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City Of Austin Migrating To OpenOffice.org
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge.com has a story up this morning about the City of Austin and the results of their pilot program on OpenOffice.org. The bottom line is this: they have found that more than 80% of the city's 5K desktops can use OO.o instead of MS Office. Let the migrations begin!"
....sounds like Austin has a savvy fellow in the CIO spot.
The Army reading list
IBM's Linux Technology Center is in Austin...
I wonder what the other 20% are doing that OO.org can't handle? Some kind of bizzare Visual Basic macros that use Windows DLLs directly or something? Access databases that don't translate well across to other platforms? Access databases that can't be replicated in Adabas? Someone should ask them, and perhaps address their problems. After all I think that migration of 80% of 5000 desktops could yield some pretty good HCI and functional testing if they (especially as a government agency) are prepared to tell the open source community what issues they have with the product.
Certainly makes sense that they're going to need to solve that dependancy before they switch those people to OO.org...
You obviously didn't read the article, however you also failed to consider something anyway. There are still things that OOo can't do that MS Office can. For example, I can't fully switch because I need the chart/graph capabilities that Excel has, but OOo doesn't. For Austin, it's a specific application. OOo is great for most people, but it's not a complete replacement just yet.
G
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
From: Scott Brown
Subject: [alg] Another Open Source win at the City
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 07:57:01 -0600
To: alg@austinlug.org
I thought a few of you might be interested in this...
We just concluded our first round of "official" Linux pilots, with one
of those being an OpenOffice replacement of Microsoft Office. It turns
out that the limited pilot we did (40 users) provided enough information
to be able to start converting some departments and users over to OO
from MS Office. First on the schedule is my department, Communications
and Technology Management, which will be having MS Office *uninstalled*
and OO installed in it's place on the majority of department desktops.
That should be around 300 people (we can't get everyone off MS Office
right now as we have one major application, the Agenda Management System
for the City Council, that requires the MS programs).
Training programs and help desk support is being put in place so it
looks like OO will be there for the long-term. Our pilot figured out
that about 80% of the users at the City could use OO instead of MS
Office so, at the very least, the City will not be paying Redmond for
anymore new licenses and at the very best, it will start converting
those apps that require MS Office over to something that will work in
the new OO environment.
We're finishing up the documentation for the rest of the pilots so I'll
keep ya'll posted...
-s.
--
Scott Brown
Technology and Support Services
OpenNetworks
website: http://www.opennetworks.org
DMCA only bans defeating 'copy protection'. If there's some obfuscation in there that's claimed to be 'copy protection', then the DMCA applies. As it is, the format is totally obscure but that's just a concequence of bad design. As a result it's legal. You can't copyright file formats. You can patent them, but MS hasn't done that with current office formats.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
I find it very interesting that some people complain that slashdot just rehashes old news from other websites while others complain that slashdot publishes news that hasn't been confirmed on other websites. Do you want a news site or a search engine?
This space intentionally left blank.
It costs OEMs money to preload applications and distribute CDs/documentation. If someone isn't paying, they're not going to do it, as far as I can see.
G
I've gotten about 30% of the computers in my workplace converted over to OpenOffice. We are a very MS Office heavy environment, so there have been some problems, but fewer than I expected. The problems all seem to be one-way, too, converting MS to OO rather than the other way around. It can be done.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
Comment removed based on user account deletion
See the comment of janderk at the end. Essentially, he tried to convert a Dutch school but because of this bug, he failed.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
I've tested Access 2000 under Linux using Codeweaver's CrossOver Office product - http://www.codeweavers.com/
It works very well, and i have complicated vba code running - the reports previewed fine, queries good, forms, etc...
you can download a version to do testing. Access was the only thing holding me back from moving to Linux - i use it all the time
What i would love to see would be Corel open sourcing the Paradox db so it could be ported to Linux - that was a great platform...
article is short
City of Austin pilot proves OpenOffice.org works
Wednesday December 17, 2003 - [ 02:38 PM GMT ]
Topics: Office Software , Open Source , Software
By: Joe Barr
The City of Austin recently completed a group of pilot studies on the use of open source software in its day-to-day business. According to a message posted this morning on the Austin LUG mailing list by Scott Brown, the results are in, and as a result, as many as 80% of the city's desktops will be migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org.
Brown noted in his email message that his department (Communications and Technology Management) will be the first to convert by uninstalling MS Office and putting OpenOffice.org in its place on about 300 desktops. The city has more than 5,000 desktops in total.
He also pointed out that not everyone can be converted yet because of one application (the City Council's Agenda Management System) that requires MS Office to run.
Brown also told the mailing list that "Training programs and help desk support is being put in place so it looks like OO will be there for the long-term."
More details to follow.
-ASQ
Ummm... no.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
Intentionally harming your competition by ispiring those feelings about a product/program through public announcements is FUD.
A good example would be what Microsoft has been saying about viral licenses and the GPL. All they need to do is get a good buzz going about "viral licenses", and wheher it is true or not, the competition has to waste time addressing their customer's fear, uncertainty and doubt.
I can speak for the company I work for. We use Word for processing electronic change notices for engineering, and the macros tie in closely with Outlook (email addresses). We couldn't easily swap out Word for OO without re-desigining that process, and believe me it was a pain politically and technically to get it to the point that it is today.
Day to Day word processor and spreadsheet use would be a totally different story.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
There's only one real Austin, just as there's only one real Paris. Both are in Texas. ;)
(Yeah, I know better, it's a joke. I've never been to either Paris, though I live in Austin - guess which one.)
The actual name of the software is OpenOffice.org. The software is not, not, NOT named OpenOffice, or Open Office.
The reason is because Open Office would conflict with the trademark of some Korean office suite.
If more open source software projects would name themselves after their domain name, it would make it really easy for customers to know where to go for information. Imagine if Mozilla.org would do this.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Well, it exists (it's called UNO), but quite obviously it is not the same.
At least it comes with nice bindings for Java, C++, Perl and Python.
A UNO-CORBA bridge was in the works, but I believe there is little interest in this.
I work for a large company and we are quietly converting many of the Access databases here to a MySQL database + PHP web frontend.
importing the data took us 10 minutes.
someone barely familiar with PHP can write the frontend within 2 months. (I knew ZERO php before I started this project. 2 months later... I'm 90% finished and we extendedto server 4 offices instead of one.)
There is no excuse to stick with Access based database. Even a visual Basic programmer can pick up PHP withing a day or two.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
if you're using PHP for a db front-end, you should check out phplens - www.phplens.com. It makes building db apps for php extremely easy, it's like using Access or Delphi. it could save you a lot of time if you are writing code to do edits, deletes, add, etc...
Merrium-Webster seems to disagree with you... (emphasis mine)
Pronunciation: "ir-i-'gard-l&s
Function: adverb
Etymology: probably blend of irrespective and regardless
Date: circa 1912
nonstandard : REGARDLESS
usage Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.