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msevior writes "Just released today, the free software AbiWord word processor, employed by the One Laptop Per Child project, tightly integrates with a new collaboration Web site to enable easy real-time collaborative editing of documents. AbiCollab.net also enables documents to be stored online, allows format conversion on the fly, stores the history of the docs in svn, provides direct links to HTML-ized docs that update as you save them, and allows easy sharing of docs amongst friends and groups. All in all, new competition for Google Docs and Zoho Writer, but featuring a real word processor rather than an app in a browser."

msevior writes "The recently released AbiWord-2.4 (downloads for Linux, OSX and Windows here ) is the first Free Word Processor to offer an integrated Grammar Checker. We can can do this because we're a pure GPL'd application and so can easily collaborate with other Freely licensed applications like link-grammar, gtkmathview and itex2mml which provide AbiWord-2.4 with a superb Latex-based Math feature. Sun's license requirements for OpenOffice.Org make it much more difficult for such collaborations to occur."

msevior writes "The recently released AbiWord-2.4 (downloads for Linux, OSX and Windows here ) is the first Free Word Processor to offer an integrated Grammar Checker. We can can do this because we're a pure GPL'd application and so can easily collaborate with other Freely licensed applications like link-grammar, gtkmathview and itex2mml which provide AbiWord-2.4 with a superb Latex-based Math feature. Sun's license requirements for OpenOffice.Org make it much more difficult for such collaborations to occur."

uwog writes "AbiWord 2.2 marks a new milestone in the life of our beloved Ant. With a native port to MacOSX, and new features such as live updating tables of contents and TextBox support, Abi is finally a grown up Ant. Read the full announcement or go grab your own copy."

uwog writes "AbiWord 2.2 marks a new milestone in the life of our beloved Ant. With a native port to MacOSX, and new features such as live updating tables of contents and TextBox support, Abi is finally a grown up Ant. Read the full announcement or go grab your own copy."

uwog writes "AbiWord 2.2 marks a new milestone in the life of our beloved Ant. With a native port to MacOSX, and new features such as live updating tables of contents and TextBox support, Abi is finally a grown up Ant. Read the full announcement or go grab your own copy."

linguae writes "I'm running a FreeBSD desktop on a PC that has a 475MHz K6-2 processor with 64MB RAM. I use lightweight programs on my desktop such as Window Maker, AbiWord, and Firefox. I have been looking for a decent yet lightweight (and preferably Open Source) spreadsheet that is compatible with Excel, and also doesn't rely on dependencies such as GNOME or Java. I'm not an Excel power user, but sometimes I do have to share spreadsheets every now and then. I wonder if there is a spreadsheet equivalent of Abiword?"

Gsurface writes "If you have decided that it is time to kill MS Word, then it is time to look for an alternative. Flexbeta.net compares AbiWord, part of a larger project known as AbiSource, with MS Word and asks: is AbiWord a worthy MS Word replacement? Not to ruin the ending but according to the article the only draw back to AbiWord is that it currently does not feature a grammar checker, though a plug-in is in the works." (Also on this front, AbiWord's native Mac OS X version is labeled experimental, but seems to work very nicely.)

Allnighterking writes "Apparently the frustration with another Windows Product is starting to reach increasingly visible users. John Dvorak over at ABC News is starting to question if it's time to kill Word With Viable options like Open Office.org available for Windows as well as AbiWord and others. Since they are both using XML as a way to create the documents. Or perhaps dropping a separate application altogether and going with something like X Forms to create a browser based office suite."

aliya writes "With Abiword's version 1.90 coming out, their cocoa developer has announced that he will no longer work on a Mac version of the software because he doesn't want to support the company which treated him so poorly. There is a still a somewhat-supported X11 version available, though it is not kept current, and it appears that Abiword will join the abundant ranks of 'almost supported' word processors for Mac OS X."

aliya writes "With Abiword's version 1.90 coming out, their cocoa developer has announced that he will no longer work on a Mac version of the software because he doesn't want to support the company which treated him so poorly. There is a still a somewhat-supported X11 version available, though it is not kept current, and it appears that Abiword will join the abundant ranks of 'almost supported' word processors for Mac OS X."

aliya writes "With Abiword's version 1.90 coming out, their cocoa developer has announced that he will no longer work on a Mac version of the software because he doesn't want to support the company which treated him so poorly. There is a still a somewhat-supported X11 version available, though it is not kept current, and it appears that Abiword will join the abundant ranks of 'almost supported' word processors for Mac OS X."

aliya writes "With Abiword's version 1.90 coming out, their cocoa developer has announced that he will no longer work on a Mac version of the software because he doesn't want to support the company which treated him so poorly. There is a still a somewhat-supported X11 version available, though it is not kept current, and it appears that Abiword will join the abundant ranks of 'almost supported' word processors for Mac OS X."

Slashback tonight brings you updates on AbiWord's recent donation theft, persistent Australian spammers, more support for open software in government, and more -- read on below. Update: 10/31 00:09 GMT by T : Oops, doubled news of AbiWord / Paypal situation update has been halved; apologies.

It was the least they could do. Last week, AbiWord's PayPal account for donations was lightened to the tune of several hundred dollars. Now, an anonymous reader writes "According to this posting, PayPal has succumbed to the pressure. They have agreed to reimburse the AbiWord team for the money that was stolen from their account last week. I still want to know how the AbiWord account was broken into..."

Because licenses matter. specht writes "I am a bit surprised that nobody has reported this yet. EPSON KOWA made their scanner and printer software available for downloading again after they had to pull it because of a GPL violation (see the previous Slashdot story). More information about this (and why it had to be removed in the first place) are here . Kudos to EPSON KOWA and EPSON for working with the FSF to resolve these issues."

No, that's "Gorilla marketing." akiaki007 writes "As many might have noticed, Friday most of Manhattan was covered with butterflies. This article on CNN that states that NYC fined MS $50.00 and the cost of cleaning up the static-cling plastic ads. On a side note, most other companies probably would have been fined per ad, though somehow MS got off, pretty much scot-free."

Priceless -- which is nice when you're paying. Digital Soldier writes "HERE is an article from Government Executive Magazine justifying, from a security perspective, the use of open source software in government. In short, the article makes the point that open source software allows security administrators to be pro-active rather than purely reactive in their work. I guess they don't like waiting for service packs."

Lovely spam, lovely spam ah ah ah ah ... ghostrider_one writes "Australian IT is reporting that notorious Australian spammers T3 direct have appealed the recent dismisssal of their lawsuit against the person they blame for being blacklisted in SPEWS."

Slashback tonight brings you updates on AbiWord's recent donation theft, persistent Australian spammers, more support for open software in government, and more -- read on below. Update: 10/31 00:09 GMT by T : Oops, doubled news of AbiWord / Paypal situation update has been halved; apologies.

It was the least they could do. Last week, AbiWord's PayPal account for donations was lightened to the tune of several hundred dollars. Now, an anonymous reader writes "According to this posting, PayPal has succumbed to the pressure. They have agreed to reimburse the AbiWord team for the money that was stolen from their account last week. I still want to know how the AbiWord account was broken into..."

Because licenses matter. specht writes "I am a bit surprised that nobody has reported this yet. EPSON KOWA made their scanner and printer software available for downloading again after they had to pull it because of a GPL violation (see the previous Slashdot story). More information about this (and why it had to be removed in the first place) are here . Kudos to EPSON KOWA and EPSON for working with the FSF to resolve these issues."

No, that's "Gorilla marketing." akiaki007 writes "As many might have noticed, Friday most of Manhattan was covered with butterflies. This article on CNN that states that NYC fined MS $50.00 and the cost of cleaning up the static-cling plastic ads. On a side note, most other companies probably would have been fined per ad, though somehow MS got off, pretty much scot-free."

Priceless -- which is nice when you're paying. Digital Soldier writes "HERE is an article from Government Executive Magazine justifying, from a security perspective, the use of open source software in government. In short, the article makes the point that open source software allows security administrators to be pro-active rather than purely reactive in their work. I guess they don't like waiting for service packs."

Lovely spam, lovely spam ah ah ah ah ... ghostrider_one writes "Australian IT is reporting that notorious Australian spammers T3 direct have appealed the recent dismisssal of their lawsuit against the person they blame for being blacklisted in SPEWS."

SabberFlapper writes "According to this Announcement to the developer list of Abiword the Abiword fund was robbed. Dom Lachowicz writes: 'I'm duty bound to let you all know that the AbiWord Fund/Tip Jar has been robbed approximately three weeks ago. I'm telling you this now, rather than sooner, since I believed that Paypal would do something about my complaints during the interim, and that this would all be resolved quietly. Today, 23 days later, this does not look like it will happen. [..] I do however, recommend doing several things: 1) Writing to Paypal, in letter, email, or fax form alerting them to this travesty. 2) Calling Paypal on AbiWord's behalf. 3) Writing or calling your Congressman/woman, pointing out that Paypal is acting like a bank, but not operating under formal banking laws. 4) Boycotting Paypal because of these reasons, and the fact that their system is notoriously insecure, and encouraging others to do the same.'" Of all the groups to steal from -- AbiWord?

SabberFlapper writes "According to this Announcement to the developer list of Abiword the Abiword fund was robbed. Dom Lachowicz writes: 'I'm duty bound to let you all know that the AbiWord Fund/Tip Jar has been robbed approximately three weeks ago. I'm telling you this now, rather than sooner, since I believed that Paypal would do something about my complaints during the interim, and that this would all be resolved quietly. Today, 23 days later, this does not look like it will happen. [..] I do however, recommend doing several things: 1) Writing to Paypal, in letter, email, or fax form alerting them to this travesty. 2) Calling Paypal on AbiWord's behalf. 3) Writing or calling your Congressman/woman, pointing out that Paypal is acting like a bank, but not operating under formal banking laws. 4) Boycotting Paypal because of these reasons, and the fact that their system is notoriously insecure, and encouraging others to do the same.'" Of all the groups to steal from -- AbiWord?

Boiotos asks: "I'm cooking up a CD-ROM image of excellent Win32 Open Source software to give to friends and family who are intrigued by the whole OSS movement but don't know where to start. I figure once they're used to Mozilla and AbiWord under WinXP, a Linux partition would be less daunting. So fellow Slashdotters, how about it: what Win32 OSS projects deserve a place on the 650 Mb of Solid Gold? Remember, this is for non-geeks and families, so Cygwin is out (even though I love it) and games are in. Extra points, as always, to the obscure but beautiful. Finally, projects targeting only Win32 -- with no Free Unix crossover -- may apply, but will be subject to a strenuous physical test."

Rimbo asks: "I'm building a computer for a friend, who has three major requirements from his system: He wants an Athlon with a 333MHz FSB, he wants absolutely no Microsoft software anywhere near it, and he needs the ability to read and edit Chinese. I imagine Red Flag Linux has great Chinese support, but is it as easy to use as a desktop OS as Mandrake or Red Hat? How easy is Chinese text editing and entry under the major distributions? What "office" software for Linux is good for editing Chinese? Thanks!"

plam writes "After 3 years of hacking, the AbiWord team has unleashed AbiWord 1.0.1 upon the world. AbiWord is a Free cross-platform word processor which runs on Linux and Windows, MacOS X, QNX, FreeBSD, Solaris and others. AbiWord is small and compact (20 times smaller than OpenOffice!), yet contains most of the features found in larger word processors, including Word and WordPerfect import/export."

plam writes "After 3 years of hacking, the AbiWord team has unleashed AbiWord 1.0.1 upon the world. AbiWord is a Free cross-platform word processor which runs on Linux and Windows, MacOS X, QNX, FreeBSD, Solaris and others. AbiWord is small and compact (20 times smaller than OpenOffice!), yet contains most of the features found in larger word processors, including Word and WordPerfect import/export."

plam writes "After 3 years of hacking, the AbiWord team has unleashed AbiWord 1.0.1 upon the world. AbiWord is a Free cross-platform word processor which runs on Linux and Windows, MacOS X, QNX, FreeBSD, Solaris and others. AbiWord is small and compact (20 times smaller than OpenOffice!), yet contains most of the features found in larger word processors, including Word and WordPerfect import/export."

bockman writes "Abiword developers have put up a letter, explaining what they expect from their user community and what the community should (and should not) expect from a volunteer-based open source software project like theirs. A much needed reality-check in these times when a large number of non-developers have joined the Linux users world." This is a must read for anyone who uses any open source software.

David Neto writes "SourceGear Corp., the parent of AbiSource, has acquired Cyclic. SourceGear will assure continued development of CVS. " Good news for all-SourceGear is going to be the new parent umbrella for AbiSource, trying to extend their name in the public domain.

thomasd writes "AbiSource have just released development version 0.7 of their GPLed wordprocessor, which runs on Unix, Windows, and BeOS. There's still a fair bit missing, but it's now quite usable for producing simple document, and it's starting to look very polished. For the lazy, there are now binary packages as well as source code. "

thomasd writes "AbiSource have just released development version 0.7 of their GPLed wordprocessor, which runs on Unix, Windows, and BeOS. There's still a fair bit missing, but it's now quite usable for producing simple document, and it's starting to look very polished. For the lazy, there are now binary packages as well as source code. "

thomasd writes "AbiSource have just released development version 0.7 of their GPLed wordprocessor, which runs on Unix, Windows, and BeOS. There's still a fair bit missing, but it's now quite usable for producing simple document, and it's starting to look very polished. For the lazy, there are now binary packages as well as source code. "

Gryphon sent us a link to a Linux Power article on Open Source causing more harm than good. Talks about OSI, ESR, the recent proliferation of "Open Source" and more things that are also being discussed fairly passionately in the article on ESR wanting to retire that we posted earlier. Update: 03/29 11:45 by S : In other reactions to the ESR story, AbiSource's Eric Sink argues replacing ESR is the wrong goal, and Bruce Perens says we need speakers not leaders. Thanks to LT and rokhed.

You've been waiting all week for the most hotly contested Slashdot/LinuxWorld Awards (which we created this morning while nate was in the shower). The nominees were submitted by anyone who happened to pass our booth this morning, and the winners were selected by our impartial (cough) judges. Hit the link to see what you missed at LWCE. Best Towering Rotating Monolithic Corporate Logo Compaq

It looms ominously over the ghetto here at LinuxWorld, obscuring the flourescent lights and casting a gentle breeze on those of us back in the corner on the show.

Best Schwag Sendmail

The little knives that they've been handing out aren't as cool as the Leatherman Wave, but they can be handy when the suits come to try to get you to move to their ISPs.

Best Hive Mentality Fashion Sense IBM

With their fancy little blue shirts and black pants, they perform with synchronicity that would make the borg jealous.

Best Futile Attempt to Capture the Alternative Feel of Linux with Cheesy Logo Extreme Linux

Snowboarding Penguins? Wow.

Open Source Leader with Most Phunk Eric S. Raymond

Believe it or not, he actually has rhythm. And he can play a mean flute.

Foxiest Booth Fluff Slashdot

The black minidress, and Adrienne Lane (hemos' girlfriend, lucky bastard) inside of it sold more t-shirts then the combined personality of Hemos and CmdrTaco.

Highest Density EMF in a Booth Debian

I think they've got 38 computers, an empeg, and more geeks than I thought possible in a 10x10 space. Next show they'll have to build shelves and stack them.

Best use of Vinyl in Apparel Joseph Arruda from VA

How can we say anything more than just wow

Sugar Distribution Award Rick Highness

The webmaster of Greasy Spoon brought us snickers, reeses peanut butter cups, kool-aid, sugar, and basically anything else that could conceivably power us through the crowds.

Most Persistant Marketeers Abisource

That damn ant. Its everywhere. It haunts my dreams. It appeared at parties. It got more action than I did last night.

Most Desirable IDG Employee Kristin "Trixie" DeAngelis

It was a close race between her and Charlie Greco, but she inched ahead when rumors of her tatoos left certain Slashdot Team members with spittle hanging.

Best Multi Bitchin' Recreational Facilities The Free Software Foundation

They got foosball, they got pool, and they got RMS. How can you argue with that? Maybe next year they'll have kiddie swimming pool and swimmies.

Distributed Use of Painful Color Computer Associates

CA has provided the whole floor with schwag bags that were such a blinding shade of yellow that everyone will need to update their optical prescriptions. Ya know how your mom told you not to stare directly at the sun?

Goon Squad Award LWCE Security

The friendly security guards who refused to let me in to get my laptop on tuesday, tried to keep me out because I had a press badge and not an exhibit badge, and even are rumored to have prevented Linus from getting in to the exhibit hall without a badge. They forced Slackware to turn off their lights for using 100 watts of bootlegged juice to run their light bulb. We don't even want to know what they did to that guy who tried to wheel in his own freight without paying $800 to have a professional do it for him. And they even tried to ban IP masqing.

Company that Bribes Slashdot with the Coolest Hardware Undecided

We still don't have a winner in this competitive catagory. So far people have threatened Cobalt Qubes, a Netwinder, Palm V's, Quad Processing Xeon's (yeah right) and at last count, 213 different blue suited representatives from IBM offering Netfinititys- but not a seriously coveted Thinkpad. So far, the winner is the pixar guys who brought me a sweet Prequel t-shirt, and the runner up is Linux Mall who gave us a big stuffed penguin, so there is still time to win this prestigious award!

I just wanna thank all the folks that helped get us down here. The LinuxWorld people got us a booth, and Red Hat hooked us up to bandwidth so we could actually post stories (guess they didn't want their portal to be boring when they announced it) and Linux-HW who hooked us up with airfare and paid our hotel for our stay in the valley.

Eric W. Sink writes "Development is moving quickly on AbiWord, our Open Source, cross-platform word processor. We also recently switched to the GPL. Come see our progress and check out the latest tarball. "

Eric W. Sink writes "Development is moving quickly on AbiWord, our Open Source, cross-platform word processor. We also recently switched to the GPL. Come see our progress and check out the latest tarball. "

Eric W. Sink writes "Development is moving quickly on AbiWord, our Open Source, cross-platform word processor. We also recently switched to the GPL. Come see our progress and check out the latest tarball. "

Eric W. Sink writes "Full source code for the first developer release of AbiWord is now available from the AbiSource website at Consistent with ESR's "early and often" philosophy, we've released early :-). The August 21st press release is now there as well."

Eric W. Sink writes "Full source code for the first developer release of AbiWord is now available from the AbiSource website at Consistent with ESR's "early and often" philosophy, we've released early :-). The August 21st press release is now there as well."

The AbiSource website has screen shots and code for an Open Source word processor that they're working on. Uses GTK, and the site seems to be hinting at the fact that this is the first component in a suite. Check it out.

Eric W. Sink writes " AbiSource Inc. is a new developer of Open Source software. We'll be making announcements about new projects at O'Reilly's Open Source Developer Day. For various reasons, we have developed a new Open Source license, called the AbiSource Public License (AbiPL). The AbiPL is a form of a copyleft which has been intentionally designed as a somewhat weaker copyleft than the GPL, in order to permit compatibility with NPL/MozPL code. We are soliciting feedback from the Open Source community on this license. See a draft of the license, as well as additional information. " Eric asked me to post this despite the fact that comments are disabled. He asks interested folks to wait until comments are back, or email him

Eric W. Sink writes " AbiSource Inc. is a new developer of Open Source software. We'll be making announcements about new projects at O'Reilly's Open Source Developer Day. For various reasons, we have developed a new Open Source license, called the AbiSource Public License (AbiPL). The AbiPL is a form of a copyleft which has been intentionally designed as a somewhat weaker copyleft than the GPL, in order to permit compatibility with NPL/MozPL code. We are soliciting feedback from the Open Source community on this license. See a draft of the license, as well as additional information. " Eric asked me to post this despite the fact that comments are disabled. He asks interested folks to wait until comments are back, or email him