just wanted to add 5 cents. Donating is one way to go if you can't contribute or "just want to use it".
Alternately, you can submit bug reports, suggestions or fixes, i.e. pay by your time. Way to go, especially for technical universities where we've got open mindset, a lot of fresh ideas and man power. You might know, that Russia mandated Free Software For Public Schools recently. If a school doesn't want to use the free software supplied by the government, it has to buy commercial licenses using its own funds. http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/23/1627250 The official announcement (in Russian) is here: http://minkomsvjaz.ru/ministry/1483/3505.shtml?bmSessionCheck&id_news=7535 Now it's India's turn to do the same, and I'm sure we'll see OpenOffice 4.0 much earlier :) 2008/10/30 Michael Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Thanks! > > Getting open source onto servers is nowadays pretty transparent to end > users, but getting it to the desktop is much more of a challenge, especially > when your choice effects many who are not just employees, but also the > customers of your organisation and who are choosing to be there. > > OpenOffice.org has come along way for this to now be a comfortable and > somewhat pleasing reality (and it has taken much longer for this to happen > on the Mac platform). While there are always the grumblers when it comes to > change and end user desktop habits are generally very well entrenched, > especially word processing and spreadsheet skills, but in this case I think > it looks like it is all going surprisingly well... > > Many people are moving to OpenOffice these days and while it is now not > unusual globally, my feeling is that wide adoption of open source on the > desktop is still lagging far behind in Singapore. Besides Mindef, I think > all government departments use MS Office (correct me if I'm wrong but I > believe it may be a requirement), and also by far the vast majority of local > schools do as well (which may also be a MOE requirement?). Singapore also > bowed down to commercial pressures and voted to approve Office XML against > the advice of its advising technical committee. > > For schools here, I believe it is more of a philosophical venture rather > than cost saving one (why OFS are running Apple Mac) as Microsoft > educational licensing is very very attractive. The cost of migration may > well outweigh the saving on licensing fees at least for the first few years, > but this is not the reasoning behind doing it. > > In terms of getting students to see alternatives and influence their view of > software in the future, I believe they will be achieving many of their > educational learning objectives and this is more of the thinking behind > their choice. It actually makes you realise how insidious the current > educational licensing "candy" extended to schools is, considering it is just > a hook to lock students minds into a proprietary software model at as > younger age as possible. Education is about the openness and sharing of > information (much more in line with the philosophy behind open source). > > It think this serves as a good example of open source not just being a "free > as in cost" alternative, and to set an example for others in Singapore to > contribute back in some way to the upstream projects doing the work (not > just the consultants like us that are implementing open source). i.e. if > every school that switched to OpenOffice donated a few thousand dollars to > the OpenOffice.org foundation, then we would see much more rapid progress - > as we all know that programmers need to eat - even ones with strong > ideologies. > > :) > > Michael. > > C David Rigby wrote: >> >> Very interesting news Michael, thanks for sharing it. This is how FOSS >> grows. It's no longer just the early adopters, individual enthusiasts and >> large corporations that are making in-roads. >> >> Cheers >> CDRigby >> >> On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 4:00 AM, Michael Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: >> >> Hi All, >> >> Just to let you all know that over the coming months, the number >> of OpenOffice.org users in Singapore will be jumping up by a few >> thousand more. >> >> Overseas Family School (OFS) have just announced their switch to >> OpenOffice.org with all faculty and students making the switchover >> (3500+ users on 1500 computers) >> >> http://www.ofs.edu.sg/about-ofs/announcements/openoffice/ >> >> OFS has donated SGD15,000 to OpenOffice.org and they have authored >> and made freely available a number of training videos that may be >> useful for others making the switch to OpenOffice.org. See: >> >> http://www.ofs.edu.sg/help-desk/using-open-office/ >> >> This has been a long time coming, as OFS, a large user of Mac OS >> X, have been patiently waiting for the release of OpenOffice.org >> 3.0 which has native Mac OS X support. >> >> There has been much planning, testing, implementation and training >> work, with the faculty beginning the migration of documents over >> to ODF in January 2008. It is really great to now reach the point >> where OpenOffice.org and ODF are becoming ubiquitous within this >> large international school in Singapore. >> >> Michael. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Slugnet mailing list >> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >> http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq >> http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Slugnet mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq >> http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Slugnet mailing list > [email protected] > http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq > http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet > _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
