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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'."
"FINAL SOLUTION" is perhaps not the best choice of words. :)
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.
'in a bid to reduce the technological gap between the rich and poor in Israel'.
And in a similar move City Officials in Hong Kong announced plans to widely distribute illegal CD-R cracked copies of Micrsoft Office 2003.
oh yeah, wait, that's already being done without a government sanction.
If there is a Hebrew localization of Office, what is to stop a zillion people from pirating it? (like everywhere else)
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?
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
The Scots got there first...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/34593.html
giving people free cds is like giving them free gasoline. it is almost useless to anyone without a car.
did you forget to take your meds?
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.
Israel National News, or Arutz Sheva (Channel 7) as it's more commonly known, is a heavily right wing biased media outlet whose management was recently sentenced to various prison terms for operating an illegal radio station.
More details here
It's an odd source for tech news.
This is somewhat offtopic, but doesn't anyone think that Israel has bigger problems to deal with right now, instead of distributing OpenOffice.org CDs?
Because God knows that if you have troubles with your neighbors you should Immediately cease any attempt at doing silly little things like bettering your information infrastructure or freeing up valuble resources that were previously going to a monopoly that was selling you software that you couldn't use properly.
Despite the anti-jewish trolls (someone mod these jerks down PLEASE, this is a TECH page!!!!). The decision Israel made points out both advantage and disadvantages of OS like OpenOffice.org.
First, there are still compatibility issues. Although OpenOffice is a great office suite as is it still has problems converting from other formats. Therefore, even though it is free, government agencies that MUST access historical files in the original form do incur further expense in making an accurate file conversion.
Second, when you have a government agency that requires certain forms to be filled out electronically you have to make sure that the people filling out those forms have access to the programs to do this. This problem is exacerbated by the first concern previously mentioned.
Israel seems to have thought this through. That's why they're giving the disks away and also why they're biting the bullet and paying for properly converting the files (part of the installation process).
If OS software is going to ever really make any imprint in the government or any other institution we're going to have to be honest. OS may be cheap, but nothings truly free.
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
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.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
No, but he is expected to meet with Yassir Arafat to discuss how he can fund the Microsoft intifada.
Don't most computer come with a rudimentary work processor and spreadsheet?
OpenOffice is not a "rudimentary" word processor and spreadsheet. The "rudimentary" stuff you mention is intentionally inadequate for a lot of people.
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.
It's much easier to get a PC without paying for Office than to get a PC without paying for Windows.
Is giving away copies of OOo going to reduce the cost of buying a computer so that it is affordable to everyone?
Well, it sure makes a big difference. You can buy a PC for less than the price of MS Office these days. So eliminating MS Office from the package halves the price. I'd say that makes a computer affordable to a lot more people, wouldn't you?
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
OpenOffice is a cross-platform suite. It's not just for Linux. I use the Windows version all the time.
Free software for the win32 platform is (I think) an important front of the F/OSS movement. Most people are unwilling to take the plunge straight into Linux. Using free software on win32 is a way to wade in and test the waters before jumping in. The win32 port of The GIMP was the first thing that got me really excited about free software, and I have since migrated to more free and open source applications and operating systems. For those of you running windows who would like to check out some free software, follow the links below:
Saddam's army attacked US troops, *not* peacekeepers.
I *have* heard of the 9/11 attack, It
was not Afganistan. It was a group of
mostly Saudi people, not by a nation.
US was not retaliating Panama.
9/11 30 years ago. Ironic is it not?
I have some good friends from Palestine who are very vocal about the issue. I have some good friends from Israel who are likewise very vocal about the issue. They are all very highly educated, very articulate, and very much believe in their perspective views. As such I have heard countless arguments on both sides over the years. I have seen numbers from both sides proving what they say, but in the end, they don't matter. You can make numbers say what ever you want them to - and both sides do. Both sides put out numbers showing how they were harmed, and how little they have harmed the other. These numbers are not stopping either side from killing the other, just encouraging it.
Numbers like these lead to more donations to Palestine some of which buys more weapons. When Israel does its the same thing - more money to buy weapons. They don't lead to any solutions, only finger pointing, name-calling and more bloodshed.
You know what angers me most? It's my own part in it. The majority of funding for this - both sides of this - comes from the USA. Until a few years ago I contributed to both sides in my charitable giving, and even worse, for a long time I did not take the time to understand the various points of view, and see my own part in it. So yes, I have blood on my hands as well. I often wonder what would happen if the money just stopped flowing.
Before I get off my soapbox, can anyone tell me how much money Israel has spent caring for those Palestinians injured in their various attacks on Palestine? How about telling me how much money Palestine has spent caring for those injured in Israel by suicide Palestinian bombers?
And we are surprised this keeps going on?
You may find unofficial translations of the GPL into Hebrew at law.co.il and guides.co.il.
Take an OpenOffice.org Writer file (SXW). Rename the file to have the extension SXC. (For OOo Calc -- the spreadsheet.)
Now open it.
It opens as a Writer document just fine.
All OOo documents use the same XML structure. Based on some information in the META-INF directory, OOo is able to deduce that the top level of the document should open in Writer.
What do I mean by all this META-INF nonsense? Try this experiment: take any OOo document and rename it's extension (from SXC, SXW, etc.) to ZIP. Now unzip it. You get a Content.xml file, a META-INF folder, and other goodies if your document contained embedded pictures, etc.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!