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5000 OpenOffice.org Seats for Singapore Government

Posted by timothy on from the just-gimme-a-few-dozen dept.

kurtz_tan writes "This story on Linux World says the Singapore Ministry of Defence (Mindef) has installed the OpenOffice productivity suite on 5,000 new desktop computers. This move is aimed at giving employees in the ministry an additional choice in productivity software. It will also help Mindef make 'significant' savings in terms of capital costs. Singapore is acknowledged as the second best world wide for e-Government. Hope all other world wide government follow suit."

19 comments

  1. Am I the Only One... by sepluv · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not trolling and I'm sure OO.o us useful in getting MS-Office lovers weaned off that to something that is at least free software.

    However, am I the only one that things--however great the work done on it--OO.o is just a bad imitation of MS Office with all the lack of usability included (but,that, like all imitations, doesn't work quite as well as the original).

    Does anyone here use really OO.o a lot and/or prefer it to say LaTeX (or other typesetting systems), Abiword (which at least used to import MSWord better than OO.o) or Scribus. It seems to me that OO.o not only copies all the worst bit of the word-processing model, but all the worst bits of the notorious MSWord sub-model.

    Anyway, it is really good to see that governments are getting the message that it is worng for them to use proproetary software (especially to store gov. data), or at least they are getting the message that free software is cheaper and more reliable.

    --
    Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
    [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    1. Re:Am I the Only One... by Knights+who+say+'INT · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It isn't, precisely because it's an inferior version of what is already available.

      It gives people the general idea that open source = inferior.

      While I'm not particularly fond of word processors either, MS Office is a great productivity suite that gets things done in minutes.

      (I love the smell of karma in the morning) It's NOT "wrong" to use proprietary software, specially if data is released to the general public in more open (CSV/RTF/HTML) formats. I mean, time _is_ money, you know.

    2. Re:Am I the Only One... by tclark · · Score: 3, Interesting

      First, you can't really compare OOo to LaTeX or Scribus - different functions. Abiword is a very nice word processor, but OOo is a full office package, so the comparison there is weak too. If you only need a word processor, then Abiword is a fine choice. I hope that Abiword and OOo Writer get cross-compatibility soon.

      I prefer OOo to MS Office. OOo runs on all the computers in my office, MS Office does not. OOo file formats are easier to work with than MS Office formats. Finally, I have found the style properties in OOo writer to be more intuitive than those in MS Word.

      YMMV

    3. Re:Am I the Only One... by 0x20 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nobody ever said it was 'wrong' to use proprietary software. What is wrong is to do what Microsoft does, which is to use bullying, cheating, lying, strongarming, and monopolization as regular business strategies. And it's even more wrong done on such a large scale. Which makes it 'right,' in a way, to refuse to support them.

      This is why governments are turning away from MS to open source and Free software. Not just because of the initial cash savings, but because they know they won't be at the mercy of Microsoft's draconian licensing practices in the long term, which is where the real cost shows up. If you've ever been in charge of purchasing software for a large organization as I have, you probably know what I'm talking about. They literally act like heroin pushers to get their claws into your company, and they're just as sleazy.

      Sure, Open Office is not as polished as MS Office - yet. It will be better in time. But here's something you and the grandparent don't appear to understand. Most Free software is publically developed. If you don't like it, don't bitch and complain about it, contribute to making it better. If you're not willing to do that, then you don't really have any place to say crap like "It gives people the general idea that open source = inferior." Either use it, help to fix it, or just shut up.

    4. Re:Am I the Only One... by Eloquence · · Score: 1
      I use OpenOffice.org, LaTeX and text files, all for different purposes. I cannot agree that OpenOffice is an "inferior clone" of MS Office; in particular, its handling of large documents with lots of images is more reliable and predictable. I also like the fact that I can use something like OODoc, a Perl library to manipulate OpenOffice documents. For a book I wrote, I wrote a mini-script to convert between LaTeX and OOo. The fact that OOo files are just ZIPs with XML and images really comes in handy.

      It's true that OOo emulates some of the usability bugs of MS Office. Using the chart component of OOo Calc can be rather painful, for example: It has three (or more?) different modes of displaying a chart, and different menu options become available depending on which mode you're in; switching between them is not at all intuitive. I remember having had similar issues with Excel in the past. Still I found Calc's charts capability vastly superior to Gnumeric and KSpread (no offense to these projects).

      The main beef people have with OOo is its monolithic nature, which makes it slow to load and heavy to download. I haven't found AbiWord usable enough to recommend it as a small alternative. Perhaps one day there will be a Firefox-like offspring of the OOo project. But OOo's feature set is certainly on par with MS Office. There's no valid reason for governments to subsidize Microsoft - if anything, they should subsidize open source development.

    5. Re:Am I the Only One... by Achorny · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't exactly call it a bad imitation of MS Office. For light Word, Excel or Powerpoint usage, most users in my experience can barely tell the difference. And light usage (an occasional report, paper or presentation) is exactly what most people use an Office suite for. I've converted my entire family and most of my non-geeky friends from MS Office to OO.o, and not one of them has had a single complaint.

      --
      @ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopq rstuvwxyz{|}~
    6. Re:Am I the Only One... by sepluv · · Score: 1

      >>don't bitch and...<<

      I was not arguing that it needs more features or that it is not as polished as MS Office or the other free-software alternatives (althought it probably isn't but give them a chance). Instead I was hypothesising that, however good MS Office and OO.o are at what they do, what they do (at least in the word-processing dept, but, also, arguably, elsewhere) is not really very useful or efficient for applications as opposed to alternatives. That is MS-Office style "office suites" (and, for that matter, many of the components even when reomved from that paradigm) are not nessecary in most business and home situations.

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    7. Re:Am I the Only One... by sepluv · · Score: 1

      Different functions (whatever that means) maybe...but same RL applications. What applications do you, for instance, use OO.o writer for?

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    8. Re:Am I the Only One... by tclark · · Score: 1

      I use LaTex for typesetting, especially for material with a lot of mathematical notation. I use Scribus for DTP. I use a bottle opener to open beers. OOo is not a good choice for any of those functions, but that is not a shortcoming of OOo. I use OOo Writer as a word processor.

  2. OpenOffice usability by Bioanarchism · · Score: 1

    After years of dabbling with Microsoft Office Suite products, a drastic change will leave some end-users grasping for help. They will probably have to adapt to the new GUi and the new stylesheets ect.

    Is OpenOffice really for everybody?

    What can we do to make others realise that non-proprietary products are the way to go in the future?

    --
    Often we do not have time for our friends, yet all the time in the world for our enemies.
  3. OO probably better but... by coolmadsi · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I've used OpenOffice at school, its really good, one of my ICT teachers said that they were using the spreadsheet part for a few days before even realising it wasnt Excel. I think that Open Office is good for those who dont want to pay loads for new Microsoft software (eg. me)

    The only downside with OpenOffice is this: I cant remember what file types you can and cant save it as, but most computers have some version of MS Word on them and the native OO file format doesn't run Word as far as I'm aware, otherwise I would use OO a lot more, expecially in school but its not installed on all the computers.

    Besides, OO can save as PDF files which is good, even though I hardly use them, they are a smaller file size then most other text program thingys.

  4. The menus in OOo are flexible by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 1
    There are a lot of technical reasons to go with OOo, especially the word processor which handles styles and large documents better than the current market leader. The open file format alone counts for a lot.

    However, perhaps the biggest reason is that the menus in OOo are flexible. This is one big technical advantage could really exploit some usability studies. It would also be possible, at least in theory, to have a training wheels mode for recovering MSO users, just like many other packages used to have. e.g. Lotus 1-2-3

    Since OOo is growing into "new" markets (new for OOo), it'd be useful for the default menu structure to be based on some decent usability studies. Easier now than later. There are a lot of new users, especially in Asia, who would have a fresh viewpoint. There are also an alarming number of users who can use what ever word processor they're put in front of, but have neither clue nor care what it is called. There are also a huge number of people both congicent and skilled who have plenty of pet peeves about their word processor, spreadsheet, vector drawing, or presentation graphics tools.

    Maybe usability studies would lead to multiple skins for OOo.

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
  5. Why one company switched back to MS Office by jgoemat · · Score: 2, Informative
    A company I worked at decided to switch at least some users to Open Office. Saving $300 * 40 licenses seemed like a good idea. Then someone opened a document from an executive and saw some rather embarrassing comments an executive wrote in MS Word but deleted. Well, MS Word doesn't really delete them, they stay in the document. Open Office displayed them to other people and the executive was none too happy. No more Open Office.

    I imagine this little "bug" was probably intentional on M$'s part...

  6. Who's the best e-gov? by davegaramond · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay, this begs the question. If Singapore is the second best, who's the first. (Also, who's 3rd, 4th, and 5th)?

    1. Re:Who's the best e-gov? by Necroist · · Score: 3, Informative

      THE TOP 10

      1. Canada
      2. Singapore, United States
      4. Australia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden
      8. France
      9. United Kingdom, Netherlands


      According to this news article, Singapore is also the best Asian country in e-government services.

    2. Re:Who's the best e-gov? by musicman2059 · · Score: 1

      THE TOP 10

      1. Canada

      That explains why Canada is totally incapable of doing anything that doesn't involve the internet. *coughhealthcarecough*

      --
      When you need great justice, take off every zig.
  7. Re:Am I the Only One... NO by JPyObjC+Dude · · Score: 1

    I am an ex power user of M$ office. My background started doing rather large spreadsheets to do energy management analysis of large complexes back in 91. I originally started with Lotus 123. The time that Lotus 123 saved me was outstanding, but when I was exposed to Excel, I was quickly converted. With built in wysiwyg it was an easy sell. I have used Excel to do many operations in the energy engineering sector for some time. Having coded applications that still live today in VBA I have a pretty good perspective of the capabilities of Excel and of other Office apps through my careers.

    I have been having a casual relationship with OOO for about three years now. I've looked a API's and they are looking very promising (Multiple scripting languages including Java, JavaScript and Python. Although the current stable tree (1.1.3) is, from a UI perspective, like Office 95-97, it does have it's strong points with unfortunately some strong UI negatives. I have been testing snapshots of the pending 2.0 release.

    OOO vs M$O

    1. Menu structures

      • [M$O]
      • They always missed the boat when they decide to layout their menu's. Many items are just in the wrong list. I guess we should forgive an entity that comes up with start->shutdown.
    3. [OOO113]
      • The page setup, area selection is on the format menu not the file menu :]
      • There are quite a few others menu re-organizations that burn you the first few times that you use them but after a while the workflow becomes much smoother than in M$O.
    5. [00019n]
      • Follows same basic structures with further organizational improvements.
    7. Spreadsheet User Interface
      • [M$O]
      • Interface well designed and thought out. Reasonably efficient workflow.
      • With proper right click event directions. Right click goes to mouse pointer location (intuitive)
      • Function wizard - Very handy and well designed UI.
      • Handy tools such as: Format painter, Paste values toolbar button,
      • [OOO113]
      • Interface followed O97 concepts. Similar enough for someone to stumble through.
      • Right clicks to things like tabs, row or column headings do to pass focus to the item under the mouse pointer. Instead the focus is passed to the last item selected in that control set (cell, row, header, tab). As a result, users must left click then right click to get the contextual menu for that item. For power users of Excel, this is painful.
    9. [00019n]
      • Developers have fixed the right mouse click issue. Focus now goes to item under mouse pointer. :]
      • Significant improvements in many faucets of the UI bringing the workflow as efficient if not better than M$O.
      • Format Painter now added :]
      • Still missing paste values button. I made the suggestion but got turned down (Issue 18987). Please feel free to post to this issue. Maybe somebody will re-open. Or I'll just learn how to program it myself and post a patch.
    11. Icon Toolbars
      • [M$O]
      • Back with O97, the toolbars were reasonably customizable were usable. Newer versions are a little nicer but without too many real improvements.
      • Unfortunately you cannot lock the menu's. When using the mouse in a drag & drop environment it is common to fat finger the menu by dragging an icon or toolbar. In M$O this happens all the time.
      • [000113]
      • Customization tool is not very intuitive. Menu's are a bit difficult to figure out. This may be partially because of the `different thinking` when it comes to the Office menu integrations across applications (writer, calc...)
      • Toolbars were always lockable. This is very nice to have.
    13. [00019n]
      • L&F that are on par with Off