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Election 2006 (and beyond): Digital Copyright Canada
From: Russell McOrmond <russell_-at-_flora.ca>
To: CANadian OPENsource Education and Research <discuss_-at-_canopener.ca>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 17:44:01 -0500 (EST)
I do believe that OOo is the "killer app" for the desktop to get people to migrate from non-free to Free Software. http://www.openoffice.org/ OpenOffice.org already works on more platforms than Microsoft Office (*1) , openly documents their native XML file format <http://xml.openoffice.org/> while still supporting legacy Microsoft formats. Linux is cool and all, but going 'cold turkey' for the existing users isn't a logical route to suggest. OpenOffice.org and Mozilla.org are where things will happen.... More about the referenced US DoD FOSS paper can be found at: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/29/0233251.shtml --- (*1) MS Office has a version that supports MacOS < 10 while OpenOffice.org doesn't yet. OpenOffice.org still runs on considerably more platforms. OpenOffice.org also gets you off the version-upgrade treadmill, and the massive version confusion as to what office suite versions supports what operating system versions. Mac OS 8.1 to 9.2 is supported by Microsoft Office 2001 Microsoft Office v. X only supports MacOS-X http://www.microsoft.com/mac/officex/officex_main.asp?embFName=whichoffice.asp&contonly=1 Office 11 may not support Microsoft Windows 9x, Me http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,655251,00.asp - Read this to see a Microsoft spokesperson being quoted saying "Windows 9x is inherently insecure. It also takes quite a bit of development time to make our products work well on Windows 9x." Great to see Microsoft admitting that OpenOffice.org is already accomplishing something which they are suggesting is too hard to do! --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> See http://weblog.flora.ca/ for announcements, activities, and opinions Speaking in Toronto: Copyright or Wrong? http://www.rabble.ca/rumble/ ALERT! ISP Licensing! http://weblog.flora.org/article.php3?story_id=273 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 29 Oct 2002 17:46:15 -0500 From: Sam Hiser Reply-To: dev@marketing.openoffice.org To: Dawn Meyerriecks <@ncr.disa.mil> Cc: OpenOffice.org Marketing List <dev@marketing.openoffice.org> Subject: [Marketing] DoD paper on open source Ms. Meyerriecks: Congratulations to you and Mr. Bollinger on your FOSS paper. It's quite a piece and more importantly: congratulations on all that free software you've been using! It makes for good infrastructure and increases my own confidence in the efficacy of the armed forces, as well as reflects so well on the government. As the co-Lead of the Marketing Project of OpenOffice.org I was pleased to see that you have our product on your list. May I please point out some errata that you can be aware of for future versions of the paper? In my quick glance at p. 27 of the document I did notice that you have OpenOffice.org 1.0 listed as being licensed under the "GPL". That is not correct, as the software is issued under the dual licenses of LGPL and SISSL--a major distinction from GPL that makes a big difference to many users. Just while I have you, we do not use the term "OpenOffice" or "Open Office" because some other foreign entity has the trademark. The Project is called "OpenOffice.org", and the Product, the software, is called "OpenOffice.org 1.0" (x.0 for whatever the current major release would be). Also, the office suite OOo 1.0 is fully open source and has been since the code was released to the open source community in Oct 2000. Dont be fooled by the dual license, it provides total freedom to all users and is thoroughly endorsed by the Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman himself. The reason for the dual license is to allow companies to add source code to the basic product while still maintaining limited distribution rights over those additions they have made. The difference is that adding any code to a GPL base would render those code additions GPL, i.e., free in all subsequent situations. Sun/OpenOffice.org did this to allow companies to use the OOo code base to create a healthy economy for businesses to exploit the free code to serve many niche markets profitably. Just wanted you to have the best information at your disposal. If there is anything we in the OOo community can do to support your efforts or your use of the software, please don't hesitate to contact me (917) 375-8644 most sincerely, Sam Hiser Marketing Project swhiser@openoffice.org
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