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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 ;)"
Why not get support for very little money. Sun has such a low cost per seat that there would have been no point to using OOo instead of SO. Perhaps you would like to see development in OOo slow down, because if SO does not make Sun money, that's exactly what will happen.
But they want the SUPPORT that comes with StarOffice.
Corel had a huge deal with the Ontario Board of Education a few years back, to get WordPerfect onto every computer. They got it installed... but nobody used it. The Microsoft hold was too strong by then. And this was like 2000. I don't think this had changed...
I recall talking to the "computer" teacher/sysadmin at the time, suggesting WordPerfect or StarDivison's Staroffice on the additional Word licenses the school held. His answer was basically "but nobody will use it." Educators after all aren't accountable for costs like private businesses would be.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
As a Canadian, I was going to make this very joke, but I was beat to the punch.
;)
However, I would like to know from those Americans on Slashdot: Where the heck does "aboot" come from? I have never met anyone in Canada that pronounces "about" as "aboot". Do any of you know where this originates?
(PS: "Zed" not "Zee"
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Well it is somewhere, the problem is that no one cares to look for it unless the money is declared missing by the opposition party. I believe on a whole we trust our government a slight bit more, until that it is it's brought to our attention. Good thing there is a federal election here on June 28th, god willing a minority liberal government will be in control.
PS for Canadian Slashdot'ers: Voting is as easy as ABC, Anybody But Conservative
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
I would be much better if you could suggest a filter that they could use within MS Office to read and write OO.o files directly.
Once OO.o reaches a 15%-20% marketshare, the battle is won as you can then demand they read your files not that they need to be "translated"
Help fight continental drift.
Before everyone starts complaining about why they didn't use a free alternative like OOo, look at the Star Office 7 link in the summary. It IS free for educational use:
Education No license fees; cost of media and shipping
It was probably cheaper than trying to burn and distrubute thousands and thousands of OOo CDs, since most schools don't have CD burners available that would be able to produce a quantity like that. They bulk of the 'minimal' amount of money probably went to a support contract.
Microsoft is not going to let this happen, and I think I know what they will do. First, drastic price cuts will be implemented followed by the creation of additional tools and resources for schools and teachers.
The reason Microsoft will refuse to give in, even if it means that they might lose a load of money in the short run, is because they understand that if they can get students hooked while they are young, they can keep perpetuating a monopoly. My younger siblings want Microsoft Word/Powerpoint/Excel on their computer/laptop simply because they know it from school.
It will be a tough fight if larger inroads are made, because Microsoft will certainly retaliate. Another problem is schools are still able to opt for Microsoft Office instead, which many of them will certainly do.
"spelling and grammer errors brought to you by California's finest public education" Make that: spelling and grammar errors brought to you by someone who'd rather blame the system than learn some shit on his/her own.
Our school district uses OO, and we don't burn CD's. That's what network shares are for. For unconnected machines, sure - you can use a CD - we techs have them. A user could burn a copy if needed.
It's easier to network-install 3-5 copies rather than popping CD's in and out anyhow, and I'd imagine most PC's are not standalone these days.
"The bottom line is, the sooner we can de-indoctrinate (is that a word?) people from Microsoft products, and in greater amounts, the sooner they will go away."
Oh brother. So your motivation is "destroy Microsoft"? You just hate them, so be gone with them? +5 Insightful?
Look, I'm not exactly in love with Microsoft here, but the reason that they're in this monopoly in the first place is they have made a VERY useful app. Spare me the "Oh they made a monopoly out of nothing and then put a gun to millions of people's heads" theories, as long as people are complaining that the alternatives are missing features then the Microsoft 'doctrine' is going to remain quite strong.
It's cool that somebody took a leap and started using Open Office, but man, don't turn this into a "ding dong MS is dead" pitchfork party.
"Derp de derp."
They still have too much too much money if they license StarOffice, instead of just installing OpenOffice for free.
Think about that carefully. You'll take a lousy teacher over a lousy plumber any day of the week and you know it. Plumbers get paid more because they fix the immediate concern. Your child won't show the effect of lousy teachers until years later. But you saved a few bucks in the meantime and your toilet didn't overflow. And thats whats really important. Screw the children if you can't keep a female from running out of the house screaming.
I'd love to say an anti-socialist system works any better. Here in the public schools of Seattle, teachers are paid peanuts, textbooks still refer to the Soviet Union as current politics, the buildings are poorly maintained (in favor of a current rebuilding/remodelling phase which was thirty years overdue), the boys' bathrooms don't have paper towels or doors to the stalls, but (almost) every classroom has at least one nice and shiny Dell with WinXP.
Now there is no problem with paying teachers and administrators more money, but don't you think they should do a better job to earn it?
Sure. But cut their classes in half (from an average of thirty students to an average of fifteen) before judging their teaching ability.
Many, myself among them, would say that it's more to do with bundling and intimidation of OEMs who offered alternatives. Certainly MS Office does the job, but given an hour to get used to it, WordPerfect's suite, IBM's SmartSuite, or several other lesser-known ones would satisfy the vast majority of users. If you've ever been in a real office and watched people using it, most never stray from: enter text, style by clicking on the formatting bar, print/save/send.
The problem I can see for Microsoft is that once something like Open/Star Office reaches a certain point (say 20%), Microsoft could get into deep trouble. At that point, everyone will know someone who uses Star/Open Office.
The biggest challenge for Open Office isn't quality of product. It's awareness and confidence.
. Spare me the "Oh they made a monopoly out of nothing and then put a gun to millions of people's heads" theories
don't turn this into a "ding dong MS is dead" pitchfork party
I didn't see either of these statements in the post you were replying to. Nice collection of strawmen you have there -- are they made from official astroturf?
deus does not exist but if he does
Why should Windows users be "cured". It's an operating system that is easy to use, is widely supported and easy to support. I have a Red Hat 9 box that runs like a champ but can be a pain in the butt sometimes and I'd hate like hell to support it over the phone to family. I haven't had a virus since ?Elvira? back in 94 or 95, and that's though using various Windows boxes from 88' to present. .02
I'd LOVE to see Linux become mainstream, but it still ain't there yet. It's a differnt OS for a different purpose/user.
Just my
--
The Marines: The few, the proud, the not very bright. - Slashdot tagline 04/21/05
StarOffice comes out in regular, supported editions, much easier than managing a large deployment of various OpenOffice versions with noone to fall back on for advice.
Give millions of students a chance to take their first steps in Open/Star Office, and alternatives to MS may seem more viable as a choice for large office environments, where user confusion is a major cost threat.
Kiwaiti
Member of the Legion Of Microsoft Haters
Not only does Ontario have a multitude of high schools...they also have several world-class Universities. University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Queens, and McMaster are just naming a few. I myself go to U of Waterloo and I know that in our engineering labs we're given the choice of using either OpenOffice or MS Office (forced to use OpenOffice in some of the lower budget labs). Now who attends Ontario Universities? Ontario students! If these students develop a preference for Star/OpenOffice, it's likely that you'll start to see MS Word disappear from our institutions of higher learning. Once you have everyone familiar with StarOffice and Netscape 7.x (it's offered as an alternative to IE on all school machines, despite the fact it's clunky as sin), a full switch to a Linux-based environment is just a hop, skip and a jump away. Now if only some of the more specializing companies made linux ports of their software.