Interview with Charles-H. Schulz on Open Standards

As you may have noticed, open standards are a hot topic currently. One person who deals with them all the time in a variety of ways is Charles-H. Schulz.

That's because he's one of the leaders of The Document Foundation, home to the LibreOffice fork of the ODF-based OpenOffice.org, and he's also on the board of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). The following is an interview exploring his views about standards - open and not so open.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Pandora's Box 2.0: Opening proprietary code

Open source lies at the heart of Google – it runs a modified form of Linux on its vast server farms, and uses many other free software programs in its operations. This makes giving back to the open source community not just the right thing to do but enlightened self-interest: the stronger free software becomes, the more Google can build upon it (cynics would say feed off it).

On The H Open.

Office Suites: LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org?

The office suite has occupied a very strange position in the world of open source. As a key software tool used by practically everyone on a daily basis, it was vital for free software to be able to offer one. And yet what came to be the leading office suite - OpenOffice.org - was widely recognised as deeply unsatisfactory. Its early versions were barely usable, and even in its later incarnations it was hard to get enthusiastic about it. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

OpenOffice.org: Freedom on a Fork

Regular readers of this column will know that I'm something of a fan of forks, but even I was surprised when OpenOffice.org was forked by the Document Foundation six months ago.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft Gives its Blessing to OpenOffice.org

On the 13 April 1999, a press release appeared headed “Mindcraft study shows Windows NT server outperforms Linux.” The summary read: “Microsoft Windows NT server 2.5 times faster than Linux as a file server and 3.7 times faster as Web server.” One thing the press release failed to mention was the following, found in the study itself: “Mindcraft Inc. conducted the performance tests described in this report between March 10 and March 13, 1999. Microsoft Corporation sponsored the testing reported herein.”

On Open Enterprise blog.

OpenOffice.org Discovers the Joy of Forking

Last week I wrote a piece entitled “Are We Entering the Golden Age of Forks?” I concluded:

I predict we are going to see plenty more forks in the near future as the community starts to re-assert itself. I also think that this tendency will lead to more independent foundations being set up to oversee the development of free software

Little did I suspect that we would see this quite so soon:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Opening up Computer Studies in the UK

One of the biggest disgraces in this country is the way that computing is taught - or rather, the way it is not taught. I know as a parent from years of interaction with the school system at various levels that what passes for computer teaching is in fact little more than rote learning of where the Open command is on the menu in Word and Excel. That is, instead of teaching pupils how to use computers as a generic tool to solve their particular problems, it becomes instead a dull exercise in committing to memory various ritual Microsoft sequences to achieve one specific task.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Has Oracle Been a Disaster for Sun's Open Source?

Companies based around open source are still comparatively young. So it remains an open question what happens to them in the long term. As open source becomes more widely accepted, an obvious growth path for them is to be bought by a bigger, traditional software company. The concern then becomes: how does the underlying open source code fare in those circumstances?

On The H Open.

Has the Irresistible Rise of OpenOffice.org Begun?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm a big fan of OpenOffice.org, and that I think it has the potential to break through into the mainstream. Maybe it's already begun, judging by these figures from webmasterpro.de:

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Great Oracle Experiment

So, it finally happened:

We are pleased to announce that Oracle has completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems and Sun is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle. With this news, we want to reiterate our commitment to deliver complete, open and integrated systems that help our customers improve the performance, reliability and security of their IT infrastructure. We would also like to thank the many customers that have supported us throughout the acquisition process....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Vietnam in Open Source Vanguard

Impressive how far and fast Vietnam has moved on the government open source front:

Accordingly, by June 30, 2009, 100% of servers of IT divisions of government agencies must be installed with open source software; 100% of staffs at these IT divisions must be trained in the use of these software products and at least 50% use them proficiently.

...

Open source software products are OpenOffice, email software for servers of Mozilla ThunderBird, Mozilla FireFox web browser and the Vietnamese typing software Unikey.

The instruction also said that by December 31, 2009, 70% of servers of ministries’ agencies and local state agencies must be installed with the above open source software products and 70% of IT staff trained in using this software; and at least 40% able to use the software in their work.

(Via Enterprise Open Source.)

Will OpenOffice.org Go to the Ball this Year?

I remain perplexed by the state of OpenOffice.org. After years of using Word 2 (yes, you read that correctly - by far the best version Microsoft ever produced), I jumped straight to OpenOffice.org as my main office software. Version 1.0 was, it is a true, a little on the, er, rough side, but since 2.0, I've had practically no problems - no crashes at all that I can remember. It's reasonably fast, not a huge memory hog (certainly nothing compared to the old versions of Firefox, or even Firefox 3.0, which still regularly eats several hundred Meg of my RAM for breakfast) and does practically everything most people who aren't Excel macro junkies could possibly want: what's not to like?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft's Tired TCO Toffee

Those with good memories may recall a phase that Microsoft went through in which it issued (and generally commissioned) a stack of TCO studies that “proved” Windows was better/cheaper than GNU/Linux. Of course, they did nothing of the sort, since the methodology was generally so flawed you could have proved anything.

I'd thought that even Microsoft had recognised that this was a very weak form of attack, so I was surprised to come across this....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is this OpenOffice.org's Firegull Moment?

One of the pivotal moments in the recent history of free software is when a small group of coders got fed up with the slow, buggy mess that was Mozilla, cut down and rewrote the code and created what eventually became Firefox....

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Outlook for Vista Gets Even Worse

As someone who has been following Microsoft for over 25 years, I remain staggered by the completeness of the Vista fiasco. Microsoft's constant backtracking on the phasing out of Windows XP is perhaps the most evident proof of the fact that people do not want to be forced to “upgrade” to something that has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system. But this story suggests an even greater aversion....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why OpenOffice.org Failed – and What to Do About It

Last week I noted that the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 seems to mark an important milestone in its adoption, judging at least by the healthy – and continuing – rate of downloads. But in many ways, success teaches us nothing; what is far more revealing is failure....

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Forecast Looks Good for OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org has always been something a Cinderella in the free software world. Partly this is because it started out as a proprietary program, and partly because it took a while for its code to be sorted out (although the same is true for Mozilla/Firefox). Whatever the reason, it's not had as high a profile as other major open source programs. But that looks like it is about to change, thanks to the interest in the recently released version 3.0....

On Open Enterprise blog.

OpenOffice.org Breaks Records Everywhere

All around the world, it seems, people just can't get enough of this amazing free office suite, which is now turning in serious market shares in some countries. For, example, according to this report, there are now 12 million users in Brazil, representing fully 25% of the entire office market there. Meanwhile, plucky little Italy has notched up 4 million downloads in the last 12 months (that's downloads, not users, but still impressive)....

On Open Enterprise blog.

A Survey of Open Source Surveys

One sign of the health of open source these days is the number of surveys saying how healthy it is. For example, here's one from Actuate:

The figures show that Europe leads the way in its preference for open source platforms, particularly in the deployment of new applications, and replacement of outdated systems, with France and Germany at the forefront....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Khmer Software Initiative

"Khmer" and "free software" are not the most obvious collocations. Indeed, the word "Khmer" tends to suggest just one other word - "Rouge" - in relation to that long-suffering country, Cambodia. So news that people are working on localised versions of open source has to be good news:

Noy’s built up a team inside NiDA to localize open source desktop apps into Khmer (a language too small to be interesting to Microsoft), build up open source development skills amongst young people (still early days on this one) and train end users on Linux, Open Office and Firefox (20,000 people and counting). He’s also the major champion behind Khmer OS, a localized OpenSuse distribution.