Plan-B for Software Documentation

Looks like Michael Dell, the iconic oner of Dell Computers, is looking deeper into Linux on Dell computers. According to the corporate Biography Michael uses a Laptop with OpenOffice.org on Ubuntu Linux.

I guess Michael did receive the letter from the OpenOffice.org community offering to satisfy the apparent demand for OpenOffice.org on Dell Computers. May be this prompted him to check it out himself.

Dear Michael,
if you need a help with OpenOffice.org, you are very welcome to join Plan-B for OpenOffice.org where we answer questions and demonstrate the features of OpenOffice.org with screencasts.

Truly Yours,
Kaj

I saw first at the Debian Security website that the WordPerfect and StarCalc import libraries used by OpenOffice.org have some vulnerabilities for overflow attacks. Then is spread around the web in all security services.

The flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code. Affected are users that open WordPerfect documents, a rather small number of users. As far as I know, Word Perfect is used a lot by the legal profession. The work around, is to not open WordPerfect documents before you upgrade to the next version or install a patch.

Debian and SuSE have already issued patches.

Ted Haeger lets us know that Novell just released its own edition of OpenOffice.org.

Thanks to Ted I now know why Novell is cooking its own version. Novell feels that the open source model is a good one. They follow the intention of open source to solve one’s own problems and contribute back to the community. In Novell’s case they solve the issues of their Linux customers and benefit all others too. All Novell additions are factored into the main stream OpenOffice.org eventually. While the community does absorb the contributions, Novell does enjoy the benefits of an advanced version that makes their brand of Linux more competitive. That sounds like a fair deal to me.

Now the Novell developers even released a version of Novell Edition OpenOffice.org for Windows. Why? Because they learned from their own experience that it sometimes takes a few baby steps until you are ready to switch from Windows to Linux. Switching from MS Office to OpenOffice.org is such a baby step. Lets hope that the Mac version is not far behind. Although I’m not sure how many Mac users can’t wait to switch to Linux.

Dell computers the widely popular manufacturer of computers for home and business, has lately done not so well. Now they have a new idea, listening to their customers and customers to be. Dell opened a website soliciting ideas how to make better Dell PCs. the site is called Dell Idea Storm and allows user participation in form of posts, comments and voting on other people’s proposals.

Interestingly, the most prominent ideas are not about competing with Apple on design or with IBM/Lenovo on ruggedness. The most popular ideas are “pre-installed Linux”, “pre-installed OpenOffice.org” and computers with no software at all. The most popular anti request after a few days is an option of “NO EXTRA SOFTWARE OPTION”, leaving out AOL or Earthlink offers.

I have offered a few ideas myself, such as “Recessed USB bay” and “No glaring screens for Laptops”. While I certainly welcome a company listening to their customers, I’m not too happy with the way Idea Storm counts the votes. I find it inflationary that every passerby voting is counted as 3 votes and every user logged in to the system is counting 20 votes for a single click.

Linux Journal, has announced it 2006 Editors’ choice awards. In three categories OpenOffice.org won the top choice.

OpenOpffice.org wins in the category office suite. “OpenOffice.org delivers just the right combination of openness, power and similarity to Microsoft Office that it provides the features and familiarity people want in an office suite without the drawbacks of proprietary document format or proprietary code.” write the editors of Linux Journal. They also note it is by far the most popular office suite behind MS Office.

OpenOffice.org Calc wind the category spreadsheet. They write “if you’re really serious about doing spreadsheet work, your best bet is with OpenOffice.org Calc.” Honorable mention in this category goes to EIOffice and KSpread. Interestingly they don’t mention neither Google nor other web based applications. Well they are probably not close enough to Linux.

The third category win goes to OpenOffice.org Impress as editors’ choice of presentation software. They state that offering “that optimal balance of features, power and familiarity for those who want to migrate from Microsoft Office” did convince them to prefer it over KPresenter or the EIOffice presentation component.

The word processor choice went to AbiWord. Often a word processor is all one needs and AbiWord apparently does a good job in that. LinuxJounal mentions that “AbiWord has all of what most people will need in a word processor and then some, without the bloat and long load times of OpenOffice.org Writer”. As LinuxJournal reviewd version 2.0.3, this category might change next year, as version OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 has much improved load times.

Congratulations to OpenOffice.org and the development team. I think these awards are well deserved.