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Israel's Finance Ministry To Distribute OpenOffice

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the free-things-are-good-things dept.

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'."

2 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Fantastic! by Limburgher · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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!

    --

    You are not the customer.

  2. Consider The Source by Eberlin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.