster collaboration between the three projects on a marketing level, helping the spread of OpenOffice.org all over Asia.

We would like to thank the volunteers of these projects for their hard work and their long time commitment to the OpenOffice.org project.

Congratulations to Kazunari Hirano and good luck to the Asian CJK Native-Lang Group!

Charles-H.Schulz,
Lead of the Native-Language
Confederation, OpenOffice.org

-----
Useful links:
- Chinese Native-Lang project: http://zh.openoffice.org
- Japanese Native-Lang project: http://ja.openoffice.org
- Korean Native-Lang project: http://ko.openoffice.org
- Asian CJK NL Group wiki: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/CJK_Group

Google Joins ODF Alliance

Google backs OpenDocument format
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001713

Good News! isn't it?

Now you can find the name here.
http://odfalliance.org/about.php

Looks Good! doesn't it?
I have counted 240 current members of the Alliance.

Microsoft and ODF

"Company to sponsor open source project for Open XML-ODF file translation to deliver more choice for government customers and their constituents," said Microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jul06/07-06OpenSourceProjectPR.mspx

It is nice to see Microsoft mentions OpenDocument Format (ODF) like this.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter

This is the open source ODF Converter project called " ODF Add-in for Word 2007."

Here is a collection of news about it.

- OpenOffice.org welcomes Microsoft's tentative moves towards OpenDocument
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=294

- Microsoft Expands Document Interoperability
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060706/sfth055.html?.v=65

- Microsoft dragged into accepting ODF
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/06/microsoft_odf_interoperability/

- Microsoft Backs Open Document Format
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3618176

- Microsoft to develop ODF tools for Office suite as open source
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/75140

- Microsoft to Support OpenDocument
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_to_Support_OpenDocument/1152166759

- Microsoft Bows to Pressure to Interoperate with ODF
http://www.thechannelinsider.com/article/Microsoft+Bows+to+Pressure+to+Interoperate+with+ODF/182582_1.aspx

- Microsoft bends on OpenDocument
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsoft_bends_on_OpenDocument/0,2000061733,39262426,00.htm

- Microsoft bows to the demand for OpenDocument.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_to_Support_OpenDocument/1152166759

And Japanese news.

- MS funds ODF converter open source project
http://japan.cnet.com/news/biz/story/0,2000056020,20162467,00.htm
- MS Office supports OpenDocument
http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/0607/06/news041.html
- Microsoft Office can use OpenDocument files -- Plug-in developed
http://japan.zdnet.com/news/software/story/0,2000056195,20106590,00.htm
- MS announces MS Office supports OpenDocument -- Prototype Add-in released
http://www.forest.impress.co.jp/article/2006/07/06/msoffice_odf.html