Transcript OpenOffice - The College of New Jersey

OpenOffice
Wayne S. Rossi
Mike Toresco
for
Open Source Development
Overview
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OpenOffice's purpose
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The Details
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Creation
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Licensing
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Projects
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Advantages and Disadvantages
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Conclusions
Why OpenOffice?
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The OpenOffice mission statement:
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To create, as a community, the leading international
office suite that will run on all major platforms and
provide access to all functionality and data through
open-component based APIs and an XML-based file
format.
In other words, make an open source project into
the leading office suite program.
The Great Showdown?
The Great Showdown?
–FIGHT!
Where OpenOffice Came From
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StarOffice was developed by StarDivision in
Germany during the 1980s
In 1999, Sun Microsystems bought StarDivision.
StarOffice 5.2 was released in June 2000
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StarOffice was distributed in a pay version and a
(proprietary) free version.
Going Open Source
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In 2000, Sun open sourced the StarOffice code
under dual licenses:
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GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
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Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
In 2002, OpenOffice.org goes online.
What they're doing now
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Accepted Projects
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Native/Lang Projects
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Includes API, DBA, GSL, XML, various applications,
underlying framework, and documentation.
Includes Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German,
Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and
Thai language support for OpenOffice.
Incubator/Whiteboard Projects
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Community-sponsored or experimental projects.
So Why Use It, Anyway?
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This presentation was made using Impress in
OpenOffice v. 1.0.1.
OpenOffice can generate fully Microsoft Office
compatible files.
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Word Documents (Writer)
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Excel Spreadsheets (Calc)
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PowerPoint presentations (Impress)
Slices, dices, and makes julienne
fries!
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OpenOffice is designed to look and feel similar to
Microsoft Office.
It's probably out for your operating system.
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If you're running Windows, Linux, Solaris,
LinuxPPC, FreeBSD, or Mac OS X (still in beta), you
can download OpenOffice v. 1.0.3.
And, since it's open source...
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OpenOffice can be downloaded completely free.
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StarOffice v. 6.0 can be bought for $79 and comes
with CDs and documentation.
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Microsoft Office XP Professional costs $579 and can
only be installed on one computer.
Is there anything it can't do?
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No parallel for Microsoft Access
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But open source solutions for databases still exist.
Cannot use some templates and macros.
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The overwhelming majority of users are completely
unaffected by this.
So, who needs it?
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Most people who use MS Office don't take
advantage of enough features to justify its costs.
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It's like driving your M1-A1 Abrams tank to work.
Who should consider the switch?
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Individuals who don't need the database, macros,
and templates that MS Office has.
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(Or just don't need them worth $479)
Businesses who can't afford or don't need MS
Office Professional.
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(At $579 per computer, that is fairly substantial.)
Conclusions
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720,000 people have downloaded OpenOffice.
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It has the desired compatibility with MS Office.
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For most users, OpenOffice is a better choice.
Got Questions?
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We do.
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What company open-sourced the office suite for
OpenOffice?
Name three popular MS Office programs whose
function OpenOffice duplicates.