OpenDocument Gains New Fans 233
An anonymous reader writes "The OpenDocument format is gathering steam, as several influential companies seek an alternative to Microsoft Office." From the article: "The ODF Summit brought together representatives from a handful of industry groups and from at least 13 technology companies, including Oracle, Google and Novell. That stepped-up commitment from major companies comes amid signs that states are considering getting behind OpenDocument. James Gallt, the associate director for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, said Wednesday that there are a number of state agencies are exploring the use of the document format standard."
Prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
Sidenote: That bloody PIX SPORTS ad does more to encourage ad blocking software than any counter-commercial advocate.
Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps an Apple version of openOffice 2.0?
They have to really -- their reliance on Microsoft to produce a Mac version of office has had them in a vice for years, but their agreements are coming to an end and Microsoft's grip is slipping.
Shootout at the MA Corral (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
More likely, they'll release their version of Excel alongside the existing iWork apps Keynote and Pages. If they manage an Exchange Server alternative, iWork would become substantially more important to them.
Or, they could just buy out the Macintosh Office division of MS.
The ball is rolling... (Score:5, Interesting)
Install Open Office on your workstation and show your boss how visually its similar to Microsoft Office so retraining for basic tasks (spreadsheets, letter documents, etc.) will be minimal. When the question comes up (yes it will) asking about opening attachments on e-mails from people still using Microsoft Office, show them it works and that you can even save in Microsoft's format to send to others.
Review the upgrade frequency of the software used in your office. If you upgrade operating systems every 3 years, explain the benefits of switching to another operating system such as SuSE or Ubuntu as far as your finances go.
I'm sure there are other ways to open eyes of management. If you can think of some, please reply to this and add it.
On a side note, not only will this open people up to alternatives to Microsoft, but the fact that they have stepped back and made a change will only make it easier to change if there is another alternative out there that would better fit the bill. It'll get them thinking.
Re:Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How much will it change anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortune 500 companies the key (Score:4, Interesting)
However, most of these big companies are locked into multi-billion, multi-year contracts with Microsoft, so I would be surprised to see anything happen soon.
I sure hope so (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OpenDocument Vs. "Microsoft Is Always Teh Winne (Score:4, Interesting)
You are so correct. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OpenDocument Vs. "Microsoft Is Always Teh Winne (Score:4, Interesting)
That, as Hunter S. T. put it, is the nut of the matter. And what *is* this? Do people develop emotional dependence on Texeco gas and get all zealotous when somebody mentions Chevron? Does KMart have loyal customers who sneer at Target shoppers as "communist"? Do HBO viewers stick to their "chosen" channel and deride Cinemax? Yet bring up operating systems, web browsers, programming languages...anything at all related to computers, down to such trivial choices as text editors: instant Jihad! I think we'd better add "computers" to "politics and religion" in the list of topics not to bring up at a table.
Man, I always figured if I'm going to put all that love into something, it's got to love me back. I just use what works for me, and don't really care what anybody else uses. Pity we can't all be shown the same courtesy.
Re:Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not a question of "outlook" or being Apple-friendly, it's a question of resources.
Apple, on the other hand, has been downright hostile towards the OOo folks, telling them in no uncertain terms that Apple does not wish to make it easier to run X11 on OS X and does not wish other people to make it easier. Apple wants everybody to port to their proprietary GUI and they are going to do whatever it takes to "motivate" people to do that.
The only way to run it will be through the X11 server, and in that case, it isn't very clean or elegant looking.
As CodeTek has shown, one can do a much better job integrating X11 into the OS X desktop. The fact that X11 is hard to use and inelegant on OS X is Apple's responsibility. Maybe they'll figure out sooner or later that they are hurting themselves with this attitude, but so far, there is no indication of that. So far, Apple still seems to seriously believe that a pure Cocoa desktop is the future.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's more of typcial sales-person FUD. Sales people can be extremely slimey critters, and will tell you anything to make sure you buy more stuff. This isn't unique to Microsoft, though it is amusing. (Especially after the whole Korn shell fiasco [wikipedia.org].)
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the AC's sale rep simply took two unrelated facts (the fact that OpenOffice contains GPL code, and the fact that OpenOffice implements the OpenDocument standard) and intentionally confused them. If he says it enough times, he might even believe it.
Personal Detriment Foundation (Score:1, Interesting)
And let me preface, this is on Windows, so you Mac and Linux desktop admins need not respond with tales of wonder about PDF.
I spend more time troubleshooting, upgrading, downgrading, converting, tweaking settings, etc; for Acrobat than anything else our Data Specialists use. What a friggin headache this program is. And whats worse, everyone not only requires PDF, they demand it.
I think OpenOffice has the ability to convert to PDF, but I haven't tried it. I assume that on Windows I would run into the same problems. Back before Acrobat 6, it was a fairly stable and reliable program, but since 6 it falls into the POS category.
Re:Fortune 500 companies the key (Score:4, Interesting)
Very true. However, realize that virtually all of the Fortune 500 have government contracts. As states adopt the requirement to use OpenDocument, those companies will have to as well, at least to some extent.
Additionally, some of the companies listed as participating in the summit are Fortune 500 themselves -- IBM (#10), Sun Microsystems (#194), Intel (#50), Oracle (#220). Nokia is a foreign company, while Google and CA should be on next years list (a maybe for CA).
That doesn't mean that they'll switch off Office of course, but it does mean that they're likely to support OpenDocument in some degree, if only by purchasing a plugin for Office to export the formats.
False (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How much will it change anything? (Score:2, Interesting)
> fail because the document produced in Open Office
> didn't produce on his MS Word a lower margin of 1
> inch, it created a lower margin of 1.25 inches,
> yes the idiot used a ruler. When he was told that
> the document was produced in Open Office, his
> response was "What's that? I said to use
> Microsoft Word!"
The office software being used is entirely a red herring here. Requiring specific margins is standard practice throughout academia at all grade levels, from the primary grades through to the post-graduate level, and one inch is by *far* the most common requirement. Students are *continually* trying to get away with slightly larger margins than are required (and slightly larger fonts than the teacher specifies, and slightly more than the amount of line spacing requested, and various other schenanighans) in order to "fill up" page requirements with fewer words; this, completely irrespective of software issues, is *always* grounds for downgrading.
On the one hand the teacher shouldn't be requiring a specific software product, but on the other hand the teacher doesn't want to hear inane and irrelevant comments like "I used such-and-such software" as an excuse for using excessively large margins. His response *should* have been, "You need to use software that supports setting the margins to one inch." (Which OO does support, of course, but the student implied otherwise.) So his response was not worded well. But, if you assumed that the student's bizarre implication were correct, it would ammount, roughly, to a paraphrase. The teacher also should have known better than to assume the student's implication was correct, but if he does take a student's remark at face value, the student really has no valid grounds for complaint.
Getting back to the software: I have wondered for a long time why the default margins in OpenOffice are so enormously large, but really it's neither here nor there. When you're doing a paper for school, you always need to check your margins anyway, to verify that they're correct. Not doing so is always grounds for downgrading, period. Trying to excuse it by explaining that OpenOffice was used is... well, let's just call it something the student needs to learn not to do and leave it at that.
Re:Prediction (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe by not supporting ODF natively and suggesting that 3rd parties will provide the support, Microsoft is actually saving us from an embrace and extend attack on the format, at least for long enough for it to put down some roots.
3rd parties will have no interest other that making the best possible conversion / support software. Given that anyone getting this 3rd party software will be highly interested in it working, any quirks will be attributed to the add-on software or Office itself.
Of course I wouldn't want to go into that business only to have Mr. Gates decide that he missed another train, catch up by bundling it with Office and push me off to the sidelines with Netscape and RealPlayer. Although ...:
That's just a troll (Score:3, Interesting)
ZDNet UK: MSOffice E29.5m, OpenOffice E200,000 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do NOT use the 'cat' binary from GNU coreutils to print out the content of a file because afterall the name 'cat' originated from the English word "concatenate".
Besides, the command '<
The linked page says the reason is that it's wasteful, and I guess that is technically correct since if you use your shell built-in may not spawn a new PID. So I guess it's as wasteful as using the 'date' command instead of getting your shell to print the date.