Mittwoch Februar 28, 2007

OpenOffice.org at the German State Department
This German article talks about the usage of open source technologies including OpenOffice.org at the German State Department. According to the article the IT expenses per employee at the state department are 1190 Euro compared to up to 5000 Euro at other administrations that haven't switched to open source, yet. In addition, Rolf Schuster, the IT manager of the German State Department, mentioned that he does not see any real benefit in Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Office 2007.
( Feb 28 2007, 11:24:20 AM CET ) Permalink

"California may join rush of states toward ODF"
"A California legislator last Friday introduced a bill that would mandate the use of open, XML-based document file formats by the state government starting next January, the third such state-level legislation to be introduced this month."
The full article can be found here.
( Feb 28 2007, 07:15:42 AM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Montag Februar 26, 2007

FINA with OpenOffice.org support
FINA is yet another solution that integrates with OpenOffice.org:
"FINA is the state-of-the-art, Free (Open Source) information management system for Financial and Fiscal Supervision Authorities to collect data, store them in the data base and generate different reports using very flexible report designer tools."
Screenshots can be found here and more details can be found here.
( Feb 26 2007, 04:05:32 PM CET ) Permalink

Sonntag Februar 25, 2007

Connecting OpenOffice.org to MySQL
"One of the good things about OpenOffice.org is its ability to use different database engines. Just give it the right driver, and OpenOffice.org can connect to virtually any database system, including MySQL. However, deciding what database driver to use and configuring a connection between MySQL and OpenOffice.org can be a bit tricky. Let's walk through the process."
The full article can be found here.
( Feb 25 2007, 10:23:17 PM CET ) Permalink

Freitag Februar 23, 2007

South Africa moves to open source
"Cabinet approved a policy and strategy for the implementation of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in government. All new software developed for or by the Government will be based on open standards and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS. This strategy will, among other things, lower administration costs and enhance local Information Technology (IT) skills. The meeting noted that all the major IT vendors in the country have both supported the initiative and made contributions to the development of FOSS. Government departments will incorporate FOSS in their planning henceforth."
Found here.
( Feb 23 2007, 09:26:09 PM CET ) Permalink

Donnerstag Februar 22, 2007

ODF/OpenOffice.org report published by the Finnish government
The Finnish Ministry of Justice just published a new report about their adoption of OpenOffice.org and ODF. Here is a quote:

"Negative experiences in the migration have been rare during the first two months of 2007. The positive results of the 2006 OpenOffice.org pilot project have been valid also in the actual migration. Also the opposition to the change in office software has been very rare. The posi- tive attitude can be strengthened by focusing in training, standards complying document tem- plates, good handbooks and supportive tools. The strong points like the support for standards and document interoperability in addition to the free installation possibilities of OpenOffice.org are emphasized in the introduction of the software to new users.

The Ministry of Justice is an important customer to several Finnish IT companies. The com- panies produce large amounts of IT systems documentation as part of their services. The mi- gration to OpenDocument file format in systems documentation has also started."
( Feb 22 2007, 08:03:20 PM CET ) Permalink

Mittwoch Februar 21, 2007

Petition for ODF in the UK
A new petition for ODF has been launched in the UK.
( Feb 21 2007, 09:56:56 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Wow! 39,192 votes for OpenOffice.org on Dell website
Amazing! 39,192 people already voted on on Dell's new customer feedback website for a pre-installed OpenOffice.org.
( Feb 21 2007, 09:53:47 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Mother-Tongue Language Day & OpenOffice.org
"In a joint project funded by the Department of Communications and administered by the CSIR, we delivered OpenOffice.org and the Mozilla Firefox web browser in all 11 official languages. In celebration of Mother-Tongue Language Day, the Department of Communications, CSIR and Translate.org.za team are proud to announce an agreement that will see OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird updated and maintained for three years. This will ensure that South Africans are now empowered to create documents, spreadsheets, email and browse the web in their home languages."
The full translate.org.za newsletter can be found here.
( Feb 21 2007, 06:09:54 PM CET ) Permalink

ERP integration software announced for OpenOffice.org
In this German press release a company called ACTIWARE just announced a new software solution that integrates OpenOffice.org into ERP solutions like "infor:COM, Baan, Bäurer B2, Navision, Axapta, SAGE KHK, etc.".
( Feb 21 2007, 05:53:37 PM CET ) Permalink

Dienstag Februar 20, 2007

Bruce Byfield: "Configuring OpenOffice.org Writer"
Here is another useful article by Bruce Byfield. Here is a quote:
"If the available options are more than you care to handle, in most cases you can safely ignore them. In almost every case, the default options for Writer are likely to be acceptable to most users, even if they are not ideal. Some, like the viewing of nonprinting characters are available from the menu, while others can be set elsewhere in Writer, such as the default fonts. However, when you want more control of your word processing or desktop publishing, spent some time familiarizing yourself with the options. Unless you're very unusual, you're sure to find a tweak or two that will make your computing easier."
( Feb 20 2007, 02:31:18 PM CET ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org wins in the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards
"The polls are closed and the results are in for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards (http://www.linuxquestions.org/awards/). Among the winners are Ubuntu, Firefox, MySQL and OpenOffice.org. The Members Choice Awards allow members of the Linux community to choose their favorite products in a variety of categories including Linux Distribution of the Year, Office Suite of the Year and Web Browser of the Year. The total number of categories this year was 21."

Congratulations to every OpenOffice.org community member!!!

More details can be found here.
( Feb 20 2007, 02:27:40 PM CET ) Permalink

The OpenOffice.org Conference 2007 will be in Barcelona, Spain
It has just been announced by John McCreesh, the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead, that Barcelona (Spain) will be the location for this year's OpenOffice.org Conference. Congratulations! The Call for Papers will probably start soon as well.

In the voting process for the location Barcelona, Spain got 297 votes, Dehradun, India 224 votes and Beijing, and China 82 votes. Thus, chances are good that next year's OpenOffice.org Conference will be in a location outside of Europe.
( Feb 20 2007, 02:12:36 PM CET ) Permalink

More details about broadband wireless under Solaris

In order to get my UMTS 3G broadband wireless card to run under Solaris (Nevada build 56), I used the information from two resources, this one and this one. There is one more article which originally helped me to get my UTMS card running on Ubuntu, but I can't find that article anymore.

The PCMCIA card that I'm using is a Option Wireless Technology (Qualcomm 3G CDMA, GT 3G Quad). I installed the usbsacm cardbus driver as explained in the OpenSolaris article. However, the driver binding looks a bit different for my card. Based on the information that prtconf provided I had to add the following line to /etc/driver_aliases:

usbsacm "usbaf0,6300"

Instead of /dev/evdo I named my device /dev/umts. That is also the name of the device I put into the setpin script that is explained in the Ubuntu article already mentioned above. The script is needed to set the pin for the wireless card. Otherwise it will not work.

Then I created the scripts for the PPP daemon. I more or less used a mixture from both articles and some knowledge that I have from a third article which I currently can't find anymore:

# cat /etc/ppp/umts-chat
ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' ABORT VOICE ABORT 'NO DIALTONE' ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE' ABORT 'NO ANSWER' ABORT DELAYED
'' ATZ
OK-AT-OK "ATDT*99#"
CONNECT \d\c

# cat /etc/ppp/peers/umts
hide-password
noauth
connect "/usr/bin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/umts-chat"
debug
/dev/umts
460800
defaultroute
usepeerdns
noipdefault
user "t-mobile"
remotename umts
ipparam umts

I think it does not matter what you put in /etc/ppp/pap-secrets. As recommended in the OpenSolaris article, I installed the inetmenu tool and enabled its use for my user account via "Administration - Users and Groups - myusername - Properties". The inetmenu tool made switching between different networks very easy.

I first had some problems, because I could see in /var/adm/messages that I got a local and a remote IP address as well as IP addresses for the nameservers, but dumb me, I first forgot to copy the files /etc/ppp/resolv.conf to /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/nsswitch.dns to /etc/nsswitch.conf. The inetmenu tool takes care of that in a nice and comfortable way.

City of Zaragoza (Spain) moving to OpenOffice.org
According to this Spanish article the City of Zaragoza (Spain) will move to OpenOffice.org. The open source office suite will be installed on about 3,000 computers.
( Feb 20 2007, 06:43:49 AM CET ) Permalink