Since the end of 2005 the project OpenTaal has worked to improve and
extend an existing open source Dutch word list. The approved word list
contains more than 140.000 keywords. The word list is available in
packages that can be installed in OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird.
The approved word list is available under a free license (LGPL) and may
be used by open source projects.

"Groovy For OpenOffice is an OpenOffice.org extension which adds support
for scripting OpenOffice.org Macros in Groovy."

Information Technology Promotion Agency of Japan in May announced results of FY2006 OSS projects, which includes "Summary," "Report" and "List of Requirements and Specifications" submitted by Good Day Inc. and its team whose proposal for an IPA public bid in 2006 was adopted to study OpenOffice.org.

Further efforts and contributions of them are expected by OpenOffice.org and Japanese Native Language Project.

More information would be available at the team's page:
http://ooo-research.good-day.net/?en_top

OpenOffice.org has the security team. If you find ones like the budbunny, please contact our security team and send one to the team.

"SB/BadBunny-A, a harmless little bunny at least until you kick it!" said Mate Temmermann, our security expert, in his blog.

Sure Openoffice.org has a macro language with access to local resources, but "nothing bad can happen to you as long as you don't allow the macros to run." he said.

"Users shouldn't run macros from unknown sources, same like they shouldn't run any programs or other scripts from unknown sources." This is the message he repeats, and we, the OpenOffice.org Community, repeat.

On May 23rd the Community issued comments "About Security, BadBunny, and Macros" based on the information available so far.

Repeat.
"The OpenOffice.org community repeats the consistent message from security experts that users should never accept files from unknown sources. For any security issue, please visit OpenOffice.org's Security Team page."

Thank you.

Chris Charuhas pointed me to a story about OpenOffice.org in Africa -
"how a school created a new computer lab without buying computers,
software, or books". And OpenOffice.org is involved!

Today In Pictures launched its new line of free computer how-to
tutorials, available at www.inpics.net. There are 12 online tutorials,
including OpenOffice.org. The tutorials can be used by anyone, free of
charge.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=7687

Deputies elected to the French National Assembly in the next legislative session will find open-source software on their desktop PCs.

The use of free software will result in substantial cost savings, despite the cost of migration and training, the Assembly said.

Free and open-source software now offers all the functions the deputies need, according to a study conducted at the request of the president of the assembly, Jean-Louis Debr¨¦.

The software on the deputies' computers will include the Linux operating system, the OpenOffice productivity suite, the Firefox web browser and an open-source email application.

OpenOffice.org Mac porter meeting at Google office
--------------------------------------------------
"he main developers of the Mac OS X port for OpenOffice.org project
meet to work together over a weekend

- show, analyse, work on current development version,
- share our knowledge in workshops (e.g. for debug )
- define tasks and objectives
- meet, collaborate and have fun coding.

Here's a rough translation of the jury decision: "The jury has chosen
to award an IT project that through large community contributions, expert
knowledge, and extensive project cooperation has created an office suite
in Norwegian, Bokmål and Nynorsk, which is user-friendly and keeps to
high language standards. 投资顾问

On GullFOSS, blog of OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun, Michael Brauer, OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC Chair, said a clear "no" to whether OpenOffice.org may switch to ECMA Office Open XML as native file format.


http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/why_openoffice.org_uses_opendocument

"The documents that our users and customers create with OpenOffice.org belong them, not us. They, not us, must be able to read or process them in the near, far, and very far future. And they, not us, must have the choice to use whatever application they want to do so. And they, not us, have to bear the consequences if this is not given."

"For this reason, the XML project already in 2000 decided to develop an XML file format for office applications that ensures interoperability and long-time access to documents, and that may be used by other office applications as well."

The main page of Sunday Times, leading daily in Bangalore, India, on November 12th, carried an article about the Kannada CDs launch scheduled in the coming month. BharateeyaOO figures as one of the main items in the "Whats Coming" inset.

On November 24, Zhiyue Cao from National Application Software Testing
Labs (NAST)/Beijing Software Testing & QA Center (BSTQC), announced to
dev@qa.openoffice.org that they will participate in QA works for
OpenOffie.org.

Alliance Statement On Microsoft/Novell Collaboration Regarding Document Format Compatibility

Washington, DC, November 3, 2006

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), a broad cross-section of organizations, academia and industry dedicated to improving access to electronic government documents, issued the following statement regarding Microsoft and Novell's announcement regarding collaboration on document format compatibility:

"We see yesterday's announcement as further acknowledgement from Microsoft that ODF is something customers are demanding," said Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance. "By making it easier for some Open Office users to access files stored in Microsoft's Office Open XML format, it makes it easier for customers to adopt ODF without worrying about the difficulty of tapping into files stored in a proprietary format that others may send them, or that they may have stored in their own systems."

"Open Office and other ODF-supporting implementations already support a variety of legacy or proprietary formats, and Office Open XML will be a welcome addition. In terms of Microsoft's translator project that would save Word files in the ODF format, the Alliance still thinks that the translator project does not yet provide true interoperability, and we encourage Microsoft to provide native support in Office that will allow users to save to ODF as easily as any other format."

I think they mean "OpenOffice.org" when they say "OpenOffice."

They are going to collaborate on "Windows and Linux Interoperability and Support," "OpenOffice and MS Office Interoperability and Support" and "OpenDocument and Open XML Interoperability and Support."

But many people questions, "How do they do?"

Let us go to their FAQ and find an answer.

FAQ from Novell and FAQ from Microsoft

Q. How will the technical cooperation work?

Document Format Compatibility. Microsoft and Novell have been focusing on ways to improve interoperability between office productivity applications. The two companies will now work together on ways for OpenOffice and Microsoft Office users to best share documents and both will take steps to make translators available to improve interoperability between Open XML and OpenDocument Formats.

Q: What does the patent agreement cover with regard to Mono and OpenOffice?

Yes, under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server. All of these technologies will be improved upon during the five years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings. The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.

-------

Have you gotten an answer to your question?

You thought Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) sucks? Wait, there is more to it: soon it will be up to Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) to show up. You have been warned, folks.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127678/article.html

OpenOffice.org translators receive prize

by Eirik Rossen

This years prize for advancement of Free Software went to the translators of OpenOffice.org

The annual prize for the advancement of Free Software was handed out yesterday. Of the 25 nominated candidates, the Foundation for Free Norwegian Office Software won.

The prize is given on the initiative of the Norwegian Unix User Group (NUUG) and the Oslo Polytechnic and amounts to 30 000 NOK.

The goal is to increase awareness of free software and open standards, and is awarded to individuals or groups in Norway who distinguish themselves with their contribution. Yesterday's tribute was the fifth time the prize has been given out.

The Foundation for Free Norwegian Office Software received the prize for its work with the organization and coordination of the translation of the Free productivity suite, OpenOffice.org to both main dialects of Norwegian. The foundation also works to influence key stakeholders to adopt financial, business and archival systems using OpenOffice.org

The jury opines that access to software in ones native language is important to guarantee that everyone can benefit from the tools needed in today's IT-Norway. In the introduction it continues:

"The Foundation for Free Norwegian Office Software has contributed to the guarantee that writing tools that are needed at many work places now exist in both Bokm0Š2l and Nynorsk, and thus helped the continuation of the Norwegian language. It has also increased general knowledge of open standards by enabling usage of an open data format, and contributed to greater choice by providing Linux-users access to a complete productivity suite."

"The prize winners have in a distinguished manner put deed before talk in regards to open standards and Free software. Instead of forcing all to use software from a single vendor, they have given everyone the freedom to choose software in Norwegian. Through the translation of this freely available productivity suite, everyone gets full support for open data formats. The OpenDocument format is ratified by the International Standards Organization (ISO). Norwegian users have gained an productivity suite which can be freely downloaded both for commercial and personal use, on a range of platforms such as Windows, Linux and Macintosh."

Link in Norwegian: http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=355064
Thanks to Lars Nooden for the news!

This years Systems (October 23rd-27th in Munich), the Germanophone project will be present again with its own booth, supported by the association OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V. and four companies exhibiting together with us.

Companies present their products ranging from migration support and development to training, and we will present the project and the community, completed with public speeches about OpenOffice.org.

The Germanophone has good experiences from the last exhibitions done this way, and we look forward to a very interesting week. If you can make it to Munich - join us!

We are in hall A3, booth 441.

The city of Munich today announced the next step in its LiMux migration project. The original press release, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be available in English, can be found at http://www.muenchen.de/Rathaus/dir/limux/ueberblick/175149/windowsabloesung.html

In short: The first official release of the base client has been finished and will be deployed to a first set of workstations by the end of the year, apart from the "beta testers" that already worked with LiMux. After that, more workstations will follow. OpenOffice.org is being used as the office suite within LiMux.

phpMyAdmin with ODF support
---------------------------
"phpMyAdmin is a web administration tool for MySQL databases, intended
to handle a whole database server as well as a single database. It is
maybe one of the most used tools for administering MySQL databases.
The new version 2.9.0, released yesterday, now contains an export
functionality to OpenDocument Text and OpenDocument Spreadsheet."

SEA, SUN AND GEORGIAN OPENOFFICE.ORG

Tbilisi, Georgia - August 20, 2006

Blue sea, sun, ancient Colchian nature, Georgian wine and celebration
spirit. What else would one need from a place to organize a
localization summercamp?

In August 2006 eRiders Georgia in cooperation with OpenOffice.org
Georgian Native-Lang project selected a group of volunteer community
members from open source, linguists and IT-experts and organized
OpenOffice.org Georgian Localization Summercamp at Chakvi, a popular
Black Sea resort in Georgia.

The aim of the project was to localize OpenOffice.org user inteface
and user assistance messages to Georgian language, as well as increase
community interest and public awareness of OpenOffice.org and other
FLOSS products.

During 6 days the group of 30 participants and organizers localized
the whole user interface and majority of user assistance messages.

The QA will be accomplished with cooperation of OpenOffice.org
Georgian NL project and Deer Leap Foundation, a school computerization
programme by Georgian Ministry of Education and Science.

As a result, OpenOffice.org will be distributed to all Georgian
schools, where all students will get a chance to get used to FLOSS
products from the first beginning of their study.

The forthcoming changes in Georgian intellectual property law should
reduce piracy rate within Governmental, corporate and private users
and will eventually increase the demand on FLOSS products.

About Georgian Native-Lang - http://ka.openoffice.org

OpenOffice.org Georgian Native-Lang project is dedicated to promoting
and providing localization, distribution and migration support of
OpenOffice.org throughout Georgia and Georgian-speaking community.
Georgian NL also provides free technical support to Georgian
OpenOffice.org users. Email contact: aietkolkhi AT openoffice.org

About eRiders Georgia - http://www.eriders.ge

eRiders Georgia, along with ICT consulting and FLOSS promotion,
strives to introduce internet to Georgan regions by using wireless
technologies. eRiders Georgia is also involved in Georgan
localization of open source products. Email contact: eriders AT
googlegroups.com

by Aiet Kolkhi, KA project lead.