----- Original Message -----
From: "James Knott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <users@openoffice.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 7:13 PM
Subject: Re: [users] The Dreaded .docx format
John Meyer wrote:
James Knott wrote:
Yesterday, I attended the "Ontario Linux Fest" in Toronto. One of the
presenters described the efforts to provide computers to very low income
high school students. They take donated computers and install Linux,
including OpenOffice on them. One thing they do, is set the default
file formats to MS Office. The reason they do this is, thanks to the
contract the school board has with Microsoft, competing software, such
as OpenOffice, is banned from school computers, so teachers cannot
accept files in ODF.
isn't there a filter for ODF files in MS? And if what you are saying is
accurate (which I believe so) then that just means that they can't
_install_ OpenOffice. How that flies with antitrust I have no idea.
Plus if you look at it in one perspective, OpenOffice doesn't _compete_
with Microsoft in terms of dollars.
And somehow the idea of requiring ISO and open software in government is
heretical to the concept of a free market. Go figure.
There is a plugin from Sun for ODF files. However, in Ontario, the
provincial government arranged for a StarOffice licence for all tax
payer funded schools in the province. This begs the question, why is
there MS Office and not StarOffice on those computers? The schools
boards are always complaining about not having enough money, yet they
somehow managed to get MS Office.
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Does this mean that these schools are paying for MS Office when they
already had the government pay for StarOffice? Which could read/write
MS formats except the new .docx format??? - which most people I know
hate.
Ever think about taking this waste of money to the School board or to the
people who pay the taxes to pay for the TWO licences - with one
banned by having the other???
If I had my area's schools StarOffice licences, I would put up a fight to
pay for $200-$500 per machine MS Licences. Thats 500-600 PC at
what? 120,000 or more for software we do not need?
How much other supplies and books could that pay for?
T.L. - Elmira, New York, USA
OpenOffice.org freely chosen world not Microsoft's manditory-chained-forever
world.
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