Israel's Finance Ministry To Distribute OpenOffice

dudeman2 writes "Israel National News reports that The Israel Finance Ministry said Sunday it will begin distributing Open Office for free as of next week. The ministry said that it would begin to distribute thousands of Open Office CD-ROMs at public computer centers and later on at community centers throughout the country, 'in a bid to reduce the technological gap between the rich and poor in Israel'."

Comments

Fantastic!

[Limburgher]

Now this is a page the U.S. SHOULD take from Israel's playbook!

Not to the start a flamewar on the subject of Arab-Israeli relations, but just imagine the impact if the U.S. gov't did this! I'd start getting .sxc as attachments instead of .doc! Then, the economically challenged could buy a cheap PC, or get one used from a church or something, and immediately make it more useful!

Re:Fantastic!

[budgenator]

wearen't they evaluating openoffice as part of a plan to migrate to Linux?
that's the impression I got;

The ministry is aware that despite the substantial savings accrued by not buying Microsoft licenses, there would also be considerable installment costs.

my experience is OO for Win32 is an equivalent install to any other Win32 software. Additionaly

the Account General supreme inter-ministerial tenders committee had instructed IT managers at government ministries to buy PCs without Microsoft operating licenses from January 2004.

implies that Linux will probably be installed on all new Isreali PC's

Is free cheap enough?

[mikeophile]

Will Bill now start paying the Israeli government to use Microsoft products?

Installation Costs?

[VivianC]

From the Article:
The ministry is aware that despite the substantial savings accrued by not buying Microsoft licenses, there would also be considerable installment costs.

I have installed Open Office, Star Office, Word Perfect Office and Microsoft Office for various clients over the past two years. Maybe I'm missing something about a large scale deploy, but they all seem about the same for installation. I can even use SMS to drop the package automatically. Any idea what they are talking about?

Re:My experience as a consultant for the Israelis

[the_duke_of_hazzard]

Check the weather story (below on the main page) out - a very opiniated response from the same user is on there, and the phrase "FINAL SOLUTION" pops up gratuitously there also...

Consider The Source

[Eberlin]

A lot of people will dismiss this as a "whoop-tee-doo" gesture and that would be an expected knee-jerk reaction. The thing here is that one must consider the source -- WHO is giving the stuff away. It's not the same as me burning a hundred OSS cd's and leaving them out for people to take. This is a GOVERNMENT entity doing this, and thus has more "umph" to it.

This is most definitely a good thing.

Well...

[tuxette]

I already make the Norwegian government send me things in non-M$ format; it usually ends up in .pdf-format. They are required by law to do this for me. Mowahaha.

How does this help the poor?

[fermion]

Don't most computer come with a rudimentary work processor and spreadsheet? It seems like mac still comes with Appleworks and PC with a stripped version of office. So how does this help? Is giving away copies of OOo going to reduce the cost of buying a computer so that it is affordable to everyone? Can someone say 'I don't need MS Office so take that off my bill." I think we have already tried and failed to get MS to refund licensing costs.

This is just a way to get people to try OOo in an effort to phase out MS. I think it is a good thing, and may ultimately make MS behave better is Israel, but it is not in any way, shape or form going to reduce the technological gap.

Re:How does this help the poor?

[An Onerous Coward]

Yes, indeed, computers are cheaper than MS Office. I'm typing this on a 433 Celeron-based machine which I will probably be selling in the next few days for less than $100. It runs OpenOffice 1.1 just fine.

As you say, there are lots of people out there with all sorts of software loaded on their machines. But much of it is illegal, so there are hidden costs. People lose respect for copyright laws. The laws themselves become more draconian, in order to crack down on widespread piracy. New players like OO.o are shut out of the market because there is an entire segment of the population where "free as in beer" confers no competitive advantage.

In short, widespread piracy distorts copyright law and locks out competition. Despite the problems with copyright law, we do need it. If a "free as in legal" product can be had that has 90% of the functionality of MS Office, then it is irresponsible to use "closing the digital divide" as an excuse for encouraging piracy.

Especially if half of the remaining 10% is Clippy.

Threat or Real?

[mcrbids]

Is this a threat to Microsoft? Or is this "for real"?

If they actually distribute the CDs, is there a difference?

I consider this a followup on this story at Linux Today about their threat to use Linux instead of MS-Windows.

As such, we are definitely seeing the economics of competition and choice re-enter the marketplace, and no matter how you look at it, this is a GOOD THING.

Re:Distributed by CDR Copies

[pergamon]

Actually, it's possible that is being done with government sanction. I once spoke with a high-up Microsoft exec who said that at that time (mid 90s), the Chinese government was their chief concern as far as piracy goes. According to him, they went all out by even copying the holograms on the license certs.

yep

[ed.han]

i used to do work w/ an israeli governmental entity who would send us large data files that were natively in hebrew. working for a financial services company at the time, i was obliged to find a translation service as we were using these files to populate a database. that particular entity was using office 97 hebrew edition to generate a large excel spreadsheet.

several characters didn't get displayed properly on my english edition PC and i went back & forth w/ the translation service and the file creators, until we learned that the issue was the file creators were using win NT hebrew edition as well, which represents certain characters incorrectly when those characters are then displayed on an english edition box. i think i lost a week getting that file straightened out.

ed

Re:You are talking ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

They occupy territories gained in th 1967 war, which was started by Israel(they call it preventive or whatever, fact is, they started it)

Bullshit. Read some history. The Egyptian government blockaded an international waterway (the straits of Tiran), an act of war. Egypt might not have shot first in the Six-Day war, but they definitely started it. Israel responded, and other Arab nations joined in (with their usual military incompetence) and lost.

If the US army rolled across the border and occupied Niagara Falls, Canada, they could probably do it without firing a shot (given the sorry state of the Canadian armed forces), but it's still an act of war. Canada would be justified to shoot at US forces without warning. The US would be the aggressor, and Canada the victim.

After the Six-Day war, the Arab nations met in Khartoom to discuss the situation. Some call the meeting the "THREE NO CONFERENCE". There were 3 resultions:

No negotiations.
No recognition.
No peace.

That policy continues to this day (except for Egypt & Jordan). The 1967 war has yet to be settled. Ergo, the territories are legally occupied.

Also, just wondering, what would you think if people started coming on your land, with the intent of creating their own country on your land

Riiight.

The British mandate of Palestine was divided by the UN to create 2 states, one Arab, one Israeli. This was unacceptable to the Arabs, and they chose the path of war (and lost).

Re:The technological gap is a wealth gap

[pavon]

So? Computer prices keep dropping while software prices have not.

Right now, MS Windows + Office costs almost as much as computer does. Since an OS and office suite is pretty much required for a computer to be usefull, this is the same as giving them a $300 dollar discount on the computer, which lowers the barrier for entry significantly. In a few years, a computer will not be an economic burden for anyone living in a first world country.

$500 Decent Computer
$200 Decent Monitor

$200 MS Windows XP Home Edition
$300 MS Office 2003 Standard

Re:Stop the PC crap already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is every criticism of the state of Israel (like the brutal occupation of Palestine) being labelled as racism?

Because Arabs, Muslims, and the rest of the world didn't give a shit when Palestine was brutally occupied by Jordan and Egypt (holding the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively).

People didn't complain until the occupation was done by Jews.

Same reason why nobody complains about Turkey's occupation of Cyprus or Syria's occupation of Lebanon. Muslims as the occupiers are acceptable in the UN and the rest of the world. Jews as occupiers is a violation of human rights.

Conclusion - Jews are held to higher standards than Muslims. That's racism.