100,000,000 downloads

On October 28th. 2009, the one hundred millionth person clicked on the Download OpenOffice.org button since version 3.0 of the software was announced just over one year ago.

www.openoffice.org

November 2009 Newsletter

Newsletter November (Danish) is out: http://bit.ly/3H4Txw. Read about 100 mio. downloads and a nine year old girl. There is also something about OpenOffice.

Is Twitter dying?

I am using Twitter.
As many other active members of the communities, I'm using Twitter. I don't tweet much, but I feel it very useful to be able to follow activities in the communities.

But are we getting too dependent on Twitter?

YES!

Twitter should not be a service but a protocol.

When Twitter is ill, we are more and more aware of our dependency.

More Danish municipalities under way

Just to let you know, we are experiencing a very important breakthrough in the municipalities right now.

City of Gribskov has been using OpenOffice for a few years.

City of Tønder has been using OpenOffice in schools for about a year.

City of Lyngby-Taarbæk has decided to use OpenOffice in schools. According to the local newspaper this is only the first step towards a compete change from MS to OpenOffice in the administration as well. A few translated articles on my earlier post here: http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2009/10/mayor-says-it-is-fully-comparable-with.html. Even the Mayor is happy ;-)

Another city close to Copenhagen is about to implement a new version of a Case- and Document Handling System, that integrates OpenOffice into it. From then, more than 90% of new documents will be produced with OpenOffice. Expected to be implemented beginning of November this year. (I will talk
about this case at OOoCon this year).

Besides this, I expect that at least a few more cities will follow this trend in the very near future.

Microsoft reactions:
Microsoft is cutting down the price for Office. Poor guys. The only reaction they can think of at the moment is telling FUD and lies about OpenOffice.org - about how OpenOffice is so old fashioned and
lacks functionality. We are trying to revert the discussion back against MS claiming that what they call old fashion is what people call a good and robust UI.

The mayor says: It is fully comparable with commercial systems!

When OpenOffice became operational last Wednesday ,the mayor Rolf Aagaard-Svendsen (K) was happy with the prospect of reducing the cost of software. Rolf Aagaard-Svendsen said:

There are many advantages to this. Among other things, it's free. The system is fully comparable with commercial systems

English translation of newspaper article:
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=da&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Flyngby-taarbaek.lokalavisen.dk%2Farticle%2F20091005%2FARTIKLER%2F710069782&sl=da&tl=en&history_state0=&swap=1

Eventually it is the plan that the municipal administration will switch from Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.

English translation of newspaper article: http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=da&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Flyngby-taarbaek.lokalavisen.dk%2Farticle%2F20090930%2FARTIKLER%2F710019956&sl=da&tl=en&history_state0=&swap=1

Localization

Localizing a complex application like OpenOffice.org is much more than just translating the user interface.

The Danish community has for years been working on several strings: We must of cause keep up with translating the application. Right now we are in a working on translation of version 3.2. We have more than 73.000 strings at the moment. We would very much like to get the manuals from OOoAuthers translated too. Unfortunately we haven't been able to keep up with versions lately.

Language tools are very important to our development. A few years ago we took a big step against an improved spelling dictionary and we are still working on that. The thesaurus was released about one year ago and right now we are working on getting a more academic approach thus we are trying to get an existing research project from University of Copenhagen implemented as the future thesaurus in OpenOffice.org. The idea is to implement what is already existing instead of developing it our selves. That way we can concentrate on the important thing like initiate new improving projects.

The latest news is, that a few guys in the community has succeded to create a Danish prof of concept of the LanguageTool: Grammar checker!



We are looking forward to see the results of this work. At this moment we are talking about a testimplementation with only a few grammar rules. But it looks great so far!

Registration is open

The registration for the annual OOoCon is now open http://conference.services.openoffice.org/index.php/ooocon/2009/schedConf/registration.