I believe Martin Hauge has already sent the ODF original of this
report to Charles Schulz. Here's a text version, for the benefit of
the mailing list audience.
Regards,
Gaute Hvoslef Kvalnes
Norwegian Native-Language Project
-------
Annual OpenOffice.org report from the Norwegian native-language project
1. Number of users, number of members and active members
We estimate to have about 100.000 users. The number of people having
downloaded and tried OOo is probably more than 250.000 (we have a
total population of 4.6 mill.).
The majority of the users are probably students/pupils.
The Norwegian OOo-project is organized as a foundation, without
traditional membership base. The foundation is named "Åpne
kontorprogram på norsk" ("Open Office Tools in Norwegian"). The
members in the steering committee are all appointed from the counties
and municipalities. Some students are hired for the translation work.
The foundation collaborates with the open-source project Skolelinux
("Linux in Schools"). The foundation also has a close relationship to
the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS).
2. Downloads
We have used the Bouncer download tool since the release of OOo 2.2.0
on 29 March 2007. The numbers below are taken from Bouncer's logs.
There are no statistics available for the versions prior to 2.2.0.
2.2.0: 85262 downloads
2.2.1: 64922 downloads
2.3.0: 141822 downloads
Total: 292066 downloads
[The ODF report contains more detailed figures.]
The figures are really positive, and it indicate a substantial
increase of users in Norway. We assume that a number of users are
still installing OOo from a cd , memory stick or class-server, but we
have no exact statistics from this kind of installations.
3. Issues with localization and/or outstanding, "popular" issues
One of the head issues in the steering committee has been fund-raising
to finance our activities
On the technical side, we have been concerned with problems related to
downloading of the Norwegian dictionary. The procedure has been
awkward and caused frustration among users. We expect the dictionary
and thesaurus to be embedded as an extension in OOo 2.4, eliminating
the need for a separate download.
4. Resources description
We have under-estimated the resources needed to translate the
help-texts in the present version. The help text translation is
therefore put on hold, and we have concentrated our activities to the
main objectives. All the translations are made by paid efforts, mainly
students. At the end of the year, the situation was substantially
improved by the grants we got from the Government.
Our marketing activities have mainly been performed by voluntary
efforts, but that will probably be changed next year.
5. Goals and objectives of the native-language project and how well
they have been reached
Up till now we have the following objectives:
a) Produce Norwegian translations for the different Ooo-versions.
This is partly reached. The interface is fully translated to both
Bokmål and Nynorsk, but the help texts remain. In ver. 3.0 this will
probably be more easy to complete.
We do QA of the Windows and Linux versions, and distribute the
builds on OOo's mirror network.
b) Promote OpenOffice.org in the public and private sector
We have probably got the best success in the schools. In four
counties the junior colleges use mainly OpenOffice.org (Akershus, Møre
og Romsdal, Oppland, Nordland).
c) Encourage vendors of professional systems to develop
integration to OpenOffice.org
We have challenged vendors of archive systems and financial
systems to develop integration. The majority of archive/issue
processing systems now have such integration.
d) Arrange annual OpenOffice.org conferences
This is done every year since 2004.
e) Finance the project through sponsors and fund raising
We have got sponsor income mainly from county administrations and
municipalities - enough to run a normal business. At the end of 2007
we got about 45.000 € as governmental support.
f) Promoting ODF has been an outstanding issue this year.
In December the Norwegian government made ODF and PDF compulsory
for documents published on the web.
For 2008 we have stated the following objectives:
1. The Project will provide translation of all new versions
for the two Norwegian languages Bokmål and Nynorsk as close to the
international releases as possible. The most visible and frequently
used features will be given priority (menus, tip, etc.).
2. The Project will give priority to marketing OpenOffice.org
and Open Document Format (ODF) by producing press releases connected
to new versions, new publications, etc. and to be visible in all
relevant public discussions, and to use situations and opportunities
to do marketing by means of limited resources.
3. In 2008 the Project will produce a complete dictionary and thesaurus.
4. The Project will arrange a national conference in spring
2008. The conference is meant to be self-financed.
5. The Project will search mutual cooperation with
organisations having common goals about spreading use of
OpenOffice.org and Open Source software (like Skolelinux, Novell, IBM,
Sun, Google, The National centre of competence and The Norwegian
Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS).
6. Finances
Going into 2007 we had a cash balance of €25,000.
Donations from county administrations and municipalities throughout
the year was €38,000. Revenue from the annual conference was €8,000
which gives a total revenue of €46,000. Salary-related cost was
€19,000, accounting and auditing was €2,500, cost of the annual
conference €5,000 and other cost €2,000. Total cost was €28,500, and
net profit for 2007 was €17,500. Cash balance going out of 2007 of
€42,500.
For 2008 the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform has
granted us €45.000 for general support to the Norwegian OOo
foundation. The Ministry of Education has granted €20,000 for
completing Norwegian textbooks for OpenOffice.org.
7. Marketing activities
The foundation arrange an annual OOo-conference at Lillestrøm outside Oslo.
We have produced press-releases connected to new versions and obtained
good press coverage. This seem to have good effects.
We update the website regularly, and the news are also available as an
RSS feed for subscription. The website was significantly reworked in
April/May to make it more attractive to end-users, moving the
(confusing) project-internal content out of plain sight.
At several occasions we have got the opportunity to give presentations
about OOo in conferences etc.
8. Users' support
We have organized the production of textbooks in print-versions and
downloadable digital versions. The idea is to produce small A5
textbooks, which can be printed for about 1€ each. The Writer textbook
is already printed in 10.000 copies, and the handbooks for Impress and
Calc will be finished during the spring 08. Link to the digital
version: http://www.kursing.no/oo/writer/nedlasting.html
http://www.kursing.no/oo/impress/nedlasting.html
We have our own support-web available on our native web-site
http://www.openofficeorg.no/Forumsider/
Students using OpenOffice are offered a help-desk service in
Trondheim, called "Skolehjelpen": It gives free support for schools,
both for MS Windows and OOo. http://www.ntnu.no/skolehjelpen/cms/
9. Most important achievement / failure.
Achievements:
* The government has decided that ODF is compulsory in public
agencies from 2009
* The foundation got important financial governmental support
to promote and translate OOo
* 2 new counties announced they will probably convert to OOo
from 2009 (Hedmark and Buskerud)
* The most popular issue processing/archive system (ePhorte)
got integration to ODF and OOo
* During the last two years we have registered an increased
number of OOo-users
Failures:
* The Novell cooperation failed.
* We failed to complete the help-text translation. If the
help-text feature could be solved by extension, this work is probably
more easy to estimate, and performed within a more limited
resource-frame. We will evaluate an alternative, where we use our
textbooks as a platform for the help-texts in the Norwegian ver. 3.
