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Ontario Schools License StarOffice
An anonymous reader writes "Sun Microsystems has signed a contract with the Ontario Ministry of Education in one of the biggest deals yet for its StarOffice software. It covers 72 public and parochial school boards in Ontario. All will be licensed to use StarOffice 7 on all school-owned PCs. Financial details weren't disclosed but Ontario school officials said the cost is 'minimal.'" Reader Apostata adds that the move "will see the application suite used by 2.5 million students. No word on whether it ships with 'Canadian English' pack ;)"
The Ontario school board used Word Perfect in the past, which made sense, giving money to an Ontario company. I don't know why they didn't just use OpenOffice now. Unless times have changed since I was in the Ontario school system it will only be used for word processing anyway.
I know as a fact, that computer systems in schools cost a huge amount of dollars (buying licenses for hundreds of computers at a time). I think the move to open source for schools will reduce the amount of prices associated with computers and allow for that money saved to be put towards something other than software (like gym equipment, or something more useful). When they move to open source operating systems, that will dramatically decrease problems associated with Windows (as there are right now)...
A lot of the great canadian references come from the movie "Strange Brew," based on characters from "The Great White North" which I believe was a Saturday Night Live skit.
;)
As for hearing anyone but them say it this way, the only peoples who I personally have heard with such an accent are those in Minnesota, which, as you probably know, is geographically very close to Canada.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
The difference between OpenOffice.org and StarOffice is that it comes with licensing, support, and the odd extra feature included. Corporations use StarOffice as opposed to OpenOffice for the same reasons they use Red Hat as opposed to Gentoo (I said it, I'm putting on asbestos underwear, you can't hurt me!). In a corporate setting that support tends to save you a few headaches.
Disclaimer: I like Gentoo, I just wouldn't use it as a server OS in a large corporation or an educational setting.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
It is not "Canadian English", it is "The Queen's English" that pretty much every other English-speaking country other than the US uses.
I hate sigs.
For anyone interested, here's (my interpretation of) the political and economic context in which this happened. This is a big win for OpenOffice, and I think this contextual information is relevant to the school boards decision to stop using MS Office.
Ontario, the most populous province in Canada, has had almost a decade of right- wing government: tax cuts and spending cuts. The economy has, on the whole, been pretty good but the debt and deficit have continued the rapid rise that began with the 89-93 recession.
Over this period the government has fought its main battles with the powerful teachers union to try and save money on their education budget.
In the recent election, both the incumbent right-wing party and the centrist party lied outrageouslly about what they could do in spite of the state of the budget. It seems that you have to do this to get elected these days. (The only party that told the truth about the budget got clobbered.)
The centrist party won the election and then had to come thru on its promises, which included a better relationship between gov't and teachers. This was clearly impossible, so they had to look at every conceivable way to save money without hurting teachers or letting any more schools fall apart. As usual, this exercise in cost cutting didn't yield even a fraction of what was promised, but it did get them to drop MS Office.
So, maybe debts, deficits, cuts, and politians aren't all bad.
But don't expect to see anything similar in big businesses. In my time doing systems consulting I found that, while government, small businesses, retail, and manufacturing were pretty strapped, most sectors of big business were wallowing in cash. The amount that these big companies are wasting on MS software is a tiny fraction of what they waste on all sorts of other things.
I drove west across the Trans-Canada Highway in '98 on my slightly roundabout way to California, and there was a definite patch of people saying "aboot" in Western Ontario. It was a long time ago now, but I think it was mostly between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay.
There is more then one "Canadian Accent" Just ask a Newfoundlander, a Quebec'er, ect... Where I'm from Greater Toronto Area Ontario, I don't hear aboot.
:P
Speaking of odd pronounciations though, why do yanks say sarry, like the Indian dress Sarie. SORR-Y
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
Coincidentally, even some British schools of grammar continue to use -'ize'. (Oxford, for example -- the traitors.)
ize
The Oxford English Dictionary argues that words which carry the sound iz whether from the Greek ending -izein or the Latin ending -izare should hold to the spelling with a z, there being no compelling reason to change.
Fowler notes that the following words need to be spelled with -ise:
advertise, apprise, chastise, circumcise, comprise, compromise, demise, despise, devise, disenfranchise, disguise, enfranchise, enterprise, excise, exercise, improvise, incise, premise, supervise, surmise, surprise.
Expect to see more such moves if the Green Party of Canada comes to power in this month's federal election. Not that they will actually win the election, of course, but the Greens do explicitly support open source software in their platform
The differences you've mentioned don't apply just to Canada; in Australia, English speaking European countries, and practically every where else, you will see "metre", "colour", and you will hear "zed", and "quarter past", "quarter to", etc. Americans are the odd ones out here.
It is true. The original StarOffice was sold by a German company. It was pretty famous for being able to run on most OSes of the time.
Sun bought them out a few years later and opened the code. The OpenOffice code is based on this old StarOffice, even though today StarOffice is a derivate of OpenOffice.org.
I don't know about Canada, but here in the UK we have major problems with teacher recruitment and retention. The argument for teacher pay rises comes not from socialism but simple free market economics. If people are not paid enough then they will go and do something else instead. And at the moment, in teaching, plenty of people do.
... doesn't mean they'll use it. The TCDSB (Toronto Catholic school board) IT department is so pro-microsoft that even anything Mac related was not supported. Even when it had to do with cross-platform software like FileMaker (used for elementary report cards, and owned by APPLE!) IMHO, the policy was reversed only because schools were buying Macs out of their own budgets for media use/etc.
Their student information system (Trillium), developed either by the Ministry of Education, or at least by a few school boards, runs on Microsoft (SQL server with a horribly written front end, most likely in VB). The alternative (Oracle) wasn't well supported IIRC.
The grade 9 "intro to computer" and compsci courses are taught with Office & VB and from what I've seen tend to focus on learning those programs, not the general concepts.
(Where would I be if I focused on learning the 1993 version of Works, rather than generic database/spreadsheet concepts?)
Finally, if nothing else, their education agreement probably ensures that licensing is cheap enough and/or forced on every machine, or prevents them from installing competing software.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
England is a country. As is Scotland, Wales and Ireland./p>
England is a kingdom. Scotland is a kingdom. Wales is a principality. Northern Ireland is a province. The republic of Ireland is a country. England, Scotland, Wales and a few odds and ends make up Great Britain. Great Britain, Northern Ireland and a few other bits and bobs make up the country known as the UK.
England hasn't been a country since about the 16th century.
You can download the Canadian English (or even NZ or Australian English) spellchecker dictionary for OpenOffice / Star Office from this location.
Dictionaries for several dozen other languages are also available. Includes some that probably aren't available for MS Word - Moari, Faroese, Setswana, Zulu, etc.
Ideology is for ideots.
Gee, why do they need to buy or license star office when Open office is FREE - yep, they can download it for _FREE_ as in no cash, no mula, nada.
Well golly gee. You've solved everyone's problem. Now if only you had:
1) taken into account the fact that, in the StarOffice license agreement, it specifically says that it's free for educational use
2) taken into account that there would actually be a need for support, documents, CDs, etc. in order to actually outfit (and support/maintain) the ~5000 schools in Ontario
(Surprise, surprise, but not every school's computer is networked, and not every one has their own in-house IT worker. In fact, there's usually only a couple of IT workers per school *board*, with some boards covering regions that are larger than some U.S. states. Deployment for an installation as diverse [geographically, worker-wise, and in terms of computer setups] requires more of a support contract than what simple open source can offer, IMO.)
I have never met anyone in Canada that pronounces "about" as "aboot". Do any of you know where this originates?
Funny, I've hardy met any who didn't. Even in Toronto, where there is scarcely any accent to be noticed, every time I heard someone say about there was a slight 'oo' in it. It probably has to do with what each individual is used to hearing. I knew a British girl whose mother was American who honestly could not tell the difference between American and British accents.
-
The Dallas Independent School District, serving Dallas, Texas, has had a site licence for Star Office for more than a year now. [From 1999-2000 stats] there are more than 200 schools in the district servering more than 150,000 students (here and here)
They obtained the licence for the purpose of distributing it on the laptops they supplied their teachers (1,000+). I heard a figure on how much it cost, but it was not from an authoritive source. If the figure is true, then the savings over MS Office was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (read: > $500,000.00+).
Star Office is a wise move for any public institution spending tax-payer monies.
Teaching in Ontario is considered a cushy, fat paying government job by most of this province's citizens. You're guaranteed 3 months+ per year of time off; there's "Professional Activity Days" where training comes during the school year for teachers, adding up to 5-10 days during the school year where students have 'days off'. This is infuriating as this training does not come during the 3 months paid leave in the summers, but during the children's learning curriculum.
The Ontario Teacher's Union is one of the most powerful unions in the country. Its almost impossible to be fire from the OTU. They're extremely active politically, and have been able to resist most modernisation efforts including: a) regular performance reviews of teachers, b) part time/replacement help, and c) mandatory training and skills progression. Sick days are essentially vacation days...you can accrue them gradually over your career and cash them in for $ or early retirement w/ full pay. I've seen teachers retire after 25 years service with almost a full school year off.
The OTU's indexed pension is LEGENDARY. Last I read it was considered the 2nd best pension in Canada, next to retired Ministers of Parliament. In some odd circumstances some teachers have found their salaries INCREASE upon retirement.
I suspect it is nigh-impossible to find a better location than Ontario to teach in North America. I seriously considered teaching for a long period of time, but ultimately rejected the career choice due to the personal stagnation that would be inflicted upon me by the union rules.
PS I know of several PhD professors from UofT who retired from the university to become high school teachers -- equivalent pay, better benefits, fewer hours. Only detriment was less notoriety.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
It's unfortunate that most people don't seem to realize that the provincial and federal Liberal parties are not the same organization. Paul Martin has publicly disapproved of Dalton McGuinty reneging on his campaign promises. And besides, what choice did McGuinty really have when it turned out that the Tories had been "balancing" the budget by selling off assets? Highway 407 practically printed money for the province, but the Tories sold it off for a short term gain so they could claim the budget was balanced.