ooo-speak

Brazil

2008-04-25T09:07:00.000-05:00

Brazil--the Sinatra song speaks of holiday hope, escape, beauty, love, and their loss--

Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June
We stood beneath an amber moon
And softly murmured "Someday soon"
We kissed and clung together

Then, tomorrow was another day
The morning found me miles away
With still a million things to say
Now, when twilight dims the sky above
Recalling thrills of our love
There's one thing I'm certain of
Return I will to old Brazil

Then, tomorrow was another day
The morning found me miles away
With still a million things to say
Now, when twilight dims the sky above
Recalling thrills of our love
There's one thing that I'm certain of
Return I will to old Brazil
That old Brazil
Man, it's old in Brazil
Brazil, Brazil

And it was brilliantly used by Terry Gillian in his bleak 1985 satire, Brazil. The country remains a focus of hope and expectation, a sunny future, shadowed by its dark realities. But the current federal administration, Lula's, is changing things, and though the disparities of wealth and privilege remain stark and brutal (Brazil is, like the US, one of the more dramatically disparate countries in terms of wealth and privilege), things are very much improving. The government takes seriously the condition of its people and the importance of social responsibility.

I discovered this anew in my most recent trip to Brasilia, for meetings with the education ministry, and Porto Alegre, for fisl 9.0. Briefly, the meetings were immensely productive, and fisl was extraordinary. It is one thing to hear the strong rhetoric for Floss and another to see it in action (read about the KDE installations). The ministry, along with other federal and provincial governments, is dedicated to Floss and wants to move fast on it. OpenOffice.org is crucial there, as it is the best productivity suite on the planet, and that it is also free software--well that simply seals the deal. But the OpenOffice.org we are talking about is BrOffice.org, the Brazilian Portuguese version that is distributed by the BrOffice team. They had to rename it for trademark reasons, but it's the same thing that nearly a hundred million others use daily. And these facts raise some compelling points:

        •        Many Brazilians, including those in the Floss movement, as well as those in major corporations and government offices, are unaware of the identity of the two
        •        Support and training are sporadically available. Now, if someone or some public or private enterprise wants support for OOo, they can find it in several languages by going to our Support page; Sun (my employer) also provides for-fee professional support for OOo, along the same lines as for StarOffice.
        •        But the default understanding of the public and private enterprises in Brazil does not include support, training, services, and these are sorely wanted. Thus, we have the states of Paraná, the huge, quasi-federal office Serpro, the social security agency and many, many more which I learned about in the three-hour session dedicated to OOo and in personal discussions. (Indeed, I had so many of these that I regretfully could attend very few sessions.)

The ultimate point: we need to develop the support business in Brazil. Of course, Brazil is not alone; we need to do this elsewhere, too. But the need is urgent there and the market is open, and as I mentioned in my presentation late Saturday, Brazil really is the leader here and has the ability to join with India and South Africa and possibly China in proving the role and value of Floss in creating not only markets independent of colonial shadow but socially responsible.

But what about support? By support, I mean first and second level support, the sort that reassures regular endusers; and I also mean training. NO polity, no enterprise embraces Floss without minimizing liability. That means they want support and services and training contracts. It means building the ecosystem for OOo and doing so now.

BTW, if you have not looked at this, now is the time: http://www.hackerteen.com .

fisl9.0

2008-04-16T12:47:00.000-05:00

It's hard not to be enthusiastic about fisl, or to expand the acronym, the 9th Fórum International Software Livre, held each year in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In part, my enthusiasm stems from the energy and commitment to free software shown by the government; and in part, from the warmth and friendship demonstrated by the Brazilians.

OOo will, as always, have a booth at fisl, and we will--a first--be holding workshops, demonstrating how to build extensions, and answering question about code, format, project, community. If the past is any measure of the future, I'm fairly sure the event will be memorable and fun.

But there are challenges. The BrOffice community is big and growing but integration between it and the international community needs to be stronger. I would love to know, for instance, some basic data, such as how many people download the application, or some basic information about who is using it. Of course, I am aware of the big players, such as major government offices. And am also acutely aware of the difficulty of obtaining solid information about the users of free software. But, the more and the better information that we possess, the more effective we can be in shaping the product, addressing needs, and so on. And the more the BrOffice community works with the international one, the easier it ultimately is to grow the developer community.

Brazil is by no means alone here: all the major regions suffer the same problems, to greater or lesser degrees, and they come down to a lack of sophisticated developers. Nor is OpenOffice.org at all unique; all major Foss projects are in the same boat. We are also taking similar actions to redress these lacks, but results do not come the next day or even the next month. Education, mentoring, outreach, community coordination, all take time to bear fruit, all are forms of capital investment, and all are worth it--from the perspective of the government, and from that of the project.

And in this regard, as I've witnessed in the last few days, Brazil is a real leader. Its government has powerfully realized the necessity not just of using Foss but of producing it. And it is to OOo's credit and honour that we are so deeply involved in the move to productive freedom.

LGM 2008

2008-04-09T15:54:00.000-05:00

The Libre Graphics Meeting is to be held this year in Wroclaw, Poland, from 8-11 May. I cannot make it, but I did attend last year's and it was a great event. OOo doesn't really focus on graphics, but it can: there is no reason to limit the application to the supposedly dull office bucket. Graphical applications, moreover, can include works such as Scribus, as well Inkscape, Gimp, Krita, Blender, and with our own Draw gaining prominence and importance, it makes sense to form tighter liaisons with these and other free graphical projects. After all, we all want to give all users, everywhere, the power and freedom (and aren't they linked?) to create.

Help support LGM 2008. Make a donation.

fosdem 2008

2008-02-25T17:06:00.000-05:00

I don't know how many attended fosdem 2008 but it had to be in the thousands. All the sessions were packed, every room filled, and the hallways, where the stands were, were jammed during the breaks. It was, without question, one of the best conferences I've been lucky to attend, and I'm glad that OpenOffice.org had such a strong presence there this year. Next year, am sure, we'll have an even stronger presence. Certainly, we'll have the audience for it, if this year was any measure.

The only sad thing: I never had time to actually attend any of the talks and sessions I wanted to go to. Instead, I met many I had wanted to meet up with and otherwise helped out Sophie G. and Leon M. at the stand. My thanks to them: They set up and manned the booth all day Saturday and, in Sophia's case, Sunday. We gave out hundreds of brochures Frank P. and Stella had created (and Jürgen had printed up) and probably over a hundred t-shirts. And we could have given away many times more that number, I am sure, as our DevRoom was in the AW building, and not the obvious main building, where the food was and Mozilla was.

Mozilla was celebrating its 10th, and I learned that Sophie had been working on it since its start. I hadn't known this. Here, I've been working with Sophie for something like 7 years (!) and turns out that she had already a long history with Mozilla--and no doubt other projects.

But the most interesting story at fosdem (that I heard) is probably Leon's, and it has little to do with Foss. Leon looks like a sailor, or so I believe--he has a the look and robust dishevelledness I associate with long-time seamen, and it turns out that he was, for many years, a navigator on a freighter. These were no small jaunts--his longest trip was 53 days, around the Cape of Good Hope. That's a very long time indeed to spend on a ship, not to touch land, not to eat fresh food, not to stop. There were more stories, and Leon told us some, but I wish he'd told us more. We were at Restobière, having a wonderful classic Belgian dinner and had tried what really was, as he had promised, the world's best beer (dark and rich and yet not sweet but complex, like a very fine wine), plus some remarkable lambic beers whose astringent yeastiness was amazingly good, and were discussing code, procedures, and the usual.

But how did Leon enter gain entry into OOo? No clear answer--it differs for all volunteers, anyway--but I think it had to do with his character--independent and fearless, confident in his ability to solve any problem, but by no means hostile to community. I asked him if he had, after 53 days, hated his shipmates. No, he said, not at all; the opposite. And that's a revelatory statement. For OOo and Foss, in general, require toleration and the ability to get along with those who may irk you because you believe that it's necessary, that otherwise, if you fight, if you let quarrels destroy the effort, the ship will founder, the project will succumb, and there are always sharks.

I'll try to post the fosdem talks we gave as soon as I can. They were good!

Where was FOSS at Davos?

2008-01-30T22:03:00.000-05:00

The World Economic Forum is held at Davos. Historically, its relevance has been questionable, but this year, the focus was on collaboration, a topic close to FOSS. So I asked Brian Behlendorf, who attended, Where was FOSS at Davos? Here is his more or less unedited response, which Brian graciously allowed me to publish here; all rights, of course, remain his.

Where was FOSS at Davos? On one hand, in its most abstract form, it was everywhere - the theme of the conference this year was "the power of collaborative innovation", after all. And of the people I talked to, the idea that businesses would find it in their own self-interest to work jointly on projects with passionate individuals, the government, or other businesses, even their competitors, was relatively uncontroversial. Jimmy Wales's presence at this year's conference and last was also proof that this was a concept that went beyond software. Though, a couple of people were surprised to hear that Wikipedia was a non-profit - which suggests that further ideas about IP ownership and the role of non-profits isn't as well understood.

The more specific sessions at the conference dealing with collaboration - you can find links to them, often including video, at www.weforum.org - often were discussions less about collaborating with the open public and more about collaborating with business partners in a private setting; or with customers but in a still very controlled way. One example given by Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, was their collaboration with Apple: they have a set of running shoes that can communicate back with an iPod information about distance, speed, and calories burned, which then feeds a desktop app back at home and a web site where reportedly 40 million miles had been collectively burned. The runners can see each other's totals, compete for the most miles ran or calories burned, and message each other on the site. This, of course, is a long distance from the kind of collaboration we know about in the FOSS world... maybe I am damning with faint praise here, but it seems better than nothing.

But back to FOSS. As Davos is often best thought of as the Olympics of networking, finding a way to describe FOSS and its attributes crisply was important. Everyone had heard of Linux, 99% had heard of Apache, and of those I asked about 80% had heard of OpenOffice. That's the good news. On the downside: twice, I mentioned ODF vs. OOXML in conversations with people, and each time, there was a lack of awareness of the issue. I really don't want to embarrass them so I won't name names, but they were people who really should have known; one was a leader of a business that has been around for years and has serious document management and longevity issues, the other a government official who was charged with preserving his country's culture but sadly non-technical. In both cases, the initial response was along the lines of "this is a mess that you techies have created, I expect you to clean it up", as if it was simply a matter of defects in code that a company like Microsoft would be cleaning up quickly. If it turned out that valuable company data from 1993 were in a Word file format that couldn't be properly read by Office 2008, then they'd simply hire someone or a firm to dive in and repair it by hand. I believe I brought both of them around to understanding how it's not just a matter of bugfixing or outsourcing the problem, that it is a knowlege and institutional threat, and the role they need to play as informed customers in pressuring vendors to do the right thing. But, Microsoft's judo-move with OOXML of appearing to do the "right" thing that isn't actually right in practice has more power than I think you or I would wish were true.

Most of the time, though, Davos isn't a place to have difficult conversations about situations and events that appear to be beyond the field of the people in the conversation - it's often simply a place to meet and build bonds with people in your field and, more importantly, beyond; bonds that later can be used when a crisis hits or some need arises. I found myself preferring to discuss possibilities and potentials rather than what's wrong or looming worries. I know that sounds impossibly frou-frou, and I could blame the rarified air, or the overabundance of champagne. Instead, though, I think it's because this is for most people a one-week escape from the harsh realities of their daily business world, into a world where they can relate to others as people, to be stoked by new ideas. They'd much rather talk about the potential for Open Source software on the OLPC as a means to democratise technology; or Open Source software in disaster relief operations as a means to increase flexibility.

Perhaps it's my own failing of marketing, but I need to improve the way I talk about the ODF/OOXML debate so that it sounds less about conspiracy paranoia (no matter how well deserved) and speaks more about possibility, choice, freedom, economic opportunities, and growth. The Extremadura story is a beautiful story about free software, for example - especially when it's told in a way that shows how it could have never had a similar impact had they chosen to use proprietary software, even if "donated".

Deadline for OOoCon Extended

2008-01-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

The deadline for OOoCon has been extended until 10 Feb. As John McCreesh (Marketing Lead) wrote,

"Last month we set a deadline of January 31st for the receipt of
proposals for hosting the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2008 - see
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=345.

"In response to a number of requests from organising teams, we have
agreed to put back the deadline to midnight UTC February 10th. We will
aim to open the community voting process a few days later, and announce the winning bid on March 1st.

"We hope this will enable all teams to put forward their best possible
bid. Good luck and thanks to those working hard on their bids!"

OOoCon has gained importance each year. But it remains a definitively community event, a place where those who know each each other through mail lists can finally meet--or meet again. And it's also, of course, the place where developers can present on the work they are doing, will do and want to do, as well as the place where business people come to learn more about OOo--and to promote their own works. Last year, in Barcelona, OOoCon lasted one day longer than usual, and I feel it wasn't long enough (and not just because I wanted to stay longer in Barcelona). I am sure that this coming year will be even more intense and interesting, and be the place where we can see what IBM, Redflag Ubuntu, Google, and others have been doing.

Why MS Office for Mac 2008 fails to impress

2008-01-18T13:21:00.000-05:00

To say that I was surprised to read Matt Asay's blog on CNet extolling Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 is an understatement. Asay likes MS Office for Mac's UI and integration and despite its downsides, like the fact that it uses OOXML, not ODF, and does not synchronize with his Blackberry (or much else, though I'd guess it does fine with Microsoft products, but that's just a guess), he believes that the "upgrade was worth the price."

Really? I guess when I think about an application I think, to be sure, about the pleasure of using it and whether it is easy to use. No one likes an application that obtrudes and prevents fluid thought (which is hard enough to get, anyway).

But I also think about how my work using it will affect others. Would my colleague, for instance, be able to read what I send? Would I be able to read what they send me? How long can I trust the format to last? Ie, will I (or others) be able to freely access it decades from now? And this raises the question: Why would I want to use something that implicitly is exclusive? Sure, I use a Macintosh, but the work I do on it that is public employs free software and open standards, and that's where MS Office for Mac fails. Okay, I confess I have not personally tried out MS Office for Mac 2008--I cannot justify buying it--but I am aware that MS Office hasn't really changed from earlier versions in a crucial way: It still doesn't play well with others and in fact, as Matt admits, effectively forces the user to dive into the MS universe and close the door after him. That isolationist attitude is predicated, to be sure, on file format, but also on the philosophy of interoperation that differentiates MS's logic of development from Foss' and in particular OpenOffice.org's.

Our philosophy is to work with others. We do not insist that our application must do everything. We do insist that it be open--use open source and open standards, so as to allow (and indeed encourage) effective interoperation of different applications, big and small. The result is that there is no real limit to OOo and the application ecosystem (on the desktop, on the Web) it centres. And there is a limit to what MS Office (and others of its ilk) can do.

But can OOo match the UI that Matt loves so much? Yes. Can it also have the level of integration (or interoperation) that he likes? Yes. Okay, when? Well, 3.0 is slated for the end of summer, and when released, it will be able to work with Mozilla's Lightning calendaring application--which integrates with Thunderbird, the email client. And as OOo already supports lots of extensions and will support even more as time goes on, the wealth of options and tools can only increase. And most are likely to be free.

Freedom here is not the price one pays for mediocre software. There is nothing mediocre about Mozilla, OpenOffice.org or so much other Foss. Freedom is rather the tool that underlies the working of superior software, and that includes making it as pleasurable to use as to develop.

No macro or VBA support for MS Office's Excel 2008

2008-01-15T11:25:00.000-05:00

A first look by MacRumors at MS Office 2008 for Mac gave a surprise: No VBA for Excel.

This is quite important. It's important because the business community has come to rely on MS's VBA for macros and other scripted actions. To be sure, Microsoft is evidently going to use Apple Script more, but there is no translation from VBA to Apple Script, at least not that I know of.

The result: a very costly and hobbled application of dubious merit, too, using a file format that is racing backward even as it tries t keep up with ODF.

In contrast, OOo uses the ODF and also uses OOo Basic, which works in much the same way as VBA. There is even an effort underway to translate VBA to OOo Basic, and for many macros, I have been told, it is successful.

The point: Any business, large or small, or even individual, with many macros already written (or that intends to write them), ought to think twice if not thrice before spending absurd amounts of money on an application that removes such a tool. And they ought to look at OOo which is not only free, but does have built-in macro tool that does, to a degree, translate from VBA. (BTW, there is a project furthering the interoperability between VBA and OOo Basic.)

Education as a project

2007-12-31T11:55:00.000-05:00

For about a year, maybe two, the education project seemed to languish. In fact, since I first thought of the project, in Crete, several years ago (after a fine dinner of goat and resin wine and olives, animated by the conversation of friends, inspiration came easily and fluently), and even after, when I formed it with Sophie Gautier. There was a lot of interest but little public action. I would make contact with all sorts of education officials--professors, administrators--but nothing came of, and I think my co-lead, Sophie, was finding the same; and nothing was appearing on the public project pages or lists. This was our fault. Thus, if at the Symbiosis society of colleges in Pune, India, I may have been warmly received and heard from faculty and students alike keen interest in including OpenOffice.org coding in classrooms, there was, in the end, no evident result. It seemed all a show, or perhaps there was something simply missing I wasn't aware of. Being invited to give yet another presentation or workshop on the same topic is just not enough. What I wanted was for students to start working on OOo and even begin appearing on the public lists, and that was simply not happening.

There are several reasons that come to mind for the lack of continued activity. One is that any community formation, especially one of this nature, where I am asking students and professors to work on complicated code with little obviously in the way of payoff, does not come easily. It's hard enough to form participatory communities among those interested in participating and in participation's outcomes. It's even harder when both what counts as participation and outcome challenge the status quo.

And that challenge to the status quo in the make up of curricula and their basis is from one perspective what I was (and am) asking for. (Although my suggestion is by no means as radical as Eliot's in 1885, when he proposed the free elective system at Harvard.) Curricula are established--accreted--over decades and implicitly represent a culture's very idea of knowledge, practical or abstract. They do not change immediately, at least not those supposedly teaching fundamental, canonical, truths. And how could they? The very notion of a truth is that it's not susceptible to change. So if from one point it seemed I have been asking for professors to relinquish not just control over the class's pedagogy, replacing her with the community, but also the very content to be taught, it's no wonder that there has been little traction.

But, no, I was and am not asking for a big change, just a small one with big effect, and one that, for that matter, trades on what is already going on. My notion is not a Toffler-eaque merging of the the academic with the industrial and commercial, or more accurately, the replacement of academic knowledge with trade school skill. That would be a replacement of, say, truth and theory and principle with effect and how to produce that effect: a loss of knowledge and the very substance of innovation and newness, or the logic underlying the effect. (I won't enter into the interested/disinterested debate here, though it is of course relevant, especially as large companies increasingly determine the coursework in areas that are costly to maintain, such as the sciences.)

But what then do I mean by including OOo and other Foss code in education? It means to me as much the teaching of software collaboration and open source tactics of communication as the canonical teaching of code using Foss in classic (obligatory) and elective programs. It can also mean the inclusion of Foss in certain vocational college programs, as at Seneca College, in Toronto, where students are instructed on how to work on Firefox extensions as part of their basic instruction in coding and where collaboration is taken very seriously. In short, it means involving students and professors in Foss projects as a means of teaching collaboration and code. The satisfaction to be gained by this is immense, or so I believe, as students will learn not only how to code better but how to work with others in more or less real-world environments. They will not be abandoning the perimeters of the classroom; not at all. They will rather be including, in certain cases, the dynamic of Foss participation.

An example could be writing papers and giving presentations in the humanities. At one point, it used to be thought that the student's presentations--at whatever level--were essentially empty exercises and not at all related to professionalizing the student. That is, what the student learned could be thought of as being useful, but more in the abstract sense of becoming a better citizen and abler at presenting his views. The idea that a presentation given in a classroom could actually be a means of professionalizing the student and making her abler to get a job, say, or otherwise perform in real world situations, has only in the last generation become more present. When I was in graduate school, it simply wasn't clear, for instance, that my presentations were actually a kind of practice, or could be thought of as such, nor that I should be thinking about presenting at real conferences. All that was over the horizon.

But had it been on the horizon.... well, I would have been far better prepared, and I would have had a far better understanding of the process. Would I have lost out on the liberal luxury of learning at my leisure anything I chose? I don't think so. One learns best discursively, by talking and thinking about something with others, by engaging in dialogues and by taking what one thinks seriously. I think I would rather have been more serious about learning in general.

And I think that including Foss in classrooms will have a similar effect of encouraging students to take what they are learning seriously--not as empty exercises in abstract learning but as something that has real effect, both for them and for the world.

Bengaluru and foss.in and airplane movies

2007-12-04T04:57:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is party time! Well, at least its OOo Project Day time, at foss.in. I've posted the presentations and urge everyone to attend who can--the talks, workshops promise to be immensely interesting. If you cannot attend--and despite India's valiant efforts to change this, the majority of people won't be able to, I recommend my colleague's Frank Peters and Jürgen Schmidt's presentations; mine can be ignored, though it does tell newbies how and gives incredibly useful links...

Sankarshan's is special (I can't speak to the others unsent because I have not seen them.) I met Sankarshan several years ago, at LinuxAsia, in Delhi, when I was developing the idea of regional mentors and thought that he should be one; I still do. But he especially impressed me and many others at LinuxAsia with a brilliant presentation on community management issues. In his talk, he detailed the problems that befall a real project in India: the attrition of members, the problem of keeping things going, communication; and also the successes: foss matters not just for computer savvy elites (those who actually attend our talks) but for farmers and others who are taking to computerized systems in order not just to compete but to survive in this neoliberal world. And foss, with its emphasis on the commons (is that a universal concept in agriculture?) works best. Or would one rather the Monsanto model, locking users into proprietary dependencies for that which they need?

So I'm looking forward to Sankarshan's talk, and the others, and trying my best to fully understand Jürgen's,for what he lays out is both important for new developers (and old) and also stimulating. I'd like, in fact, to video Jürgen's presentation and make it wide available, if he's in agreement, as we need such material for all.

As to Bengaluru: I arrived late last night (early today), around 02:30 and slept about three hours. The flight was long--about 20 hours, altogether, though pleasant, however much I didn't sleep. I spent the time working, but.... At some point I ran out of battery power and tried changing batteries but was foiled by a jammed battery and so watched the latest Bourne movie (not as good as prior [or as Die Hard or Live Free] but has tidbits of political relevance, with episodes damning waterboarding, Bush's totalitarian ambitions, and so on) and part of Ratatouille, which is decidedly not as entertaining (or at least not in the same way) as Flushed Away, and for interesting reasons.

Briefly (and how can I speak of Bengaluru when I have only ventured out for a short walk today and am ensconced in a colonial palace with the reminders of colonial past, its dream, nightmare, memory all around? A lovely hotel, a whiplash of history), Rat foregrounds the commitment of identity cartoons assume and put under erasure. For that reason, it's very smart. Oh, it's also smart because Pixar has gone beyond technology here: we no longer watch the film as geeks marvelling at what computers can do but at what artists can imagine. So, just as Disney at their prime pictured the imagined forest of Bambi or Snow White lushly, as if every leaf was the adamic first and not something already seen, a meaningless brusstroke subtended to the action before us, so to does Rat picture the world: it's glorious to gaze upon, it's a world of sense not simply sound and fury.

And the rats are rats. I heard an interview with the director and one of his concerns was to represent rats as rats, not humans more or less rat looking. He succeeded. (Once, as a student, I unrolled my futon late at night and a little family of roof rats panicked out, fleeing for the window; I fled down the stairs. But this little family looked just like those pictured in the film.) And that's where the movie was interesting. For in foregrounding the ratness of the rat, its correspondingly difficult to take the same naive pleasure that one takes in Flushed, which is really about humans dislocated to an exotic but all the same familiar environment. There is no real ratness, no perceptual snag to arrest the grace of mimetic transfer. But there is in Rat: one is reminded of the rat and of ratness. Of course this is the point of the film, and when the airplane landed, that point was being explicitly enunciated. But that point alters the equation of entertainment (mimetic transfer) to a more Brechtian position, and for a cartoon of this nature, that's quite interesting.

foss.in

2007-11-09T15:40:00.000-05:00

foss.in is in just a couple of weeks and if you have not registered yet you really ought to now. Why? OpenOffice.org will be holding a Project Day, either 4 or 5 December (somewhat annoyingly scarily, it's still uncertain), and it represents a major opportunity for developers and would-be developers to learn more about OpenOffice.org coding, the project, and what the future holds

OOo is popular: in India, millions use it and the government has gone on record endorsing it, as have many large companies (actual use varies, of course). And Indians also produce code for OOo. Much of that work is localization, but not all. Nevertheless, if OpenOffice.org is really to flourish in India and elswhere--and to sustain that flourish--local developers are needed. This more than just establishing a community; it also entails cultivating the ecosystem that can produce foss developers, and OOo developers in particular. And that means ultimately focusing on strategies that educate as well as employ foss developers: the work of government policy as well as the putative invisible hand.

Foss.in should be fun and interesting. But if you can't make it, there are sure to be other OOo events in the near future. I'll likely be presenting at the upcoming (and renamed) Open Source India Week (OSIW), formerly LinuxAsia, the longstanding and quite well attended Delhi event. I hope while there to present, as well, workshops on entering OOo for developers and businesses.

Meanwhile, see you in Bangalore, either the 4th or 5th of December!

Support and OpenOffice.org

2007-10-16T11:04:00.000-05:00

This is a not atypical scenario: Government Blue wants to adopt foss but is uncertain about support, services, training, certification, liability, not to mention the longevity of the foss project in question. So, even though that free technology is gratis and more powerful, extensible and secure, Blue decides to stick with the status quo, as that SQ satisfies the crucial (and wholly nontechnical) requirements that the purchasing department insists upon. From the purchasing department's perspective, this scenario is simply anarchic chaos and very undesirable.

I've noticed this now for several years and have suggested the same remedy: related foss groups can form consortia. The result would be a single vendor who is responsible for all the above. Support can be contracted out, as can the other elements. The crucial point here is that Blue would not be dealing with a single responsible vendor.

Of course, this demands considerable cooperation among groups and individuals who formed small businesses and became independent precisely because they wanted to work alone. But it's necessary, I think.

OpenOffice.org fortunately is addressing this problem, though we still have some ways to go. Well over 350 companies offer professional support and services in many languages and in many lands; and that is not even counting Sun Microsystems, which offers per-call support for OpenOffice.org users. We list support options, free and not, at http://support.openoffice.org/.

We have ways to go. I would love it that when a user downloads OpenOffice.org (and most who download it form the OOo are Windows users), they are presented with support options. And that companies recognize the options available to them: that foss projects like OpenOffice.org are both community and professionally supported.

On Festival Software Livre, Brasilia, October 5-6

2007-10-05T13:14:00.000-05:00

To say that Brazil has taken to OpenOffice.org and software livre is an understatement. Claudio Filho, the lead of the Brazilian Language project, and one of the leads of the BrOffice.org group, estimated that there are about 10 million OOo users here. (One must use BrOffice.org instead of OpenOffice.org in Brazil for trademark reasons.)

Like most countries, Brazil remains primarily a consumer of FOSS, not a producer. And although one will save money with free software, one has not changed the relationship to the commodity that free software offers: one is still a consumer and effectively in debt to others for the product. That is something that I and many others would like to change. In my previous trips here, especially the last, in April of this year, I've tried to encourage students, professors and other would-be developers to consider working on OOo. Although I certainly hold out the hope that many would-be new participants would do so at their leisure (and have, say, a day job), I am cognizant that many (most) would likely participate as part of their job. OOo has certainly become easier to work on and one may contribute in any number of ways that have little to do with coding; and , to be sure, we have made it much easier to create extensions. But to work on OOo code requires an allocation of resources. And that implies that OOo be seen as popular enough, powerful enough, and possessed of a future. It has to be seen as worth the investment. Just saving millions of dollars is probably not enough; after all, regressing to typewriters or pens and pencils would also save money, as does not doing anything at all.

(Status quo or regression is tantamount to erecting a fatal wall of isolation. The fact is that the modern world requires the tools that can produce electronic documents and it also requires interoperability. Isolation of any sort is hobbling. At the same time, it's also clear that if a nation is expected to compete globally, its residents need access to the tools of production. They cannot just be limited to the elites nor can we accept the proliferation piracy as any sort of solution to giving all the appearance of access to informatic tools of production. [Pirated copies of proprietary software are still proprietary and have all the encumbrances we have come to expect.])

Brazil and other nations increasingly recognize the problem of being merely consumers and the advantages of becoming producers. Moving from one to the other, let alone moving simply enough to foss, is not trivial. The move to foss saves money; the move to producing foss also saves money, but in cases can also cost. One has to shift educational systems and in some cases encourage markets. Relying on the invisible hand for all this probably doesn't work, at least not at this stage. It doesn't work because in a monopoly environment, there is no invisible hand; there is no real market: that's what a monopoly is all about. The agent enabling this shift has historically been the government: it alone has the ability and the responsibility. For what's at stake here is not the success of one private company or another but a lot more, the commercial health of the nation.

But back to the Festival. Held in the Catholic University (Universidade Católica de Brasilia) just outside Brasilia, and sponsored by an impressive array of local and multinational companies, the event, the second in as many years, spanned two days and included presenters from various ministries as well as national and multinational companies. Its primary organizer, Kleber Fígaro Rozado,the director of Training Tecnologia, invited me. I went down uncertain of the audience; it turned out to be mostly students, which was good, as they were clearly engaged. Even more encouraging, the professors were clearly interested in furthering the connection to fosters users and developers. They want their students to be producers. (Follow up emails have been sent but more needs to be done to ensure that what was sown in October actually bears fruit.)

As is always my fate, I was too occupied with impromptu meetings and discussions to attend all the presentations, which was a pity. But I did catch the Caixa presentation, David Kuhn's of Serpro, Keith Bright's of IBM, and in some ways my favourites, Maddog's.One of the really encouraging things about Caixa's presentation was mention of their contributions to OpenOffice.org. Unlike so many who use without contributing, they recognize that absent their contributions, the fruit may not just whither but never arise. Foss projects need participation, else we are back to commodity dynamics.

I only regret that i had to leave so soon and was unable to enjoy the pleasure of seeing friends. I am glad I was able to renew my acquaintance with Roberto Salomon, now of IBM and one of the leads of the Brazilian language project, and of course, to say hello to Claudio again. I hope to see them again soon, at next year's fisl, an event not to be missed.

FOSS publishing

2007-10-02T16:12:00.000-05:00

Last May I had the pleasure of boring people at the LGM event in Montreal, where I met some of the Scribus team and also learned more about FOSS publishing and graphics. As a kind of update, my friend, Mayank Sharma, sent me a link to the magazine he writes for, o3:magazine, and its issue #9 is on open-source publishing. I pitch it here not because Mayank asked me to, but because the magazine touches on creating documents with OpenOffice.org. In particular, Mayank's article on "Collaborative editing with OpenOffice[.org]" is useful and interesting for both editors and writers. I would add that with 2.3, we have improved the component considerably.

Worth a read.

State of the project, the fuller account

2007-09-28T21:45:00.000-05:00

In my speech on the State of the Project, which I gave at the recent OOoCon in Barcelona, I promised I'd provide the fuller account here, in this blog. I meant to do it immediately after the conference, but as is the nature of these promises, other things intervened. But, here is the fuller account.

Every year I ask the project leads to tell me (and the community) what their project has done that is interesting, cool, important, and to let us all know who was responsible. FOSS thrives on community recognition. Below is simply the responses, more or less in the order I received them. A few, I have edited.

Joost Andrae, QA Project
Speaking for the QA project one of the highlights were the introduction of Nakata Maho as new QA project lead and Caio Tiago Oliveira de Sousa as co-lead besides myself. The structure of the QA project has been widened by application related sub teams. The QA homepage has been re-worked. The skills of QA team members improved considerably. There were QA related meetings in Germany (eg. in Essen) and the OpenOffice.org team in Germany was present at the CeBIT trade fair. Most important: Various versions of OpenOffice.org got released. The cooperation between native language teams and the QA project intensified.

Charles-H. Schulz, Native Language Confederation.
I think we should mention our struggle for open standards and freedom, the (so far) triumph of ODF worldwide. As for names, I have many: Davide Dozza, Florian Effenberger, Claudio Filho, Pavel Janik, Leif Lodahl, Jeongkyu Kim, Rail Aliev, Alexandro Colorado Michael Brauer, Erwin Tenhumberg, you, my humble self... and I'm forgetting some others.

Frank Schönheit, Base
For Base, the Report Builder is certainly the most important accomplishment over the last year. It provides a dedicated user interface for creating reports, using Pentaho's reporting engine, formerly known as JFreeReport. Ocke Janssen was the brave man :) who implemented this nearly alone.

Jürgen Schmidt, API and Extensions.
Well new API's are developed always when new features are implemented. But often requested in the past and now provided is a new awt TreeControl. Many other new API's were introduced. With OO.org 2.3 for example 223 new UNOIDL types are introduced that allow to program certain parts of the office from macros, extensions or even from remote.

Addons were improved, support of more complex toolbars ....

Service provider interface for embedded objects. I think a really useful and powerful SPI that for example allows Java embedded objects that can be activated outplace.

We did a lot of good stuff in the area of programmability. The SDK example ObjectInspector can help developers to get necessary context info of real objects. It allows to browse through an object hierarchy and can of course generate code snippets in Basic, Java and C++ for smaller parts.

A lot of improvements related to the extensions infra structure. Improved extension manager in the office. Online update for extensions, PackageInformationProvider API to get easy access to local package content and many more ...

The extensions repository web site. A really huge step forward to promote extensions for OO.org and allow easy access to new extensions. We now have one and well integrated access point for extensions. Check out the "Get more extensions" link in the extensions manager.

We have released a first version of our OpenOffice.org API plugin for NetBeans. Also a tool for developers to simplify the development with and for OO.org. 4 wizards for client programs, general and specialized components (special service provider interfaces SPI). It support type completion, context sensitive help, ... Version 1.1 should be available next week.

Hand over the Developer's Guide to the documentation. Well we will probably still provide the content but the documentation team has taken over the maintenance. The guide will be published in the wiki (soon) to simplify the contribution. It was often requested by the community and we are now in the situation where we have a suitable solution for the wiki (status will be presented on the conference). And of course the guide was extended with two chapters for extensions and graphical user interfaces.

Many many more stuff.

Matthias Bauer, Writer
I think *the* highlight for the whole project was that ODF officially had become an ISO standard in November (or was it December?) 2006.

The main highlight for the Writer project is the increased community interest and contribution we are seeing and feeling everywhere. Some examples:

• the number of received patches has increased (and we integrate them much faster now ;-))
• on several occasions developers worked together with us to implement new features
• we get a lot of feedback to specifications we have written; some community members also wrote specifications by themselves

Though we have done a lot of work in Writer in the last year I don't see a single particular highlight that should be mentioned. We have been very busy (and still are), but not doing "cool" things. Well, there will always be people that have to do the dirty work. :-)

Thinking a little bit more about it I think that perhaps it is worth mentioning that the Writer team now tries to address highly requested features as much as possible. We had two great Google Summer Of Code projects in areas that belong to those that needed improvements most (notes, text language selection).

Éric Bachard, Philipp Lohmann, Mac Porting Project
About Mac OS X porting project:

• 6 new Domain Developers joined the Macport and thus, the OpenOffice.org community
• Sun MicroSystems provided us 2 dedicated developers at full time
• 2000 cvs commits, a lot of cws, and an Aqua version of OpenOffice.org better at every milestone.

After the fantastic effort the Community and Sun did, the Mac OS X porting project is proud to announce the Aqua version is scheduled for 3.0, and - we hope -, will become a new major port.

Joerg Sievers confirmed we did the first steps in the QA process, and serious things, to integrate the Mac OS X Aqua version will start after OOoCon Barcelona.

Kai Ahrens, Graphics
For the Graphics area, the new Chart implementation (Chart2) is surely a real benefit and of interest for many many people, especially the fact that we now have a solid base on which further improvements are possible, which wasn't the case before.

For the other graphics applicalications like Draw and Impress, there's been a lot of work ongoing regarding modularization of core and UI components to easily develop extensions. Those extensions are currently under development and expected to be released, at least as a prerelease, within the next months.

The currently developed PDF-Import as well as PDF/A support are also highlights among many others.

Christian Lippka, Graphics
In addition to what Kai said about the graphics team, I like to point out that SUN released
its direct x canvas for windows as open source. See Thorstens blog here

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/windows_display_driver_woes_what

Also the work on modularization will soon spin of some very useful download able extensions. The first
that is soon to come is a minimizer component that can hugely reduce the size of presentation documents by
rescaling images, replacing ole objects and removing hidden slides and many more. Expect a blog entry
about this soon.

Carsten Driesner, Framework
I think the framework project implemented many new features to support a better extension integration into OpenOffice.org.

• Dialog and localization support for extensions
• Merging of items into toolbars and menus
• Support for complex toolbar controls (e.g. comboboxes, editfields, ...) for extensions
• Easy to use message boxes
• Flexible and extensible paths to support:
• Gallery items, Templates and Autotext within extensions

Rafaella Braconi, l10n
The highlights of the last year for the Localization project are:

• contribution: more and more teams are providing translations and are updating the localization of their version on a regular basis. The collaboration on localization efforts between Sun and the native-language teams has enormously increased not only in terms of number of teams contributing but also in terms of volume provided.
• teams expertise: the skills of the team members have improved considerably both in terms of translation quality delivered and in terms of tools and process knowledge.
• project structure: the l10n project has a new co-lead focusing on i18n, Eike Rathke, the irreplaceable and indispensable guidance and support of Pavel Janík and a new lead (myself).

Niklas Nebel, Calc
Some highlights from Calc:

• We started to concentrate usability activities (see http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/improving_calc_usability, http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Calc/To-Dos/Usability lists some issues that have already been resolved).
• There was a successful "Summer of Code" project to integrate R with Calc (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/R_and_Calc).
• Ongoing: Compatibility improvements (GETPIVOTDATA, array constants, JIS/ASC, ...).
• ...and (John McC addes,) surely a 12857% speed improvement is worth a mention :-)
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/another_12857_speed_improvement

Frank Peters, Documentation
Documentation is in the middle of a major restructuring since I took over as the co-lead 4 months ago. We started to move to the OOo wiki consolidating the available information sources. Sun open sourced all StarOffice documentation bits inm 2007 to be included in the community set. The Administration Guide is already on the wiki, the Dev Guide with 900+ wiki pages will very soon follow.

For the first time, community members contributed large parts of the help content for the new chart module, first and foremost the German community with Regina Hentschel.

And, there was the successful Template and Clipart contest, sponsored by Worldlabel. And thanks to Jean Weber, who has worked on migrating many docs to the wiki.

Last not least you may consider paying tribute to the longtime documentation project lead Gerry Singleton who unexpectedly passed away in May.

These updates represent but a fraction of the interesting work that has been done this last year. OpenOffice.org has well over a hundred projects and probably more regional efforts. Let me know what you've been doing and I'll add you to this list.

OOoCon Impressions

2007-09-22T08:43:00.000-05:00

My reaction after just the first morning in Barcelona, where we held this year's OOoCon was: I want to stay here, live here. And judging from others' reactions, I was not alone. We had reason for our desire: This year's event was held in the grandly gorgeous Universitat de Barcelona, a building and location that offered what we wanted--pleasant rooms, a lovely interior garden, and outside, across the street, cafés and restaurants where we could mingle. Softcatalà, the organizers, did a fine job of making sure we had rooms and excellent food. I can well imagine how much work they had to do, especially given the commencement of classes.

How did the several hundred attendees like this event? From all reports, they greatly enjoyed it. Each of these conferences serves to build community, to undo the differences that distance imposes. Most of us only see each other this one time and learn to communicate via email, IRC, IM--wholly inadequate media for resolving misunderstandings or quickly coming to understandings. This is especially so given that OOo is such an international community with many, many languages spoken, though English remains the language for development and general communication. But for those for whom English is not just the second but fourth language, meeting in person and seeing the real smile not the smiley makes a difference.

My regret: I could attend only a few panels, and I evidently missed a lot of the really good ones. My excuse? I was pressed into meeting after meeting and listened to vendors show their ideas. I don't think I am in wrong to say that this year saw more vendors with clever solutions attend with briefcases in hand. Startups like what we offer, to be sure, and not only startups. Look at IBM, with 1M downloads of its derived product Symphony in just the first week or so: OOo has achieved what is utterly remarkable, a recognizable position in the market, and all without meaningful marketing money being spent. Why is this so remarkable? Well, to sell a commodity like an office suite, some companies must spend astronomical sums, hundreds of millions of dollars each year. We spend nothing. But we have a community, not a consumer base, and that makes all the difference between our incandescent rise and the others' steady descent. The cost of vendor lockin is too high, and freedom is, well, free.

Update on the native Mac Port

2007-09-20T08:49:00.000-05:00

Ran in to Éric B, and he politely corrected me on last blog, in which I described the latest Mac port to Aqua as being purely cocoa'd. It's not: just some elements. That said, it is still quite nice and really amazingly fast. Nice work!

Of course, now is the time to make it pure cocoa, so if you want to join.....

Fun at OOoCon with the new Aqua Port

2007-09-19T16:41:00.000-05:00

Haven't slept much since I arrived here in Barcelona for OOoCon 2007 and feel I should get biological but I have to write that not only did I do my morning presentation using the new native-Aqua port but also my afternoon one--and had no, none port-related glitches. It worked brilliantly.

Chapeau to Éric Bachard, Philipp Lohmann, and everyone else who has worked furiously and tirelessly to make the native port possible these last few months (!). I, along with the rest of the millions of Mac users thank you--but I am ahead of myself: the port is still Alpha.

I'm downloading now the very latest one that Éric posted to his ftp site and I believe it's purely Cocoa, not Carbon, plus it fixes lots of issues.

Again, this is a native port: no X11, just the very fast OOo application running natively on Mac OS X Aqua.

The IBM Agreement

2007-09-10T21:56:00.000-05:00

The IBM agreement announced today represents a milestone in OpenOffice.org's trajectory. It's not just that IBM is implicitly confirming OpenOffice.org's mission--others have done that, not least of which we can number Redflag--but that it is also throwing its weight behind OpenOffice.org's ODF implementation, as well as furthering it with its accessibility technology.

That last element is particularly relevant for governments, which righty insist on technology all can use, not just a segment of the population. Governments previously chary of committing to the ODF and OpenOffice.org because they were either unsure of accessibility support or unsure of the project's future and nature, may think twice now, assured that the technology will be there--only better and more flexible than the proprietary alternative.

Built by thousands of contributors working from every region of the globe and backed by some of the world's most powerful and visionary IT companies, OpenOffice.org is hardly any longer a thing of wonder, an alternative suite whose main virtue was that it could do for free what others did for a fee. Rather, it can rightly claim to be the first choice and also the right choice.

Oh, memory

2007-09-10T21:33:00.000-05:00

Michael Meeks' blog today, 10 Sept. was pointed out to me by more than one person earlier today. Meeks is a reliable blogger and his entries are useful for keeping up with OOo development. Today, his blog focused on the IBM agreement but took a nice swipe at me. And what he wrote surprised me.

"Louis Suarez Potts famously re-assured IBM (Don) in Koper that no-one in the community thinks not-releasing your OO.o code-changes is anti-social (or words to that effect). As a person who had spent some time hammering Don on this topic the night before, I was appalled."

"Famously"? Wow. No, I do not recall saying what Meeks attributes to me at all. And second, as I pointed out to Meeks, not only do I recall that evening session quite clearly (I had put the session together and moderated it), I actually have a public and published record of saying exactly the opposite: that I and the community wanted then and even before that night two years ago for IBM to contribute its work to the project. That community is quite pleased with today's announcement, as am I. It culminates several years' of waiting and proves very clearly the merits of the project both Meeks and I work on. Expect now a brilliant and I am sure interesting future.

Interesting new extension--Teacher's Pet

2007-09-03T13:10:00.000-05:00

Teacher's Pet is a menu pulldown that can be added to OpenOffice.org as an extension. Still in Beta, the menu features many clever and useful scripts as commands that will surely help teachers, students (of all levels) and writers. As far as I know, it's available only in English now.

Download it and see how it works with your OpenOffice.org. The URL: www.teachers-pet.org.

Changes

2007-07-12T14:53:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of this month I left CollabNet, which I had been with since October 2000--
since the release of OpenOffice.org code to the public. I am pleased to announce that I've joined Sun Microsystems, whose Hamburg team I've been working with on a daily basis since that same October.

My role as Community Manager will not significantly change, at least not immediately. To the best of my abilities, I'll continue to represent the community, impartially and fairly, to all interested individuals, organizations, companies, governments, and to help manage and articulate community activity so that the entire project benefits. And I'll continue with my efforts to involve the world in developing and using OpenOffice.org, the product and the project, as well as the ODF. My goals will thus not change. In fact, I think they will be strengthened by my new affiliation, as it will give me the vantage point needed to act on behalf of OpenOffice.org and its interests within Sun as well.

How will this affect my relations with other companies, groups, individuals outside of Sun interested in OOo and the community? OOo is a large an inclusive project built by a community, and I will continue to represent that community. In this way, there will be no difference to the way I represented myself when I worked for CollabNet.

From Russia to London

2007-06-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

The great thing about the area of London where I am (Hackney/Shoreditch, staying at the very cool Hoxton Hotel on Great Eastern) is that there is a lot of free wifi, including at my hotel and in the many bars, cafés and other venues. (Of course This characteristic was not shared by the airport lounge at Frankfurt, where I spent 6 hours after missing my flight to Moscow (visa issues), but it did have endless quantities of unnourishing but tasty and even inebriating comestibles. I arrived in Moscow at 5:05, and was spirited to my hotel, the Izmailovo, by a taxi driver I got after dickering and who believed that it was *okay* to go 160 km/hour down the freeway. The cost of the thrill ride--1500 rubles--seemed almost worth my life. The hotel was interesting--large, near the folk market (the Vermisage), popular with Russians and the stray tourist, and a lot unlike where I've stayed before; it had slot machines in the lobby, as in Vegas, and I should have played: my lucky day, for I survived the ride and was there, in Moscow.

But I had only a couple of hours or so to get ready for the conference, Moscow Interop, where Brian Behlendorf was also speaking (we were on some of the same panels) and that time could have been better spent ironing my very wrinkeled shirt, drinking coffee, eating (the cafeteria for breakfast offered an amazing smorgasbord of Russian food, and I tried it all), having a shower, shaving. It was already, at 7, about 30--Moscow's been having a freakish heat wave--and humid, too.

Brian and I got together, and with him leading, made our way via the magnificent, triumphant subways to the event. Muscovites don't really believe in air conditioning--they should (and at some point I thought I could make a fortune selling fans)--and the hall where the event was taking place, though auspiciously modern looking was only slightly less hot and only slightly less humid than the blazing moist outdoors. But it was tolerable, and the coffee was good, as was the cake, and there was lots of water. For our first panel, which included Eric Allman of Sendmail, as well as Brian and me, I'd gone only about 26 hours without sleep, but this is (unfortunately) not too unusual for such events; for the event in São Paulo, in April, I also presented right off the plane, and I went probably 30 hours without sleep. It's fairly easy to do, and adrenaline does a good job of keeping one awake.

So, the panel went well, though the questions by the moderator and audience ran all over the gamut. Quite a lot of them focused on OOo and ODF, a few on starting open source projects, and things related to their management: fairly normal, in other words. The second presentation could have been more interesting, but I will chalk it up to translations effects; normally, I wake people up, as tend to be animated. Anyway, the presentation ended, and then it was a series of meetings--the real point of being there, to be the community ombudsman, and see what I could do to resolve issues and focus attention on the RU community, and viewing a brilliant presentation (it merits its own entry) of Gnosis, a very cool implementation of the ODF for presentations--concluding with a dinner with the community members, to which Brian was included. That went quite well, and was rather fun, even without vodka (indeed, no vodka at all this trip!). And by this time, it was more than 40 hours without sleep.

The terrible thing about Moscow, is that the internet in hotels is so horribly expensive. By the time we returned to the Izmailovo, both Brian and I were likely really needing to catch up on things. Not only did I have a pile of things to follow up on, but also had to do my usual work. But internet access cost--get this--1200 rubles (25/dollar) for 600 minutes!! In cash. But I decided to do it anyway: there were too man pressing things.

The return to London the next day was accelerated by the heat: it was too hot to wander around Moscow with a suitcase and though I wanted to meet with some Sun people, they were busy in the morning. So I just headed for the airport an hour early. It too was expensive and lacking in efficient air conditioning, though it was cooler than the 36° outside, on the runway.

Since my return, I've been doing follow up and also further organizing the upcoming OOoCon. Actually, come to think of it, that's what I've been mostly doing: OOoCon. (Plus lots of other things.) OOoCon entails contacting would-be sponsors, such as Google, which promised money last year but has yet to pay up (Zaheda Bhorat of Google was a keynote speaker), and Intel, which is also delinquent. I find it amazing that such extraordinarily rich companies should have such a cavalier attitude... Especially in cases like Google, which in many ways is the largest ODF implementation (via Google Docs and Spreadsheet) and which claims to help open source projects. It would be nice to see concrete evidence of that help.

As well, I've been organizing a strong education push. Both Brian and I know that you don't just find FOSS developers, though that is always possible. But you can help yourself by helping to make them. (Or, you get companies to allocate them.) To this end, I've been working with numerous colleges, universities and the like in Canada, the US, Europe, Russia, India, China, Brazil (wherever I have been and then some) to see about getting OOo and other FOSS projects taught as part of the curriculum, as well as implementing GSoC kind of programs. It's also a lot of work, as it entails, again, an investment. But the payoff is huge. GSoC programs are great--call them fellowships--but they will only ever select a few students, though they will affect the course material, as professors and students seek to maximize their chances. Nevertheless, we need a stronger effort, the inclusion of OOo and other FOSS projects in regular course work. Mozilla (and to a degree, OOo) now have students work on extensions for Firefox and OOo in class, as part of their coursework. It's just a start. We need to move documentation, content, workflows, sample curricula, etc. to environments that are available to all; and we need, too, to have material and mentors to help teach the collaborative techniques that characterize FOSS. I started something like this in 2004, and in 2006, Sophie Gautier and I formed the Education project. But we need to move ahead, both on the OOo and more generally FOSS front.

In Memoriam

2007-05-15T04:11:00.000-05:00

I learned Monday morning that my friend G. Roderick Singleton had passed away, felled by a heart attack. I knew Gerry through OpenOffice.org; he was one of the leads of the Documentation Project and a staunch supporter of OpenOffice.org. At his demise, he and I, along with a few others, had just embarked on a new and interesting project.

Gerry was gruff, grizzled, honest, smart, experienced; never cynical, never inconsiderate. Did the community know that he spent an enormous amount of time caring after his aged and frail parent? We tend to forget that people in the open-source community also have real lives. Gerry's integrity was exemplary, his work inspiring, at least to me. When my wife and I moved to Toronto from Berkeley, he made an effort to introduce me to the local Toronto open-source groups and to make me feel at home; he succeeded. Our schedules, however, made close work difficult, but he tried, all the same, to keep in touch with me, and possessed a quality of patience I hope one day to have.

I will miss him, the community will miss him.

Libre Graphics Meeting

2007-05-05T12:58:00.000-05:00

The Libre Graphics Meeting is taking place 4-6 May in Montréal (now). I spoke there Friday, at 09:45. I'm fairly excited about the conference, which touts itself as being, "all about participation. Artists and developers, feel free to bring your laptops and show us what you can (and can't yet) do. Organise a BOF about your favourite project or feature. We're aiming for a bazaar."

The conference's aim was true. Unlike a lot of other conferences, this one was for developers, not marketers or sales people. Louis Desjardins, the lead organizer, arranged it so that people actually spoke to each other, crossed boundaries, learned about what other projects were doing; it was terrific. I'm not a developer, but I was able to establish liaisons with the KOffice (Krita) leads, the Scribus people, and numerous others, all with the aim of bridging differences and collaborating, technologically and socially, so that users and developers can learn about FOSS solutions and use them that much easier.

I pointed out that all compatible FOSS projects can consider working with OOo and exploiting ("leveraging") its immense momentum and popularity. Even having links--friendship or partnership--on our website to these FOSS projects would help not only the projects *and* OOo but also users. The user wanting, say, a desktop publisher, can think about Scribus; she might not have if she hadn't learned of them because us. And that's just one example. And, from my perspective, having ODF implemented by Scribus and other relevant applications seems desirable, though not as compelling as perfecting import functionality. What is important here is ultimately making it easier for users and developers to use and work on the code without the mystery shrouding proprietary applications. One other possibility for collaborating with Scribus: the application is very discriminating regarding fonts; they have to meet specifications that go far beyond what most other applications demand. We discussed, over lunch, the possibility of establishing a library of fonts ("library" in the old sense: a repository) that have been vetted according to Scribus' standards but can also work with other compliant applications, such as OOo. This would not only help Scribus but also, if feasible, OOo. It is worth following up on.

Along these lines, I discussed (or vice versa) open fonts with SIL.org leads Nicolas Spalinger and Dave Crossland. Nicolas was brilliant, and showed me what his project has been doing. OOo already works with them, though given the importance of fonts I'd expect that more collaboration will occur. I asked Nicolas to send me more information about the project, as I am sure it will make an interesting article.

But back to the conference. One of the coolest things about the event (aside from the fact that it was in Montréal, during one of the most beautiful set of spring days I've seen, situated at the peak of the Université de Montréal), was the superb broadsheet published by the conference team. It shows how *good* Scribus is (I assume it was made using it--Louis D. is a project member) but also showcased the seriousness of the effort put into the event.

I only wish I didn't have to leave. The conversations I've had here have been tremendously useful and productive--but of course, that all remains to seen. One thing to talk, another to do.