French National Assembly switches

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=7687

Deputies elected to the French National Assembly in the next legislative session will find open-source software on their desktop PCs.

The use of free software will result in substantial cost savings, despite the cost of migration and training, the Assembly said.

Free and open-source software now offers all the functions the deputies need, according to a study conducted at the request of the president of the assembly, Jean-Louis Debr¨¦.

The software on the deputies' computers will include the Linux operating system, the OpenOffice productivity suite, the Firefox web browser and an open-source email application.

OpenOffice.org Mac Porters Meeting

OpenOffice.org Mac porter meeting at Google office
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"he main developers of the Mac OS X port for OpenOffice.org project
meet to work together over a weekend

- show, analyse, work on current development version,
- share our knowledge in workshops (e.g. for debug )
- define tasks and objectives
- meet, collaborate and have fun coding.

Norwegian Native Lang Project Wins

Here's a rough translation of the jury decision: "The jury has chosen
to award an IT project that through large community contributions, expert
knowledge, and extensive project cooperation has created an office suite
in Norwegian, Bokmål and Nynorsk, which is user-friendly and keeps to
high language standards. 投资顾问

Why OpenOffice.org uses OpenDocument

On GullFOSS, blog of OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun, Michael Brauer, OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC Chair, said a clear "no" to whether OpenOffice.org may switch to ECMA Office Open XML as native file format.


http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/why_openoffice.org_uses_opendocument

"The documents that our users and customers create with OpenOffice.org belong them, not us. They, not us, must be able to read or process them in the near, far, and very far future. And they, not us, must have the choice to use whatever application they want to do so. And they, not us, have to bear the consequences if this is not given."

"For this reason, the XML project already in 2000 decided to develop an XML file format for office applications that ensures interoperability and long-time access to documents, and that may be used by other office applications as well."

BharateeeyaOO hits Sunday Times, Bangalore

The main page of Sunday Times, leading daily in Bangalore, India, on November 12th, carried an article about the Kannada CDs launch scheduled in the coming month. BharateeyaOO figures as one of the main items in the "Whats Coming" inset.

Team from China for QA

On November 24, Zhiyue Cao from National Application Software Testing
Labs (NAST)/Beijing Software Testing & QA Center (BSTQC), announced to
dev@qa.openoffice.org that they will participate in QA works for
OpenOffie.org.

Office Open xml will be welcome

Alliance Statement On Microsoft/Novell Collaboration Regarding Document Format Compatibility

Washington, DC, November 3, 2006

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), a broad cross-section of organizations, academia and industry dedicated to improving access to electronic government documents, issued the following statement regarding Microsoft and Novell's announcement regarding collaboration on document format compatibility:

"We see yesterday's announcement as further acknowledgement from Microsoft that ODF is something customers are demanding," said Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance. "By making it easier for some Open Office users to access files stored in Microsoft's Office Open XML format, it makes it easier for customers to adopt ODF without worrying about the difficulty of tapping into files stored in a proprietary format that others may send them, or that they may have stored in their own systems."

"Open Office and other ODF-supporting implementations already support a variety of legacy or proprietary formats, and Office Open XML will be a welcome addition. In terms of Microsoft's translator project that would save Word files in the ODF format, the Alliance still thinks that the translator project does not yet provide true interoperability, and we encourage Microsoft to provide native support in Office that will allow users to save to ODF as easily as any other format."

Novell and Microsoft Collaborate

I think they mean "OpenOffice.org" when they say "OpenOffice."

They are going to collaborate on "Windows and Linux Interoperability and Support," "OpenOffice and MS Office Interoperability and Support" and "OpenDocument and Open XML Interoperability and Support."

But many people questions, "How do they do?"

Let us go to their FAQ and find an answer.

FAQ from Novell and FAQ from Microsoft

Q. How will the technical cooperation work?

Document Format Compatibility. Microsoft and Novell have been focusing on ways to improve interoperability between office productivity applications. The two companies will now work together on ways for OpenOffice and Microsoft Office users to best share documents and both will take steps to make translators available to improve interoperability between Open XML and OpenDocument Formats.

Q: What does the patent agreement cover with regard to Mono and OpenOffice?

Yes, under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server. All of these technologies will be improved upon during the five years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings. The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.

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