O p e n O f f i c e . o r g

By Erik Kluit April 30, 2002 the OpenOffice.org community (www.openoffice.org) announced OpenOffice.org 1.0. This free office suite features a word processor (WRITER), a spreadsheet (CALC), presentation manager (IMPRESS) and drawing program (DRAW) in 27 languages (more being constantly added) with a similar 'look and feel'. OpenOffice.org works transparently with a variety of file formats (such as used in Microsoft Office and StarOffice). As most other end-users I use Microsoft Office, liking it or not. Some days ago I downloaded and installed OpenOffice.org on my Windows NT server. To say the least: it's promissing! I'm also running RedHat Linux 7.3, and installed OpenOffice.org there too. Again: promissing ...  OpenOffice.org is Office-compatible and cross-platform (Windows, PPC Linux, Linux and Solaris). Additional ports, such as FreeBSD, SGI's IRIX and Apple's Mac OS X are in various stages of completion. Why is the AIX platform missing here? And HP-UX? Untill now AIX was not considered a platform of choice to host a office productivity suite. To be completely honest: that was always my answer if students of AIX courses asked about office suites for AIX. But the world is changing ... My life would be a bit easier (let's not exaggerate) if I could use a cross-platform office suite that's also available on AIX. I fully support OpenOffice.org's mission statement: "To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format." AIX is a major platform. I suggest we start making some noise!

After studying Informatics I started in 1980 at the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands) as a System Administrator for a HP1000, and a Gould super-mini computer running a combination of BSD and SystemV Unix and later on as IT manager for the faculties. After that I worked at Wang as Unix Product Specialist and as Product Marketing Manager RS/6000. March, 2001 I registered the ROOTVG.NET domain to fulfill a need for information for AIX Users and System Administrators. Nowadays I am a free(lance) AIX teacher.     The official logo of OpenOffice.org

What are the main differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org ?
• The code base for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are synchronized daily. Main difference: OpenOffice.org must be distributed with open-source substitutes for technology that is licensed for inclusion with StarOffice. Examples are: Certain fonts (including, especially, Asian language fonts), the dictionary and grammar software, the database component (Adabas D), some templates, extensive Clip Art Gallery, some sorting functionality (Asian versions), certain file filters (for opening Wordperfect files).
• Sun offers for StarOffice fee-based 24x7 (dial-up) support and training, deployment and migration services, quality and assurance testing.

Statements and facts
• "OpenOffice.org 1.0 may be the single best hope for consumers fed-up with Microsoft's desktop monopoly", Eric Raymond (co-founder of the Open Source Initiative).
• Free to use - just download it via the internet.
• Free from licence fees - you will never need to buy a licence or pay for an upgrade again.
• The program has its origins in StarOffice, a product which has had fifteen years' development (originally developed by Star AG).
• Sun took the decision to release StarOffice as a free open source project a year or two ago.
• Sun also decided to help kick-start the creation of an open-source community to maintain and develop the package – the OpenOffice.org Source Project (July 2000).
• To date, more than 4.5 million downloads of earlier versions of OpenOffice.org 1.0 have taken place.
• OpenOffice.org is the largest open source project with more than 7.5 million lines of code.
• In less than two years, the OpenOffice.org community has grown to more than 10,000 volunteers (!), working together to build OpenOffice.org.
• OpenOffice.org 1.0 is written in C++ and has documented API's licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) open source licenses.
• The product's collaborative development process is hosted by CollabNet, whose software is designed to let numerous people work on the same project.
• OOo is short for OpenOffice.org.
• "OpenOffice's worst trade-off is its performance", Rob Pegoraro (www.washingtonpost.com).
• Microsoft Office format documents take up to twice the disk space.
• The trademark for "OpenOffice" belongs to someone else (I do recall Wang used to have the Open/Office software!). You must use "OpenOffice.org" when referring to this open source project and its software.
• What does this mean for Koffice, ABIWord, etc. .... ???? OOo ...

Links
OpenOffice.org Source Project (OOo).
Main OOo FAQ (OOo).
OPENOFFICE.ORG COMMUNITY ANNOUNCES OPENOFFICE.ORG 1.O: FREE OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE (OOo).
Why it's hard NOT to like StarOffice (ZDNet).
OpenOffice suite goes 1.0 (The Register).