Mittwoch Oktober 12, 2005

"Why multi-party stewardship of the OpenDocument Format matters so much"
"Given ODF's multi-party stewardship, the ODF standard is far more open to incorporating such changes than would be a single-party controlled format since that single party may have other offerings that are threatened by the enhancements. Although such conflicts of interest are not completely avoided by multi-party stewarded standards, their likelihood is significantly reduced by the transparency of the standards setting process."
The full article can be found here.
( Okt 12 2005, 10:48:24 PM CEST ) Permalink

Avanquest distributing StarOffice 8
"As part of the agreement, Avanquest will make StarOffice 8 software available to consumers throughout Europe, downloadable versions of StarOffice 8 software will be available through Avanquest Online stores in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the UK. Online shoppers in Italy, Spain and Portugal will be able to download the software from Avanquest Online by end-October, with the retail boxed version of StarOffice 8 also available through more than 5,000 retail outlets Europe-wide by the end of the month."
The full article can be found here.
( Okt 12 2005, 10:42:13 PM CEST ) Permalink

Open Source Attracts Public Sector
"File format compatibility could prompt other public-sector CIOs to consider similar moves, said Murugan Pal, founder and chief technology officer of SpikeSource, which sells combinations of open-source products and support licenses.

"Two hundred years from now, organizations won't want to be paying software royalties just so they can read documents that were formatted in a variety of old formats," he said.

Even if OpenDocument isn't the prevailing format years from now, developers will be able to easily create tools that understand it, he said. "The moment a format is not owned commercially, anybody can create an interpreter to read that format," he added."

The full article can be found here.
( Okt 12 2005, 10:37:26 PM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Release Candidate 3
Please read Stefan Taxhet's blog!
( Okt 12 2005, 09:40:55 PM CEST ) Permalink

About Dinosaurs
I just realized that someone picked up a statement from my blog and commented on it:

"Well, Microsoft rivals are bringing it on. There was this shot at Microsoft from Sun's Erwin Tenhumberg, on Microsoft's decision to offer PDF support in Office 12:

It is interesting to see that this huge dinosaur of a company (i.e. Microsoft) can and does actually change the product strategy based on customer pressure.

Is Microsoft a dinosaur? If they are, it might not bode all that well for Sun and Google after all. Remember, dinosaurs dominated the earth for 100 million years and ate a lot of smaller prey."

I personally did not see my statement as strong as it appears in this article when I wrote it, but I probably have to be more careful about how I say things because one never knows where it ends up. Nevertheless, I want to make one more comment on dinosaurs. Do they still exist?

The future will tell us if I was right or wrong, but I strongly believe that the increasing support for the OASIS OpenDocument format (Massachusetts, the European Commission, IBM, Corel, Novell, KOffice, AbiWord, TextMaker, ...) is leading to a big "climate change" which might be more beneficial to some "species" than to others.
( Okt 12 2005, 06:57:47 AM CEST ) Permalink

"OpenDocument standard garners worldwide support"
"The budding Open Document Fellowship will add momentum to a growing trend among schools and public agencies to support open standards for the creation, storage and delivery of business documents, the group said."
The full article can be found here.
( Okt 12 2005, 06:55:12 AM CEST ) Permalink

"Is a Web-based office suite on the way?"
"Michael Prince, CIO of Burlington Coat Factory, was happy to opine on whether StarOffice, Sun’s commercial version of the OpenOffice.org suite, was enterprise-ready. His company is a retailer with 350 stores and $3 billion in revenue. In 2001, Prince deployed StarOffice in all 350 of the company’s stores, with about six full-time users per store. Prince calls StarOffice “a hell of a product,” describing it as full-featured and having a lot of unique functionality. For example, he says, you can create a PDF file in StarOffice, something you won’t be able to do with Microsoft Office until Version 12."
The full article can be found here.
( Okt 12 2005, 06:51:48 AM CEST ) Permalink