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OSSDI to Distribute OpenOffice.org in Schools
Xampper writes to tell us that the OSSDI (Open Source Software Distribution Initiative) is a new organization that has cropped up to help not only spread the word about Open Source Software, but to help distribute the OpenOffice.org office suite starting with less fortunate school districts. The OSSDI describes their current status as still being in its "infancy as an organization. Because of this, all of our current resources are focused on gaining supporters, raising funds, and recruiting volunteers. Plans are under-way for our first software distribution, but we must first cover our operating costs. We are also interested in becoming a registered not for profit corporation so that donors will receive tax breaks for their gifts, but the registration process can also be very costly and time-consuming."
seeing the planets slowly aligning in Linux' favor?
The timing of this post hit me just as I was migrating our email services to Google Hosted Services. If you email OSSDI and get a bounce, try again in an hour. Sorry about the trouble!
I wonder if the same can be done for distributing OLPC's software platform easily. If a large part of the cost of computers in schools is the software and the continual upgrades that come with it, wonder what can be done for schools that already have computers, just not the latest and greatest...
Might want to ensure they are organized and have status prior to engaging. This will ensure that they are more effective and focused on their mission, and not distracted by the worries of setting up and operating as an entity. Wonderful idea, they just need to keep on when faced with adversity.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
So, they are not really doning nothing yet... but the mision sounds good, with a good organization pushingig OO to become the standar suite, although I guess that means to give customer / technical support, which is why schools and enterprises don't use more OSS. BTW non profit corporation... isn't that an oxymoron or just a fancy name for fundation (or am I just not used to legal terminology?)
Ave Maria
As in those currently having only MS software?
Ok, your heart is in the right place, but you seem a bit unprepared. I mean, if you can't cope with the bureaucracy of registering as a non-profit, how are you going to cope with the bureaucracy of school management?
What did you think the Novell deal was about?
I'm not sure I understand the reasons for CD based distribution. Don't most schools (even inner city schools)
have a connection that could download OO? The complete distro is 93 megs. Am I so naive to think that most
schools don't have at least some access to broadband and a CD burner somewhere in the building, or among the
staff/community?
Most Americans of course, are still on dial-up, or without computers/access altogether... but most schools/communities?
That puts our current state of connectivity in a pretty dim light.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Ehh, this actually sounds like a scam to me.
IMO, The less fortunate should learn something more mainstream that they can get a job with. Like Microsoft Office.
Does anyone else find it odd that the site is remarkably anonymous? Usually, in an "About" or "Contact Us" page, you'll find at least the name of one contact (or the name(s) of the founders, board members, etc), which is not the case here.
;)
There may be an excellent reason for this, but it just seems strange to me. Oh well, maybe I've become overly paranoid in my old age when people are asking me for my money
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
Because there's something very strange about providing a free office suite that runs on an expensive OS.
Why not distribute a Linux distro bundled with OOo?
Otherwise the overall mission seems compromised by the platform.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I like the idea. Though it certainly is not going to be easy to find districts willing to install and support the software on their own if they don't have experience with it.
But why just Open Office? Why not do something with (or like) Edubuntu, and distribute an entire platform that has the administration and management tools built in? People are definately hesitent to change, but if they are going to learn something new (in this case Open Office), it might be a good time for them to jump right in (especially if you, or a group of local volunteers can spend time training them).
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
How about some old copies of Office 97 instead? That still runs snappy on my mid-1990's Toshiba laptop...
This is exciting to hear, as it's amazing how many people have never heard of 'open source' or even specifically Open Office.
It's a concept that is generally segregated to those already in 'the know' and not so much Joe User. As awareness grows, use will grow, and the entire open source community will grow.
That's my theory, at least.
If only many of these efforts to promote open source software weren't focused on these bloated imitations of Windows apps that I so dislike.
I think the true strength of open source is not in the apps that mimic some Windows app, but in the many little, lean and mean apps that are totally _different_.
This is not to knock the good efforts that seek to promote open source. I think they are commendable. I just wish people would see that open source provides so much _more_ than just the same apps that people already have on Windows.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"... but to help distribute the OpenOffice.org office suite starting with less fortunate school districts"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't "less fortunate school districts" usually having some really old hardware? Is OO.o going to help, given that it supposedly takes ages for any of the bundled apps to start even on fast machines due to high hardware requirements? I mean, if you're installing OO.o on a machine with 128 or 256 MB RAM, this probably isn't going to go well. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't individual OO.o apps actively using 50-100 MB of memory with just simple documents loaded? I haven't actually tried them as Abiword is enough for me and I have no need for spreadsheet apps, so all I heard would qualify as hearsay. I don't even have a clue on how much memory MS Office apps need. Can someone provide some numbers, please? KOffice too, if possible...
This reminds me of that initiative American Online used to do where they sent their software to everyone, for free!
Will the package come with the features listed, as well?
"Resembles Office 97, but is much slower and requires a lot more system resources!"
"Teach children effective office skills that will immediately become invalid if they ever get real jobs."
"Confuse aging librarians and unofficial "IT professionals" at elementary schools!"
New Interface, New Standards, New Format! Difference: It's now "standardized"
That doesn't mean anything to people.
Considering most of these schools are running older hardware, I think it would be a better idea for them to just use MS Works or the old Office likely already installed on their computers. If you're going to send something schools, send them something useful. Send them hardware... text books (not patchwork wiki crap) - or maybe sports equipment.
It looks like this initiative has now raised $120! Why is this news?
The first step for a small non-profit wannabe is to recruit a like-minded lawyer to handle the legalities at little or no charge. Then you solicit funds. This effort sounds bogus or the organizers are naive, either of which can spell disaster to such a good idea. However, is this project even needed? The software is already available for download and anybody may copy and distribute it, so the distribution channel is already in place (unless the community is so remote or impoverished that no one has Internet access or a CD burner or doesn't know of someone who does), so I would speculate this effort would primarily focus on promotion, or "getting the word out" and perhaps mailing the occasional CD. Aren't there already groups doing this? Why not ally with them? Folks: Get you organisation established by using your local resources and only then reach out for broader support; any decent person or any Nigerian scammer can create a website and tout their altruistic intent. First obtain some legitimacy, then look for the most economic way of achieving your goal. Your efforts and our money will work better and go farther.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Well, in my not so humble opinion, there is a difference between memorizing and comprehension. If one teaches a child how to use a word processing or spreadsheet application, they can pretty much use anything out there. That goes the same for most software on the planet (i.e. if you know how to use one web browser, you know how to use most others thanks to interface conventions). That being said, if you can teach a child about the fundamentals of office applications in a free piece of software, why not avoid vendor lock in / licensing fees? Assuming that they actually _learn_ the conventions and _learn_ how to use the help feature, they will be quite AHEAD in the "get a job" world.
Anyway, the point is that if we expose young people to Linux, Open Office and other open source software before they fall into the Microsoft flock. Even if they don't all decide to use it at home, how many more would use it that would otherwise never know it even existed?
Also, in school districts like mine that have a limited tax base because they are in a dry county and gambling/lotteries are illegal, OSS can be a great way to bring technology into schools without having to choose between teachers/books/classrooms and computers/ servers/administrators.
This sig only exists because you are observing it.
I don't necessarily think that Open Office is a good choice for this sort of application. As someone else pointed out, most "less fortunate" schools and districts are probably running on older hardware. Open Office is going to be somewhat of a lumbering sloth on computers that are five years old or more. I know from experience. I installed Edubuntu PPC on my son's Apple clamshell G3, and it runs Open Office, but -barely-. In contrast, Abiword is quite snappy.
I think that the OSSDI is definitely on the right track, but I think they should really try to tailor the solutions specifically to the computing environments that the schools currently have, lest they end up, while meaning well, creating more problems along with that "solution".
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
I suspect that an even larger part of school's budgets than software, are the salaries of the people who are responsible for maintaining everything; IT-types but also teachers, librarians, etc.
Those are the people who need to be "sold" on Linux or even other OSS projects like OO.org; in my experience it's a lot easier to get management on board with a solid presentation highlighting the cost savings and feature parity, but it can be quickly scuttled by the rank-and-file if they're resistant to change.
A few days ago I read another post that I think highlighted the problem. The major impediment to any sort of even slightly radical IT change, is the huge number of users who do not understand computers, or the technology they use on a daily basis. At best, they've been trained to complete certain tasks, but there's no more understanding of what's going on there, than a rat understands what goes on outside its cage when it presses on the food pedal. Do this, this happens; there's no conceptual grasp of the process, just of the procedure. This is a huge stumbling block, because it turns what someone who understands the system perceives as a trivial change, into a major one, with massive retraining costs. Something as simple as changing some menus or the "look and feel" of a dialog box can send 'trained' users back to management, demanding retraining on the new software.
I've worked on some big software projects for government users, and there have been times when entire systems have been gutted and rebuilt, but the one thing that absolutely, positively, could not change, no matter what were the user interfaces. Ripping out all the infrastructure behind the scenes was a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of sending all the users to retraining courses, which is what they would demand if they noticed anything different. (In reality, this was mostly an excuse to demand a paid psuedo-vacation; travel on an expense account to someplace where they could sit around in a classroom and space out for a few days. But that's the way it works.)
Concentrating on the 'top down' and costs savings will only get you so far. Unfortunately, people at the bottom are going to resist any change at all, unless you can figure out a way to paint it so that it's to their personal advantage.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Now, how much steeper is the learning curve from, say, Office 2009 to Office 2012 compared to OOo 4 (or whatever) to Office 2012? Probably not much. They will have learnt to do the same things - write badly formatted over-decorated documents that disobey the rules of typography (check), produce badly designed spreadsheets on which inputs and outputs are confused, with pointless background colors (check), produce content-free presentations that send people to sleep (check) and possibly learn to use a database front end that makes it hard to use the power of SQL while making it quite difficult to do clever queries (check). They are just going to heave to learn a new menuing interface. And that, compared to the general steepness of the school to work transition, is peanuts.
Pining for the fjords
I don't know if Edubuntu follows Ubuntu lead, but Ubuntu includes a subset of "The Open CD" set of utilities that's visible when you load the CD from Windows. (try it)
This gives you the best of both worlds -- Windows versions of open source programs plus a good education-oriented Linux distro if one decides to experiment with Linux.
If they don't want to promote Linux, they should likely stick to theOpenCD (http://www.theopencd.org/) since it's already done the hard work of picking a good set of Windows compatible open source that's actually useful.
Nothing is more dangerous than a programmer with a screwdriver.
isn't that funny naive?
look, schools are budgeted OPM (Other Peoples' Money) and the spend other OPM.
what INCENTIVE do they have to REDUCE THEIR BUDGET?
NONE, NADA, ZIP, ZILCH.
my friend went on a last minute trip to new orleans and stayed at the ritz... why? training budget had to be spent or it would be lost. did he need the training? no, but he caught a free vacation, stayed at one of the best hotel chains in the world and got to kick back, new orleans style... all on OPM.
oh, and the budget for the following year wasn't cut so the managers had more dough (bigger feifdom) to play with the following year. everybody wins but the OPM guy and gal.
this *is* how the government operates and NOBODY has the ability to get elected AND the character to change the broken system.
iow, don't expect budget cuts for schools (pay raises for OPM contributors - tax payers) anytime soon. in order to do something like that, the consequences of "playing the system" will have to be grave - like losing one's head.
Here in Hawaii there is a group doing this using Linux and everything. They take old donated computers and set up Linux labs in schools.
http://www.hosef.org/
So many times I tried to give away CDs to try (Ubuntu, the OpenCD, custom made). They all appreciate the gesture, but the CD goes in the dust, because they got the "real" version of whatever program (Office for example), not necessarily legally. What I am trying to say is that handing out the CD is simply not enough. Lots of people would rather have pirated software they know than experiment with new one, unless you install those programs for them. They will not probably see the difference. So full installation is the trick. Other wise it's a lost battle.
you underestimate the control grid. i gave a presentation at university about open
source software. i can not give the same presentation in the local school system because the software won't load on the desktop. meanwhile, OTHER software loads just fine. every yahoo gack game loads,
nero type software loads. but guess what? firefox or open office? oh no no no. will not activate.
so they have control where they want it. it is a huge issue, K-12 public education and the Microsoft
sleeze-o-rama combined with the bureaucratic flattery game. It is a HUGE issue. I conclude any official action must be sanctioned from the top of government, either state or county. Those are the people who make policy and then policy makes the material occurrence, the action. But all the good hearted intellectuals on the bottom get absolutely nowhere. That is why the general public and technocrati need to be kickin' some ass and stop being so passive and sweet. The Microsoft jumble will not be easily countered. Their game is working with authority, working with the authorities. Microsoft is a well paid gestapo, oh yes. Naturally they socially network well with other well paid gestapos, like fee and tax-based governments.
"The world needs ditch diggers, too."
There's some validity to teaching MS office, since the $8/hr secretary jobs all require it. They don't care that you know OO, they want you to be able to sit down and type a memo without having to send you to a class. That costs money, which is probably not budgeted.
OO should be in all the high-tech schools where the graduates will eventually go on to be mangers looking for $8/hr secretaries.
(mod me down, but those of you that work in the real world know it's true - 80% of the jobs out there are just need a seat that needs to be filled with a skill.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Perhaps I misunderstood the the purpose of the program. I thought it was to provide this software, documentation, and some clip art to the students in a depressed area. This way they have an office program they can use at home that is compatible with the MS Office applications they probably use at school. This would be a great idea, however if the purpose was to try to save the school some money then, I don't think there will be huge savings to the district. I have been a systems analyst at a school district in Florida for about 10 years now and we get MS office, and most other software, at super steep discounts. It would cost more to produce the cd's for open office with documentation and a clipart license than it would for a school district to purchase MS Office through a qualified software reseller.
This is not a new idea. There is a smaller site called http://softwarefor.org/ that has been trying do the same thing for a few years now except at the student level. They not only include OpenOffice, but other freeware applications aimed specifically at starving students. It will be a tough sell to school districts. Once the students go to a school that can afford MS Office, the students will be at a disadvantage. The acceptance away from MS Office needs to start in the business world first, and then to the schools. Schools teach what is in demand and until MS Office is no longer in demand, the schools should be teaching how to use it.
Migrating from a word processor with grammar check to one without will undoubtedly have an adverse effect on many students and teachers, but in the end, it will hopefully teach them better proofreading skills. I know this to be the case from when I switched.
And yes, I know grammar check for OpenOffice is in development, but there's no indication of how long it will take.
OpenOffice.org 2.1 just plain sucks on Linux if you have freetype 2.2 or higher. The fonts suck so hard that it's hardly usable. Heck, this is a damn 20-line-patch, what's so hard in integrating it into stock OpenOffice.org?
Office Suite != Word Processor
but...
It's not gonna change minds where it matters. Statistically, better funded school districts produce more leaders that set the trends. These trend-setters can afford to buy branded, closed, software, and their environment guarantees they'll think about buying closed software before trying Open and/or Free software.
What this does is convince the End User that better is synonymous with more costly. The End User can be wealthy or poor, but both will agree, from experience, that the software that does things is bought and sold. Not better, although that term is used, but because it has to be worked toward [as a goal] is MUST be better.
"I was given this software, but everyone else who works [and makes more money] uses that software, therefore to move up I must buy that software.
On the other hand, if those leaders are using, and exploiting, OSS then OSS gains credibility over closed systems.
Perhaps giving more wealthy areas open software along with source-code, programming and an IP curriculum [Learn By Example! remember that???] will go further in promoting OSS than these efforts that, by design, will fly under the radar.
In fact, do any of these Open Source projects hold any kind of competition for students?
The OLPC hardware is being bought by governments and given to the kids,it is not being sold to poor villagers in other words, and the kids are primarily supposed to be doing normal schooling type stuff, along with like creative drawing and so on. It is an advanced e book reader, mesh network, teaching machine, half to be used in class, half for the kids to take home to *own*, in areas where such a thing might be WAY outside the budget and would thrill them beyond belief. Unlike western rich nations where the fat kids on ritalin and various fats and sugars diets whine over which game console they got or that they missed the latest iPod upgrade or shiny cellphone.
Really, go to their home page and read it, you got two extremely basic facts wrong, and you are basing your opinions on those errors. Most likely-this is a guess-you have a lot of other misconceptions about the project. Maybe later one the kids will be hacking away and..who cares, isn't that a good thing anyway? But primarily, think HELLA cheaper than dead tree books, just for a start, and easily upgraded to even more books. Kids in school need BOOKS, just keep repeating that to yourself until you get it. This is by far and away the cheapest way for kids to get a variety of books there is, and they can be kept current. Do you know how much normal school kids text books cost? How many are you gonna get for 150 bucks? Hundreds, thousands, or like...three or something?
Which makes more sense, along with all the other advantages of having a somewhat useful computer and net access occassionally?
Really, no offense and don't take it as such, not trying to flame but... get data first, then think, then post, it works much better in that order, not backwards of that.
If you have "word processing in an office environment" on your resume, the keyword scanner picks up "word" and "office", and if you understand the conventions of the WIMP GUI (which really haven't changed much over the two decades since Apple introduced Macintosh), you can probably wing it enough to make it past the 90 days of probation.
Are you making sure to use the same preloader setting for both products? If you don't turn on OpenOffice.org's preloader, turn off Microsoft Office's.
Do spreadsheets, databases, slide shows, and Internet electronic mail get used often in K-12 schools? They didn't where I went to school. Sometimes a word processor is enough.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
I don't have much pity on teachers who have to "work all day" to get a tool that they'll use MANY HOURS EVERY DAY ALL YEAR and for years to come. Tools that increase their productivity thousands of times more than tools they USED to use like typewriters and "ditto machines". (Which cost MANY hundreds of dollars.)
Where would education be right now without computers, and specifically, without Windows-based systems and Office? Back in the stone age -- that's where. If there are free alternatives that do the job NOW, that's great, but don't forget about how we reached the current state.
Would you hire a carpenter who was too cheap to buy his own hammer and saw? A plumber who doesn't own a pipe wrench? A mechanic without his snap-ons? EVERY tradesman (including teachers) should consider it a cost of doing business to buy their own tools. The more efficient and better quality the tools -- the faster and easier the work.
There's a very old saying, "A poor tradesman always blames his tools". If you think YOUR education system has money problems -- take a look at Russia, the FSU and hundreds of other countries before griping, whining and complaining.
Right now, OpenOffice, KOffice, AbiWord, Google Docs and SS and others all read ODF, so there's no way for them to lock each other out of the market like MS Office has locked most other office suites out.
Yes - and it's not like OpenOffice is leading in every part of the ODF format either. For example, take this from October 2006: "The formula editor of KOffice now supports OpenDocument and MathML and uses it as its default file format. It also surpasses the equivalent component in OpenOffice.org, scoring 70% on the W3C MathML test suite compared to 22% for OpenOffice.org Formula."
Sure, you might say it's a bit obscure but there's plenty work left just to support 100% of the ODF features, not to mention competing on usability, layout and so on which is a neverending story (remember, even if ODF can store any type of layout it doesn't mean designing it is easy or intuitive). Personally I very much look forward to KDE4 when all the K* applications will be competing against other OSS software on the Windows platform. KOffice, Konqueror, Krita are far from bad competitors to OpenOffice, Firefox and GIMP.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"it certainly is not going to be easy to find districts willing to install and support the software on their own if they don't have experience with it"
Like what 'support' are you refering to. You put the CD in the drive and click on INSTALL, click next etc, and that's it.
was: Why just Open Office? (Score:4, Insightful !!!! ???)
davecb5620@gmail.com
It will take the full class period just to load. Just imagine the latest cut of OpenOffice on five-year-old surplus hardware.
Oh bullcrap! I have both Offices, have run the comparisons and this is bullcrap.
If they have a system that can run MS Office, it will certainly run Open Office. I think that is what the original article was about. And I have 7-10 year old systems that run OO.o just fine, thank you (example: Thinkpad 600E with a 300M PII and 128M RAM).
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you completely, but I think you're giving Windows and Office in particular far too much credit.
Where would we be without Windows and Office? It's hard to say, but I don't think either one really brought along a whole lot of features that wouldn't have existed elsewhere. The main thing they brought to the table, is the creation of a de facto standard, but I'm entirely unconvinced that this wouldn't have happened in their absence. Obviously, having a standard format in which to interchange documents is a Good Thing. You don't have to be a genius to figure that out; if Microsoft had never existed (and no other company had stepped in at the right time and managed to grab 90+% of the desktop computer market), standardization under some body independent of the software companies probably would have happened a lot faster.
The technology, computers and networking in general, have without a doubt brought vast benefits to humanity in terms of increased efficiency. But I don't think that Windows and Office have really added much that wouldn't have existed otherwise. If anything, there's a good argument to be made that they've actually stifled innovation, and held back the technology from where it would have brought us without them.
It's not as though, had Windows never been released, that the world would still be sitting around with PC-DOS on 286s. We'd just be using some other OS, and some other office suite; probably more than one OS and more than one office suite. Microsoft and its products took advantage of the developments in technology, and jumped on during a time of incredible advancement, and established themselves in a position that they're basically impossible to dislodge now. But they didn't create the driving force that propelled them there. It could have just as easily propelled Apple, or IBM, or some other company who didn't happen to be there at the right time and in the right place, and whose name has now been forgotten.
As for your other comments about teachers bringing their own equipment, there are some professions where tools are the responsibility of the tradesman or worker to provide, and some where they're the responsibility and property of the employer. I work in software development, and I don't bring my own workstation -- my employer gives me one to use while I'm at work. (I bring in my own mouse and keyboard, but that's just because I don't like theirs.) Auto mechanics and carpenters have their own tools, granted, but it's mostly for historical/traditional reasons, and because people have differing preferences of tools (Snap-On vs. Craftsman, etc.). Bringing personally-owned tools to work is more of an exception than a rule, and I don't know of any reason why a teacher would be more like an auto mechanic (own personal tools) than a software developer (use employer's tools).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."