OfficeBuzz

During trainings in LibreOffice Writer, that we give at customers offices or in the LibreOffice-Trainingcenter , a standard part is how to handle AutoCorrect. As long as people don't know what happens, AutoCorrect is a source of annoyance and errors. Once they've learned how it works, this changes drastically. Recently during a training for a regional office if the Dutch Refugee Council there was attention for the example "aanrijken" that is replaced by "aanreiken" through the AutoCorrect function. (Since we know AutoCorrect is language dependent, it's time for a little help in this English version of the original Dutch blogpost. The correct word "aanreiken" means: hand over, give something to someone else. The wrong word "aanrijken" has the part "rijk" what means rich. So, now back to the plot of the story ;) ) During the training I gave the next, free, explanation for the example: we see enough of the 'aanrijken...

Let me start with the second part of the head line of this article. Munich is a success. And not a little one too. Already during the 9 year long migration to LiMux (looking for a reason why Microsoft can't count 9 ;) ) the saved money counts to 11 Mln Euro. From the money spent to consultancy, nearly 50% has benefited (regional) SMB. The user satisfaction has clearly increased - though there are still items in which improving is possible. More then 14.000 of the 15.000 systems have been migrated. A larger number then was set as target. De savings on licenses will count, year after year, millions. (Also see Symposium LibrOffice in de Praktijk ) Now is this news? Not really. But it is something we cannot repeat enough - brief and clear. There only needs to be one Microsoft-partner driven 'investigation' ( see.. and this.. ) or one new major who recently has been doing business with Microsoft ( see.. ) and there are new headlines seeding wrong impressions. FUD. Let's ...

Now and then people ask me about LibreOffice or OpenOffice. Usually I point to the statistics about number of developers and such. And to the large difference in new functions. And of course the fixed old bugs. After explaining that to an artist, he came up with a nice drawing that I don't want to hide for you. A nice and funny drawing. On the other hand it's of course possible that such a split in a - originally single - project has negative impact on peoples joy in work and ambitions. And might that be the case - it's something that I always regret - I do hope that time will have a healing influence. As it usually does.

No, this has nothing to do with a possible match during the soccer worldcup. It is about open source. Look at the German city Munich, where they started in 2005 to migrate to open source. In 2013 the project was finished successful. A migration that resulted in 14.000 of the 15.000 seats running among others Linux at the desktop and LibreOffice. Significant investments have been made, but already now there are savings of 11 million Euro . The money that has been spent, of course will benefit the regional economy to a large extend. Smart! There is by the way also a report that says that Munich loses money on the project, but that reports makes wrong assumptions and is - what a coincidence - written on request of Microsoft by its partner HP, that gives no underlying info . So all municipalities: do take good notice of this , for in case someone uses that manipulated report to give a negative advise on open source! So fine, a significant use of open source does make sense. Do the peo...

Yesterday there was a great Ubuntu release party in Apeldoorn where at least four members of the Dutch language LibreOffice community joined. And since our friend Luc had to leave early, I was asked to present about LibreOffice. My audience appreciates a little explanation about the history of LibreOffice. So via an explanation on making LibreOffice an attractive and active open source project, easy to build, fast delivering contributions and with a great amount of developers and hackers - which all is achieved - and modernising and improving the huge code base - which is well on it's way - I ask if people know the release schedule with two main releases every year. Many do not. So I explain that, the relation with the schedule of other main free software projects, and end up counting releases for our 4.2 series, of which only last week the 4.2.4.2 was released. And from the very first alpha of this series, around 16 versions have been released in six months time. Indeed an impre...

19.999 days young, and still celebrate the second lustrum .. how can that be possible ? It's possible when you are me and started your company on April 16 2004 :) It's a very busy time the last months at Nou&Off , but wishing not to let pass this joyous moment unnoticed, it was decided at the last moment to do a little party in a smaller circle. To pay attention to it in wider circles, later this year a symposium will be organized around the use of open source office-software in Dutch administrations, institutions and companies. At the same time as the 10 years anniversary of Nou&Off, there was the official opening of the LibreOffice-Trainingcenter . That was expected earlier, but due to the high workload on projects, it slipped. Luckily, sooner or later, all will be fine ;)