The Open Office Blog

2011-11-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

Hebi cosplay is popular now.You can make yourself as a member in team Hebi.You can't wait to prepare a costume for your Hebi show.Now,it's time for show.

Cosplay

2011-03-27T19:42:00.001-07:00

Cosplay

Wonderful Nino Cosplay

2011-03-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Nino,A mysterious girl who lives in Arakawa. She is a self-claimed Venusian and later Kou's girlfriend. The origin of her name comes from the sweatsuit that she always wears that has the tag "Class 2-3" (Ni-no-san) on it. She is an incredible swimmer and can stay submerged for several minutes. With this skill Nino commonly goes fishing in the river and it is her job in the village to provide fish for the residents. She often forgets important information and often needs Kou to remind her. Her home is constructed of cardboard with the entrance sealed by a large curtain. Her lavish bed is made out of velvet, although she chooses to sleep in the drawer under the bed. If she becomes frightened or angry, she'll pull her sweatsuit over her head and climb on top of a streetlamp.Here some Nino Cosplay.

Yuumil Cosplay

2010-09-07T20:07:00.000-07:00

Yuumil Cosplay

cosplay

2010-08-17T19:45:00.000-07:00

cosplay

Cosplay

2010-06-07T02:10:00.000-07:00

Cosplay is short for "costume playing."

Cosplay

2010-06-04T01:35:00.000-07:00

The term cosplay represents a contraction of the English words costume play. The term was coined by Nobuyuki Takahashi of the Japanese studio Studio Hard while attending the 1984 Los Angeles Science Fiction Worldcon.

buy cosplay

2010-05-30T20:22:00.000-07:00

buy cosplay

pandora hearts cosplay costumes

2010-05-17T21:26:00.000-07:00

pandora hearts cosplay costumes

costume jewelry

2010-04-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

costume jewelry

cosplay headband

2010-04-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

cosplay headband

silver wig

2010-04-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

silver wig

red wig

2010-04-12T18:32:00.000-07:00

red wig

More details on Microsoft's free Office

2010-04-08T00:27:00.001-07:00

Microsoft has said that, starting with Office 2010, it will allow computer makers to bundle in a limited version of the product onto new PCs. However Microsoft has shared relatively little about Office Starter 2010, the product that will replace Works at the low-end of Microsoft's productivity lineup.

Over lunch on Wednesday, Chris Capossela, a senior vice president at Microsoft, shared a little more about what users can expect when they open up Office Starter.
Chris Capossela

Chris Capossela, a senior vice president at Microsoft, has shared a little more about what users can expect when they open up Office Starter.
(Credit: Microsoft )

As previously detailed, the product includes scaled-down versions of Word and Excel and is free for consumers, but does include advertising. Capossela said that the ads will change every 45 seconds, but for the foreseeable future the pitches will all be for Office itself. The ads will never be based on the content of one's document, he said.

"There's no scanning of the document," he said, a clear dig at rival Google. Instead the ads will say things like "Don't you miss PowerPoint" and encourage people to upgrade.

As for what users can do with the applications, Capossela said that Word will be capable of opening and displaying even the most complex documents. However, Office Starter users won't be able to use macros, create automated tables of contents, or add comments, though they will see comments added by others.

The approach with Excel is similar, with users able to view and edit documents, but not create their own pivot tables and pivot charts, for example.

Those who want more features--or to use of PowerPoint--will have to upgrade to a paid version of the product. Microsoft is also trying to ease that process, including all the code for Office 2010 on new PCs and allowing the other programs and features to be unlocked through the purchase of a new product key card.

The software maker envisions that over a short time more than 80 percent of new PCs will have Office Starter, though Capossela said on Wednesday that it will be up to computer makers how quickly PCs sold at retail have that product, as opposed to the current combination of Works and a trial version of Office 2007. He said that some PCs with the older software will probably be on shelves through the fall.

Microsoft is making a big bet with Office Starter. Although the company got comparatively little revenue from Works, which Office Starter replaces, the danger is that some users that would have paid for Office will settle for either Starter, the free browser-based Office Web Apps, or some combination of the two.

The company has been exploring the idea of an ad-funded productivity suite for years and did quietly introduce an ad-funded version of Works.

I'll have much more from my lunch with Capossela in a follow-up post Thursday morning.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, ch

wavy hair

2010-04-08T00:13:00.000-07:00

wavy hair

Final Fantasy Cosplay

2010-01-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

Final Fantasy Cosplay

Cosplay Costumes

2010-01-13T00:43:00.001-08:00

Cosplay Costumes

Cosplay

2010-01-13T00:43:00.000-08:00

Cosplay

2010-01-06T19:51:00.000-08:00

I like cosplayfu.

hetalia

2009-11-23T18:39:00.000-08:00

hetalia

Axis Powers Hetalia Paper models

2009-11-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

Axis Powers Hetalia Paper models

Just bought some Axis Powers Hetalia Paper models to make by myself.

Wang Yao (China)

Arthur Kirkland (United Kingdom)

Antonio Fernandez Carriedo (Spain)

Gilbert Weillschmitt (Prussia)

Alfred F Jones (America)

Francis Bonnefoy (France)

Ivan Braginsky (Russia)

Feliciano (North Italy)

Natalya Arlovskaja (Belarus)

Roderich Edelstein (Austria)

Axis Powers Hetalia Paper models Family!

Hetalia: Axis Powers

2009-10-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

Hetalia: Axis Powers is a webcomic, later adapted as a manga and an anime series, by Hidekaz Himaruya . The series presents an allegorical interpretation of political and historic events, particularly of the World War II era, in which the various countries are represented byanthropomorphic characters. Hetalia is a pun combining hetareand Italia .This is to make light of Italy's apparent cowardice during World War II.Himaruya originally created Hetalia as an online webcomic, and so far two tankōbon have been published by Gentosha Comics, the first on March 28, 2008 and the second on December 10, 2008. The series was later adapted into drama CDs, and an anime series created by Studio Deenhas also begun streaming online.The main historical events portrayed in this work occur between World War I and World War II. The series often uses satire and comedy to address well-known and lesser-known historical facts alike. Historical political and military interaction between countries is represented in Hetalia as social and romantic interaction between the characters; the webcomic version in particular depicts military and economic incursions using innuendo.

2009-10-29T20:21:00.001-07:00

hetalia

kjkjkjkjkjk

OpenTaal Publishes Dutch Word List

2007-06-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

Since the end of 2005 the project OpenTaal has worked to improve and
extend an existing open source Dutch word list. The approved word list
contains more than 140.000 keywords. The word list is available in
packages that can be installed in OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird.
The approved word list is available under a free license (LGPL) and may
be used by open source projects.

Groovy For OpenOffice 0.1

2007-06-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

"Groovy For OpenOffice is an OpenOffice.org extension which adds support
for scripting OpenOffice.org Macros in Groovy."

Japan's IPA Accepts List of Requirements

2007-05-28T00:52:00.000-07:00

Information Technology Promotion Agency of Japan in May announced results of FY2006 OSS projects, which includes "Summary," "Report" and "List of Requirements and Specifications" submitted by Good Day Inc. and its team whose proposal for an IPA public bid in 2006 was adopted to study OpenOffice.org.

Further efforts and contributions of them are expected by OpenOffice.org and Japanese Native Language Project.

More information would be available at the team's page:
http://ooo-research.good-day.net/?en_top

SB/BadBunny-A, a harmless

2007-05-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

OpenOffice.org has the security team. If you find ones like the budbunny, please contact our security team and send one to the team.

"SB/BadBunny-A, a harmless little bunny at least until you kick it!" said Mate Temmermann, our security expert, in his blog.

Sure Openoffice.org has a macro language with access to local resources, but "nothing bad can happen to you as long as you don't allow the macros to run." he said.

"Users shouldn't run macros from unknown sources, same like they shouldn't run any programs or other scripts from unknown sources." This is the message he repeats, and we, the OpenOffice.org Community, repeat.

On May 23rd the Community issued comments "About Security, BadBunny, and Macros" based on the information available so far.

Repeat.
"The OpenOffice.org community repeats the consistent message from security experts that users should never accept files from unknown sources. For any security issue, please visit OpenOffice.org's Security Team page."

Thank you.

OpenOffice.org in Africa

2007-02-11T19:03:00.000-08:00

Chris Charuhas pointed me to a story about OpenOffice.org in Africa -
"how a school created a new computer lab without buying computers,
software, or books". And OpenOffice.org is involved!

Free Online OpenOffice Tutorials

2007-01-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

Today In Pictures launched its new line of free computer how-to
tutorials, available at www.inpics.net. There are 12 online tutorials,
including OpenOffice.org. The tutorials can be used by anyone, free of
charge.

French National Assembly switches

2006-11-24T02:22:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-20T19:12:00.000-08:00

OpenOffice.org Mac porter meeting at Google office
--------------------------------------------------
"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

2006-11-20T19:10:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-17T03:28:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-05T00:29:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-04T19:37:00.000-08:00

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.

-------

Have you gotten an answer to your question?

Microsoft Office Joins Mss Genuine

2006-10-28T23:17:00.000-07:00

You thought Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) sucks? Wait, there is more to it: soon it will be up to Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) to show up. You have been warned, folks.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127678/article.html

Norwegian OpenOffice.org community wins prize and cash

2006-10-28T13:19:00.002-07:00

OpenOffice.org translators receive prize

by Eirik Rossen

This years prize for advancement of Free Software went to the translators of OpenOffice.org

The annual prize for the advancement of Free Software was handed out yesterday. Of the 25 nominated candidates, the Foundation for Free Norwegian Office Software won.

The prize is given on the initiative of the Norwegian Unix User Group (NUUG) and the Oslo Polytechnic and amounts to 30 000 NOK.

The goal is to increase awareness of free software and open standards, and is awarded to individuals or groups in Norway who distinguish themselves with their contribution. Yesterday's tribute was the fifth time the prize has been given out.

The Foundation for Free Norwegian Office Software received the prize for its work with the organization and coordination of the translation of the Free productivity suite, OpenOffice.org to both main dialects of Norwegian. The foundation also works to influence key stakeholders to adopt financial, business and archival systems using OpenOffice.org

The jury opines that access to software in ones native language is important to guarantee that everyone can benefit from the tools needed in today's IT-Norway. In the introduction it continues:

"The Foundation for Free Norwegian Office Software has contributed to the guarantee that writing tools that are needed at many work places now exist in both Bokm0Š2l and Nynorsk, and thus helped the continuation of the Norwegian language. It has also increased general knowledge of open standards by enabling usage of an open data format, and contributed to greater choice by providing Linux-users access to a complete productivity suite."

"The prize winners have in a distinguished manner put deed before talk in regards to open standards and Free software. Instead of forcing all to use software from a single vendor, they have given everyone the freedom to choose software in Norwegian. Through the translation of this freely available productivity suite, everyone gets full support for open data formats. The OpenDocument format is ratified by the International Standards Organization (ISO). Norwegian users have gained an productivity suite which can be freely downloaded both for commercial and personal use, on a range of platforms such as Windows, Linux and Macintosh."

Link in Norwegian: http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=355064
Thanks to Lars Nooden for the news!

Germanophone project to exhibit at

2006-10-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

This years Systems (October 23rd-27th in Munich), the Germanophone project will be present again with its own booth, supported by the association OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V. and four companies exhibiting together with us.

Companies present their products ranging from migration support and development to training, and we will present the project and the community, completed with public speeches about OpenOffice.org.

The Germanophone has good experiences from the last exhibitions done this way, and we look forward to a very interesting week. If you can make it to Munich - join us!

We are in hall A3, booth 441.

News about limux migration project

2006-09-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

The city of Munich today announced the next step in its LiMux migration project. The original press release, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be available in English, can be found at http://www.muenchen.de/Rathaus/dir/limux/ueberblick/175149/windowsabloesung.html

In short: The first official release of the base client has been finished and will be deployed to a first set of workstations by the end of the year, apart from the "beta testers" that already worked with LiMux. After that, more workstations will follow. OpenOffice.org is being used as the office suite within LiMux.

Phpmyadmin now can export to

2006-09-20T19:16:00.000-07:00

phpMyAdmin with ODF support
---------------------------
"phpMyAdmin is a web administration tool for MySQL databases, intended
to handle a whole database server as well as a single database. It is
maybe one of the most used tools for administering MySQL databases.
The new version 2.9.0, released yesterday, now contains an export
functionality to OpenDocument Text and OpenDocument Spreadsheet."

News from Georgian Native Lang Project

2006-08-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

SEA, SUN AND GEORGIAN OPENOFFICE.ORG

Tbilisi, Georgia - August 20, 2006

Blue sea, sun, ancient Colchian nature, Georgian wine and celebration
spirit. What else would one need from a place to organize a
localization summercamp?

In August 2006 eRiders Georgia in cooperation with OpenOffice.org
Georgian Native-Lang project selected a group of volunteer community
members from open source, linguists and IT-experts and organized
OpenOffice.org Georgian Localization Summercamp at Chakvi, a popular
Black Sea resort in Georgia.

The aim of the project was to localize OpenOffice.org user inteface
and user assistance messages to Georgian language, as well as increase
community interest and public awareness of OpenOffice.org and other
FLOSS products.

During 6 days the group of 30 participants and organizers localized
the whole user interface and majority of user assistance messages.

The QA will be accomplished with cooperation of OpenOffice.org
Georgian NL project and Deer Leap Foundation, a school computerization
programme by Georgian Ministry of Education and Science.

As a result, OpenOffice.org will be distributed to all Georgian
schools, where all students will get a chance to get used to FLOSS
products from the first beginning of their study.

The forthcoming changes in Georgian intellectual property law should
reduce piracy rate within Governmental, corporate and private users
and will eventually increase the demand on FLOSS products.

About Georgian Native-Lang - http://ka.openoffice.org

OpenOffice.org Georgian Native-Lang project is dedicated to promoting
and providing localization, distribution and migration support of
OpenOffice.org throughout Georgia and Georgian-speaking community.
Georgian NL also provides free technical support to Georgian
OpenOffice.org users. Email contact: aietkolkhi AT openoffice.org

About eRiders Georgia - http://www.eriders.ge

eRiders Georgia, along with ICT consulting and FLOSS promotion,
strives to introduce internet to Georgan regions by using wireless
technologies. eRiders Georgia is also involved in Georgan
localization of open source products. Email contact: eriders AT
googlegroups.com

by Aiet Kolkhi, KA project lead.

Information Technology Promotion

2006-08-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

We, the leads of the Native Language Confederation, would like to
thank the Information Technology Promotion Agency of Japan (IPA) for
proposing a study of OpenOffice.org. The study would focus on enhancing
OpenOffice.org's usefulness for the Japanese user. It represents a major
step toward the Japanese adoption of OpenOffice.org, the world's leading
open-source and open-standards-based office suite.

OpenOffice.org is available in the ten most spoken languages in the world

2006-08-20T19:29:00.000-07:00

While you can use OpenOffice.org in more than 80 languages (with
localized versions varying in quality and status), it is interesting
to note that with the latest developments taking place inside the Bengali
Team, OpenOffice.org is now available in the ten most spoken languages
in the world.

Danish Company Integrates CAD Drawings into OOo

2006-08-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

Finn Gruwier Larsen has brought us news "Danish company integrates CAD drawings into OpenOffice.org" at dev/AT/marketing.openoffice.org.

He has shortened and translated an announcement made by Danish company A. B. Jensen Maskinfabrik and OpenOffice.org in Denmark.

Danish engineer Lars Brandi Jensen and German software developer Simon Mieth has developed a program extension that makes OpenOffice.org capable of reading CAD files into an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet and make automatic calculations on it.

"We didn't choose OpenOffice.org just because it's cheaper," says Lars Brandi Jensen who is co-owner of company A.B. Jensen Maskinfabrik A/S.

"OpenOffice.org does of course fullfill the basic needs, but it also gave us open access to develop the functionality we needed to automatise the workflow when the production cost of an order is to be calculated."

The software extension called DXF2CALC makes it possible to import vector graphic files of type DXF into OpenOffice.org and make calculations based on the graphic.

It's also possible to see an outline of the drawing directly in OpenOffice.org. With this extension OpenOffice.org can act as an integrated part of the complete software setup used by the company to fulfill orders – from first sketch to the customer invoice.

A. B. Jensen is a production-to-order company in the area of sheet metal processing. Metal sheets are processed using laser and water beams. The company uses open source software whereever possible, and the tendency goes towards using more and more OSS.

OpenOffice.org is the software cornerstone that binds together drawing, calulation and ERP.

DXF2CALC is free for all to use and can be downloaded from this web address:

http://abj.dk/dxf2calc/

Extentions! Major Topic at OOoCon Lyon

2006-08-04T00:50:00.000-07:00

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier sat down with Louis Suárez-Potts, chair of OpenOffice.org's community council and community manager, at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Ore., to see what's on the OpenOffice.org development roadmap.

Suárez-Potts says that development is moving along nicely, but it will probably be a while before we see OpenOffice.org 3.0.

http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/02/1625228

Suárez-Potts says there really aren't many popular extensions for OpenOffice.org at this time -- but extension development will be a major topic of discussion at the OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon) 2006 that will be held from September 11 through September 13 in Lyon, France.
-----

OpenOffice.org Newletter readers, are you coming to OOoCon Lyon?
Register Now!
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/registration.html

Northern Netherlands Municipality of

2006-07-25T19:37:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-21T00:51:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-20T08:32:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-13T01:21:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

"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

Take Test Drive Keep Car

2006-06-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-21T11:11:00.001-07:00

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

2006-06-14T04:37:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

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/

Google to Take 630 SOC Projects

2006-05-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-24T00:56:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-21T03:29:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-20T19:40:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-18T03:45:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-04T00:24:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

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.

OOO Newsletter of April is Here

2006-04-29T19:41:00.001-07:00

After some weeks of *not* updating the OOo Newsletter-on-blog service, we are back, and this time you will have the pleasure to read the April issue of the OOo Newsletter.
Sorry for the inconvenience and welcome back to our show!

http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=281

OOO Newsletter of April is Here

2006-04-29T19:41:00.000-07:00

OpenOffice.org available in 7 new other Indic languages

2006-04-12T01:03:00.000-07:00

Thanks to RKVS Raman for these news:

"The BharateeyaOO.o Group ( http://www.cdacbangalore.in/bharateeyaoo )
of CDAC Electronics City Bangalore announces the availability of
OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 language packs in 7 Indian Languages.

The languages are

1) Assamese
2) Gujarati
3) Hindi
4) Malayalam
5) Marathi
6) Oriya
7) Urdu

Out of these languages Hindi has been jointly done by us and Rajesh
Ranjan and Gujarati has been translated by Utkarsh (
http://www.utkarsh.org ).

Special credits have to be given to GIST Group CDAC Pune (
http://www.cdac.in/html/gist/gistidx.asp ) for translating for the
rest of the 5 languages.

The Urdu Language Pack supports RTL interface.

The language packs have been made available for Linux (Debian and Red
Hat) and Windows.

The merged source is also made available.

Please download from http://www.cdacbangalore.in/bharateeyaoo/download.shtml

News of the Germanophone project at the Cebit

2006-04-08T01:05:00.000-07:00

"Hi all,

I know, that some of you have interest in the marketing activities from the germanophone project, so I would like to give you a short summary of CeBIT 2006 in Hannover (9.03.-15.03.06), where we presented OpenOffice.org.

This year CeBIT celebrated its 20th anniversary and had 6,262 exhibitors, including over 3,300 from abroad.

The germanophone project had a nice booth in hall 4, where also Microsoft, SAP and other small companies exhibited their goods :-) We presented the project together with some companies, which offer services around OOo and which made our booth possible. Additionally we had two lectures in the "LinuxPark".

Please have a look at our summary (german):
http://de.openoffice.org/veranstaltungen/cebit2006/index.html

English version:
http://de.openoffice.org/veranstaltungen/cebit2006/index_en.html

(thanks to Volker Merschmann and Sigrid Kronenberger for this!)

Some photos from the event:
http://de.openoffice.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=562 "

By Jacqueline Rahemipour

Microsoft to Delay Office 2007 With Vista

2006-03-25T01:02:00.000-08:00

Microsoft said Office 2007 would be delayed until next year, a move that will coincide with the delay of the highly-anticipated Windows Vista operating system.

The software giant had originally planned to make Office 2007 and Vista available concurrently in the fourth quarter in late 2006.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3594051

OpenOffice.org Premium introduced

2006-02-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

Kami Hir, from the Hungarian Native-Lang project ( http://hu.openoffice.org ) introduces OpenOffice.org Premium:http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=

George Ou writes another impartial article

2005-12-27T01:04:00.000-08:00

"Those who criticize Microsoft for producing some of the world's biggest bloatware clearly don't have the facts on their side."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=140

Visioo Writer Open Source

2005-11-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

A open source OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument word processing document file viewer available for Windows and Linux:
"Visioo-Writer is a free OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument file viewer.
The project is to create a multi-operating sytem, multi-language, fast and simple to use program, for the smallest possible size."
http://visioo-writer.tuxfamily.org/EN/

Telugu Software Tools Release

2005-10-31T22:31:00.000-08:00

RKVS Raman has announced the release of the Telugu Software Tools CD at a function in Hyderabad on Friday, attended by the Hon. Chief Minister of state of Andhra Pradesh as well as Hon. Minister of Communications and IT Mr. Dayanidhi Maran. This follows the Tamil and Hindi CD releases.

The CD includes the release of 1.9 trunk of OpenOffice.org in Telugu with the other OSS software included being Firefox, Thunderbird and Gaim.

The localization work was done in collaboration with the Andhra Pradesh chapter of the Free Software Foundation of India.

The Punjabi and Urdu CD release will be on November 9th by Hon. Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh.

The downloads are available from http://www.ildc.in/telugu/tindex.aspx

Free Software Foundation of India:
http://www.fsf.org.in/

Google lends hand to microsoft office

2005-10-31T00:42:00.000-08:00

"Google lends a hand to Microsoft Office rival"

The Times (UK) posts a story about Google's plans to help OpenOffice.org:
"Google is opening up yet another front in its battle with Microsoft by backing a competitor to Bill Gates’ dominant Office software package.

The internet search and advertising company is set to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice, a freely distributed "open source" alternative to products including Word, Microsoft’s massively popular word processor, it was revealed today. "
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1851613,00.html

Further reporting at ZDNet:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9593_22-5920762.html

OPINION CommonWealth Senate Meets On

2005-10-31T00:27:00.000-08:00

[Opinion] "Commonwealth Senate Meets on Holloween"

Sam Hiser has written an opinion piece about today's meeting of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight which aims to discuss the state's move to the OpenDocument Format. As previously blogged Microsoft has been attempting to get this move reversed:

http://samhiser.blogspot.com/2005/10/commonwealth-senate-meets-on-holloween.html

Recommendation of OpenOffice.org by Sydney Morning Herald

2005-10-29T00:58:00.000-07:00

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article that recommends that readers download OpenOffice.org 2.0:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/sites/foos-gold/2005/10/25/1130006117094.html

translate.sourceforge.net - localisation tools for FOSS

2005-10-28T21:23:00.000-07:00

"translate.sourceforge.net is a project to aid in the localization of software. Primarily the focus is Free and Open Source software. But more importantly the focus is on Language as the project, by this we mean that localisation should be a project in its own right not just an extension of another FOSS project."

translate.sourceforge.net - localisation tools for FOSS

2005-10-28T01:06:00.000-07:00

translate.sourceforge.net has released tools for the localisation of software. Included in this are tools to translate between different translation formats including OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox. From their own site:
"translate.sourceforge.net is a project to aid in the localization of software. Primarily the focus is Free and Open Source software. But more importantly the focus is on Language as the project, by this we mean that localisation should be a project in its own right not just an extension of another FOSS project."
translate.sourceforge.net

Review glimpse of OpenOffice 2.0 now

2005-10-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

"Once an open-source project really gets rolling, as has OpenOffice.org, it is tough for closed-source developers to beat it -- even the Microsoft Goliath. As you have noticed at this OpenOffice 2 level we still are viewing Microsoft Office as the standard and looking to see how OpenOffice 2 matches up against the standard. It would not be surprising at all if by the time OpenOffice 3 is released that OpenOffice is the standard and people will be looking to see if Microsoft Office comes up to the OpenOffice standard for office suite software."
http://www.mozillaquest.com/OpenSource05/OpenOffice-2-release_Story01.html

Hidden OpenDocument Agenda Uncovered

2005-10-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

"Between the fact that Microsoft made these allegations, the fact that Microsoft publicly stated it had been in contact with the state's Senators (who do not play a role in administrative decisions such as statewide IT standard setting, but who could be powerful enough to scuttle the decision), and the fact that there is now a hearing to investigate the process that's being led by a state Senator (Sen. Marc Pacheco) who has already voiced his opposition to ODF makes it pretty clear that Microsoft has had some role in the drama's latest developments."

"Corel, Novell Stump for OpenDocument Format"

2005-10-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

eWeek reports the news of Corel and Novell reiterating their backing for the OpenDocument format:
"In an attempt to both clarify the company's position and put more emphasis on its commitment to ODF, Corel's communication manager for WordPerfect said, "Corel is pleased to support the continued development and adoption of the OASIS OpenDocument Format, and Corel strongly endorses ODF, much as we strongly support the adoption of open standards industry-wide.""
"Novell Inc. has also given more prominence to its role in the ODF movement. Although the company has been active in promoting the format in the past, this is the first day that Novell has been officially listed on the membership roster of the technical committee at OASIS."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1877815,00.asp

Further reporting:
http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2144971/novell-steps-support-open

Speculation on Sun Google and

2005-10-25T23:25:00.000-07:00

ZDNet has a blog piece of speculating on an "AJAX-based version of OpenOffice.org":
"Much the same way that more Web sites make browsers more useful, and the way more Bittorrent servers make Bittorent clients more useful, AJAX will make OO.o more useful because, by virtue of solutions that we haven't seen or heard of yet (some of which will undoubtedly come out of the Sun-Google relationship), the number of people (aka: the size of the community) who can interact with OO.o-generated documents at any time, from any place, using any browser will probably be greater than the sum total of all users who have both OO.o and Microsoft Office."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2055

eWeek also has an article on the speculation:
"Sources close to the joint efforts between Google Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. say rampant speculation about hosted desktop productivity offerings and common operating systems is way off base."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1876336,00.asp

Further commentary on the eWeek article is also available:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20051025ForgetAboutSunGoogleOpenOffice.html

Further Contests On Massachusetts

2005-10-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

ZDNet has an opinion piece about news that Microsoft has been trying other methods to get the Massachusetts decision to use OpenDocument reversed:
"Based on what I've learned in the course of my reporting, Massachusetts' Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) of which the ODF/PDF decision is part, is an administrative matter that's not subject legislative proceedings. The only connection I can recall between the ETRM deliberations and mention of legislators was an indication from Microsoft's Brian Burke during the last semi-public meeting on the matter (Sept 16) that he had been discussing the matter with the state's senators on Beacon Hill (Boston's equivalent of Capitol Hill)."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2057

InformationWeek has further information on the move:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=172900251

Further reporting:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/10/25/galvin_attacks_software_proposal/

Firm deploys OpenOffice where it makes

2005-10-24T00:41:00.000-07:00

Firm Deploys OpenOffice--Where It Makes Sense

"The potential savings were compelling enough for Benincasa to get buy-in from management to begin deployment of OpenOffice.org 1.1.1 in areas of FN Manufacturing where potential incompatibilities would not be an issue. In December, Benincasa and his IT managers deployed OpenOffice.org 1.1.1 on warehouse operations desktops and upgraded shop machines from OpenOffice.org 1.0 to Version 1.1.1. Using these machines, users view construction and operation control sheets but do not create or make changes to documents."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1872805,00.asp

FOSS luminaries call to worldwide vote

2005-10-21T23:32:00.000-07:00

FREE AND OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE LUMINARIES CALL ON WORLDWIDE COMMUNITY TO VOTE AGAINST SOFTWARE PATENTS IN THE "EUROPEAN OF THE YEAR 2005" INTERNET POLL

Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly, Alan Cox, Rasmus Lerdorf and Monty Widenius endorse Florian Mueller's candidacy "because he runs on a NoSoftwarePatents ticket, and that is the message we want to reinforce"

Brussels (20 October 2005) -- A group of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) celebrities has weighed in on the election of the "European of the Year 2005" by calling on "software developers and users around the globe" to vote for Florian Mueller, the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, in a public online poll. The illustrious consortium consists of--in alphabetical order of last name--Alan Cox, Red Hat Fellow and Linux kernel maintainer; Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of the PHP programming language; Tim O'Reilly, book publisher and conference organizer; Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation (who in 1984 began the work
that produced today's popular GNU/Linux operating system); and Monty Widenius, creator of the MySQL database.

In a NoSoftwarePatents press release, the community leaders today expressed their support for the voting recommendations that NoSoftwarePatents.com has published in more than a dozen languages: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html

Participants in the poll are required to make a choice in each of ten categories, and the voting list provided by NoSoftwarePatents.com explains the role that various candidates played in the software patent debate so that voters can reward the opponents of software patents and penalize pro-patent politicians.

On 22 September, Florian Mueller was nominated for the most prestigious award in EU politics, the "EV50 Europeans of the Year". The jury thereby recognized his political efforts against a legislative proposal that in his opinion would have legalized software patents in Europe. The European Parliament rejected the bill on 6 July by a landslide of 648-32 votes. Mueller, who stressed that he owes this nomination "to our entire community and especially to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII)", is credited with founding a multilingual campaign website,
speaking out in the media and at public events, and lobbying MEPs (Members of
the European Parliament) as well as governments and parliaments in select EU
member states.

The European Voice, a major EU-focused weekly, is now conducting an Internet
poll in which Mueller runs against such famous contenders as U2 frontman Bono, Bob Geldof, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, and political leaders including British prime minister Tony Blair, the outgoing German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and Schroeder's successor designate Angela Merkel. The poll is open to the worldwide public until 11 November.

Mueller's endorsers pointed out that the FOSS community has played a particularly active role in the fight against software patents, but that software patents "threaten us all because they don't discriminate based on programming language, operating system, or licensing model". The group is "disconcerted by early reports" that the EU is now looking at alternative ways of giving software patents a stronger legal basis in Europe, such as an EU community patent regulation.

The press release underscored the fact that "this is a campaign for a cause, not for a person": People are asked to vote for Mueller "because he runs on a NoSoftwarePatents ticket, and that is the message we want to reinforce". The NoSoftwarePatents.com label is right next to Mueller's name on the ballot (http://www.ev50.com/poll).

The endorsement furthermore stated: "Some other nominees also stand for valid concerns and noble causes. However, those issues and individuals have already received a lot of coverage in the mass media, while the implications of software patents to the whole world, including developing countries, still require much more public awareness. In the sense that software patents monopolize mental steps, they are also a human rights issue."

Mueller is confident that he can win the title of the "European of the Year" against his famous competitors in the light of the "indisputable e-campaigning power of the anti-software patent movement". In addition to a campaign statement and voting recommendations, the website provides an email form that allows supporters to spread the information (http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/notify.html), and banners (http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/banners.html). The two main slogans of the electoral campaign are "Vote against software patents" and "Vote for your right to program".

Should he win the popular vote, Mueller said that "everyone is a winner". He promised "to donate the Microsoft-sponsored prize money to the FFII", without which he says he "probably wouldn't have become involved, let alone succeeded, in this political battle".

The EV50 winners will be announced on 29 November. A gala evening at the Palais d'Egmont in Brussels will be hosted by former European Parliament President Pat Cox, who was hired by US corporations to lobby for software patents in the build-up to the 6 July vote. The EV50 awards are supported by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. Sponsors include PR and lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller, software maker Microsoft Corporation (a major owner and backer of software patents), and pharmaceutical giant Novartis. The European Voice is a publication of the Economist group.

NOTE: Florian Mueller founded the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign in 2004 with the support of three corporate sponsors (1&1, Red Hat, MySQL AB), and managed it until March of 2005. He then gave his website to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), the leading European pressure group that opposes the patentability of computer programs.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Florian Mueller
florian.mueller@nosoftwarepatents.com

More OpenDocument Filter News

2005-10-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

Following on from the story "OpenDoc plug-in for MS Office users" CNet posts more details on the filter:
"Phase N intends to do exactly that, a task which it expects to take a few hundred hours of development time. It calls its project OpenOpenOffice.

Rather than client-side software to do the conversion, OpenOpenOffice relies on a server running a Perl application, according to the technical description.

The company hopes to have an open-source project started on SourceForge shortly."
http://news.com.com/2061-10795_3-5906971.html

Phase N has their description of the server side solution:
http://www.phase-n.com/openopenoffice/

Previous story:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2005/10/opendoc-plug-in-for-ms-office-users.html

SVG Import Filter for OpenOffice 2.0

2005-10-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

Now that OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been release we can point to tools and tips which can make it even more useful. One such tools is an importer for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) into OpenOffice.org. It can be found here:

http://www.ipd.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hauma/svg-import/

OpenOffice.org 2.0 relase news roundup

2005-10-20T23:30:00.000-07:00

The release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 has triggered a wave of news reports. Here is just a few of them:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123110,00.asp
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39232452,00.htm
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8346339850.html
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1549201339;fp;16;fpid;0
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=661
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/20/openoffice_versus_microsoftoffice/
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27120
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2005/10/21/openoffice_20_finally_released.html

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is here

2005-10-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source.

With new features, advanced XML capabilities and native support for the OASIS Standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society.

Download it now. If it is not ready today in your language, it will be shortly. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is yours.

Announcement:
http://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/press_release.html

Features:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/index.html

Press Kit:
http://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/index.html

Download:
http://download.openoffice.org/2.0.0/index.html

[Opinion] "Mozillarization of OpenOffice.org"

2005-10-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

"While sat here watching Ben Goodger doing a talk about Firefox at EuroOSCON, it got me thinking about this concept of taking a huge and bloated project (such as Netscape) and cutting it down to the core and releasing a spin-off project such as Firefox. With all of the recent discussion and email I have been receiving triggered from Opening the potential of OpenOffice.org, it makes sense if this process was drilled into OpenOffice.org."
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8136

News OpenOffice nears download

2005-10-19T23:07:00.001-07:00

ZDNet UK reports from the OASIS Adoption Forum in London that downloads of OpenOffice.org from the main site (that is not counting mirror sites, Linux packages or other distribution methods) is nearing 50 million over the 5 years of the project.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39231617,00.htm

Microsoft slashes shared licenses

2005-10-19T23:07:00.000-07:00

... And pretends to use BSD and MPL-style licenses:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1872835,00.asp

Open formats make history and maintain

2005-10-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Mozilla Foundation's Gervase Markham writes in the online edition of The Times about open document formats:
"Governments such as Massachusetts are concerned about long-term data preservation. We need to care about it too - there would be no point in having the 30-year-rule, which lets us read the inside story on all the Government scandals of the 1970s, if all the data was stored electronically in a format no-one understood any more.

All these problems are left behind by open formats. Anyone can implement them. The people behind www.OpenOffice.org, www.koffice.org and www.abiword.com have all done so - and there is no vendor lock-in. The documented and free nature of the format means that obsolescence is not possible. As long as the format has users, there will be software to read and write it."

OPINION Microsoft says maybe someday

2005-10-17T23:34:00.000-07:00

"Pryke-Smith said Microsoft would not be adopting OpenDocument, citing backwards compatibility concerns, but did say the company will watch to see how adoption of the standard develops. "We'll respond to customer demand on that," he said. "Our main focus is serving our existing customer base.""
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/newsblog/blog.php?ID=1642

OpenOffice.org 2.0 release candidate 3

2005-10-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

The lead up to the full release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 is underway. Release Candidate 3 has been released for testing. It can be downloaded at www.openoffice.org

eWeek has more news on this release here:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1871750,00.asp