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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.
Does that mean that the best way to lobby for OpenSource is to lobby for cutting funding in education?
:)
The ministry probably can't even get StarOffice if the budget is cut to $500mil, maybe then they'll start considering OpenOffice
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
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.
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!!"
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.
Actually, the Pop vs Soda thing isn't Canadian vs American. Take a look at this map, which shows which term is predominantly used in each part of the US and Canada.
The biggest differences between American and Canadian English that I know of have to do with spelling. eg: colour vs color, metre vs meter, etc. The only differences I've noticed in spoken English are zed vs zee thing, and the nonsensical way Americans use "quarter of" when referring to the time. (to me "quarter of 12" is 3, but to Americans it apparently means "a quarter to 12")
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.
Given the tortured grammar of that sentence, Canada feels no loss.
It's real. Vowels tend to wander in regional dialects so what sounds like an "au" to you might sound closer to an "oo" to me. Google turned up "Canadian Raising" which explains this particular difference better than I can.
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
Those formats were all designed for interchange. Both doc and oo.o files were designed primarily to be used with their respective Wordprocessors. It's following MS's paradigm to send wordprocessing files when a much simpler format does the job without a special plugin.
I had to think for a minute about rtf. My first reaction: RTF What? The Manual or the Article? It's a short step from RTF to RTFM or RTFA.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Well, I just come in the log cabin from hunting caribou whilst fending off grizzlies (and a couple o' vicious salmon) and I see some post on slashdot mocking Canadian English, eh. Well, as a born and bred Canadian, I feel it's aboot toime someone set the record straight on this whole sordid affair, 'fore a body ends up with a frozen mukluk to the arse.
I'll give it to you straight -- we may wear toques, sit on chesterfields, and pay for our two-fours in loonies, and we may even say "aboot", but we get more beaver than anyone else on the planet.
"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."
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.
I'm no lover of Microsoft either but there's no denying that some of their products are quite good. Microsoft haters need to realise that Microsoft makes stuff that is "good enough". It isn't always the best but similarly it isn't always the worst.
Of course, this "good enough" mentality in customers is what will destroy Microsoft. Free software like Linux is also "good enough". So Microsoft might invest considerable effort to make their products better but the vast majority of customers just won't care. Superior quality didn't save Microsoft's competitors in the 80s and 90s and it won't save Microsoft now.
However, I will make a point that Microsoft got this large mostly through luck. They owned the popular OS which ran on the hardware platform that grew from the expected run of several 1000 IBM units to several 100 million cloned units worldwide. That success could have just as equally gone to Apple if the Apple II was a clonable platform, or to Digital Research if the Kildalls hadn't balked at IBM's NDA. Mr Gates was in the right place at the right time and knew someone willing to sell him the right product. You might call that "business genius" but honestly I think Gates isn't that smart. He might have had some inkling the deal with IBM was "important" but I doubt he realised it was worth tens of billions.
What's really sad about this is that normally it's not the case. The K12LTSP mailing list is full of members pitching a thin client system to underfunded districts, saying that they can reuse all the machines currently in the school and accept donations from parents, while spending a relatively small sum on a couple of high quality servers.
The overwhelming majority choose to totally upgrade their IT structure on MS's timetable while slashing teaching positions, instead.
Some people don't have their priorities straight.
Put identity in the browser.
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?"