City Of Austin Migrating To OpenOffice.org 456
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge.com has a story up this morning about the City of Austin and the results of their pilot program on OpenOffice.org. The bottom line is this: they have found that more than 80% of the city's 5K desktops can use OO.o instead of MS Office. Let the migrations begin!"
They are switching to something cheaper? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They are switching to something cheaper? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you *sure* this is a local government agency?
No worries there. Austin was recently blackmailed into a multiyear contract with microsoft which perpetually and only expands in which they will pay for multiple Windows and MSOffice licenses for more desktops than they actually have. So the waste is there, it will be that they will be not only paying for more copies of office than they could possibly physically use, but they will not actually be using Office. Woohoo government! :)
Re:They are switching to something cheaper? (Score:3, Insightful)
There have been 16 million OOo downloads, and that doesn't include Linux distro sales. It's big. But as govt agencies typically take years to make a switch, this is big news.
Get out more.
Re:They are switching to something cheaper? (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that the next time Microsoft brings out a new product and the first sales figures are reported....
There's some history here... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There's some history here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's some history here... (Score:4, Insightful)
This should be leading to some good discussions about open standards rather than just open source. If that app had been built on an open standard then a real comparisson could have been made between the office platforms based merit rather than lock-in.
TW
Okay...Will this legitimize OO for other orgs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Okay...Will this legitimize OO for other orgs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Okay...Will this legitimize OO for other orgs? (Score:5, Informative)
It works very well, and i have complicated vba code running - the reports previewed fine, queries good, forms, etc...
you can download a version to do testing. Access was the only thing holding me back from moving to Linux - i use it all the time
What i would love to see would be Corel open sourcing the Paradox db so it could be ported to Linux - that was a great platform...
Re:Okay...Will this legitimize OO for other orgs? (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't, "My father will fire you.." all the ammo you need?
*dreams of such a senario, including a chocolate wonderland.*
Re:Okay...Will this legitimize OO for other orgs? (Score:4, Informative)
importing the data took us 10 minutes.
someone barely familiar with PHP can write the frontend within 2 months. (I knew ZERO php before I started this project. 2 months later... I'm 90% finished and we extendedto server 4 offices instead of one.)
There is no excuse to stick with Access based database. Even a visual Basic programmer can pick up PHP withing a day or two.
That makes sense... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:That makes sense... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:That makes sense... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That makes sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would guess that Dell is probably the largest private employer in Austin. Granted, they're technically in Round Rock. IBM has a relatively small campus in Austin, even after acquiring Tivoli. And as far as AMD goes, Intel also has an office there as well.
My guess is another reason, if not more likely, is The University of Texas. The UT CS department is a pretty open source heavy department. The rest of the university, other than the business school, is pretty apathetic to Microsoft. I would guess that people making these decisions in Austin are either influenced by, educated by, or former employees of the university.
Overall though, Austin is a pretty tech centric city. So, at least to me, who lived there for a number of years, this isn't really that much of a surprise.
Re:That makes sense... (Score:5, Informative)
I would guess that people making these decisions in Austin are either influenced by, educated by, or former employees of the university.
Actually, while good guesses, neither of the suggestions above is relevant. I'm a city employee, and I'm familiar with some of the decision making that went on. A couple of things occurred within the last 12+ months that caused this to occur. The first is an economy that tanked. The second was the promotion of a new CIO who is open minded when it comes to technology. There was also extreme disgruntlement (internally and externally) with the contract the city signed with Microsoft (see Joe Barr's Linuxworld articles). This is just a start, the city is also looking at using Linux.
Re:That makes sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
The call for papers for our philosophy journal asked for LaTeX format as first preference, .doc as a second preference.
Re:That makes sense... (Score:3, Informative)
Another motto for OO.o (Score:2)
I think we'll start to see more of this (Score:5, Interesting)
This is definitely one of those cases where an open source product is obviously of greater value than it's commercial counterpart, both financially and from a quality standpoint.
Keep up the good work, OO.o!
Re:I think we'll start to see more of this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I think we'll start to see more of this (Score:4, Interesting)
Now if only IT departments will start cutting costs this way INSTEAD of offshoring everything. I can hope, can't I?
Microsoft Development. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft Development. (Score:4, Interesting)
What they are (and will be) using is free software. It's of higher technical quality, in addition to the fact that it doesn't cost anything.
Microsoft could only give them their software in a hope that they might use it - that would be the best change MS would have, really.
In addition, for the fraction of what they spend on MS products annually, surely they could invest a hundred thousand or two (not a significant amount when you consider that they'd be spending $1.2M dollars for those 4k systems, @ the bargain price of $300/seat) of it into the sallaries of 3, 4, or 5 high-quality developers, or maybe offer bounties (as other companies/people/groups have) for features they want implimented, or for other software that they need? The money has been budgeted for software in the past, and groups have gotten by, so shaving a 200k off that huge 'discount' would be fairly insignificant. Why not pass some of the benefit back to the people that pay the gov't, by making the gov't run more efficiently?
Excellent news! (Score:2, Interesting)
One can only hope this catches on in larger scale!!
Re:Excellent news! (Score:2, Interesting)
No,
Re:Excellent news! (Score:3, Insightful)
My father said his father gave him
Re:Excellent news! Or... (Score:2)
More money on education? When has that made a bit of difference?
This one application (Score:4, Interesting)
RTFA:This one application (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This one application (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't help it (Score:2)
Steve "Fester" Ballmer? (Score:2)
Does this mean that if you put a lightbulb in his mouth it will light up, or at least produce a blue-screen-of-death?
Anyone know of OO has run into DMCA troubles? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anyone know of OO has run into DMCA troubles? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anyone know of OO has run into DMCA troubles? (Score:5, Interesting)
They are under investigation exactly for the reason of trying to abuse their desktop monopoly in order to squash competition on the server side (Kerberos anyone?)
Attempting to abuse a virtual standard on which so many businesses and government agencies depend would guarantee bad trouble for Microsoft. And else then in the US they have not that much cronies in high places here.
Re:Anyone know of OO has run into DMCA troubles? (Score:3, Insightful)
One, hate them as much as the next guy, but one thing I can't say about M$ is that they sue everyone and their dog, so the court doesn't seem to be their primary weapon.
Two, such a lawsuit would open a lot of eyes to the fact that your documents are being taken hostage.
Nah. What they'll do is double the efforts for the next format to be even harder to import.
is it just me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Weird, I tried to read the article (yes .. i know .. this is slashdot) .. and couldn't find the article.
EA? (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried to tell them... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I tried to tell them... (Score:2)
Re:I tried to tell them... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some thoughts to ponder on your bashing.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OO 1.1 is (finally) a viable alternative (Score:5, Interesting)
OO is getting there (Score:3, Interesting)
I still have some conversion issues (the WP doesn't like MS's superscripts or subscripts much and embedded graphics generally don't work on conversion from MS). Also, I think the graphing/charting in the spreadsheet is ugly as can be, and they could do with separating the p
Lowers System Cost (Score:5, Interesting)
The original email (Score:5, Informative)
Subject: [alg] Another Open Source win at the City
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 07:57:01 -0600
To: alg@austinlug.org
I thought a few of you might be interested in this...
We just concluded our first round of "official" Linux pilots, with one
of those being an OpenOffice replacement of Microsoft Office. It turns
out that the limited pilot we did (40 users) provided enough information
to be able to start converting some departments and users over to OO
from MS Office. First on the schedule is my department, Communications
and Technology Management, which will be having MS Office *uninstalled*
and OO installed in it's place on the majority of department desktops.
That should be around 300 people (we can't get everyone off MS Office
right now as we have one major application, the Agenda Management System
for the City Council, that requires the MS programs).
Training programs and help desk support is being put in place so it
looks like OO will be there for the long-term. Our pilot figured out
that about 80% of the users at the City could use OO instead of MS
Office so, at the very least, the City will not be paying Redmond for
anymore new licenses and at the very best, it will start converting
those apps that require MS Office over to something that will work in
the new OO environment.
We're finishing up the documentation for the rest of the pilots so I'll
keep ya'll posted...
-s.
--
Scott Brown
Technology and Support Services
OpenNetworks
website: http://www.opennetworks.org
Re:The original email (Score:4, Insightful)
So, this story seems premature. It should be "City of Austin Considering Migrating to OO.o".
(BTW, I worked at a place that did the same thing a few years ago, except with Lotus SmartSuite which could be had almost for free from IBM. SmartSuite worked great in the IT dept, but a large number of users said "Fuck You" and started pirating MS Office. This led to a showdown between IT and a VP, and IT got their ass handed to them. Next thing you know, they are buying/supporting both Lotus and Microsoft.
So, IT Dude saying that OO is a great solution doesn't really mean anything, politically.)
OpenOffice to the rescue (Score:4, Interesting)
If you haven't already check out the development section of their web site:
http://development.openoffice.org/index.ht
I am really amazed with the level of documentation, add on's, scripts/macros, and integration with other languages.
Re:OpenOffice to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean to sound trollish, but what exactly is your definition of "near future"? Because from where I sit, I don't see OpenOffice taking over MS Office within this decade alone. Not because OpenOffice isn't a good product, but because of the fact that hundreds of thousands of companies have millions (if not billions) of dollars invested in their infrastructure which includes MS Office, Exchange, etc... That takes time to convert.
Re:OpenOffice to the rescue (Score:4, Interesting)
Some desktop will still run MS Office because... (Score:2, Interesting)
If an single application requires MS Office to run, I bet its Access-based. I think once more applications are converted from Access to SQL, you'll have more conversions from MS Office to OO.
Those pesky legacy apps. (Score:5, Interesting)
First the disclaimer: I hate M$. I've moved myself to the Apple platform, I run a Linux server at home, I almost never use my Windows machine.
But I've been in many clients' offices where I was about to save hundreds of man-hours where clerical people did repetitive tasks by writing a quick VBA application. I've also seen specialized applications (in particular, I have intimate exposure to one used in most non-profit organizations) built completely from the Windows COM/ActiveX architecture, and these apps integrate really nicely with Office in a way that OpenOffice would have to have strong COM integration to compete. (It may, I haven't looked recently.)
I felt bad writing these apps because I knew I was helping to entrench these clients in their Windows world, but when they are running on a shoestring budget (and non-profits get KILLER cheap deals with M$ software) if I can help cut an office's labor by 10% or more, I think I'm morally obligated to do so.
One last point: last time I gave OpenOffice a spin on Windows, it seemed to have a cool feature-set, but anything approaching a complex 100+ page document caused application crashes. I haven't seen Office crash since 2000.
For the most part, I'd say it's not a question of "if" but "when". But "when" might not be today.
Re:Those pesky legacy apps. (Score:4, Insightful)
We have about 10 desktops running Windows and Office 2000 here. I am the closest thing to a help desk we have and I spend about 20% of every day helping people try to figure out why Word/Excel/Access is doing the weird thing it is or trying to recover docs/spreadsheets/Access databases that were corrupted with or without a crash. Pages in manuals just disapear; cells in spreadsheets randomly have the formulae change and whoever decided that Access reports should reflect changes back into the Access database should be fired!
These are all fairly new desktop systems, we don't do anything really fancy and no other app we use causes anywhere near as much grief (a distant 2nd is AutoCAD Lite). We are seriously looking at OO 1.1. No matter how bad it is, it cannot be as bad as MS Office!
Re:Some desktop will still run MS Office because.. (Score:4, Insightful)
i work on software in the legal sector and just about every instance of word in the legal sector has some sort of customisation done to it. wether it be document management integration with Hummingbird or iManage or maybe just a set of macros to centralise and populate templates etc...
people often don't realise the power of Office's VBA and the heavy investment that document-centric organisations have made in this technology.
this will be OO's biggest stumbling block regarding adoption.
Probably Word template based. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm the network administrator for another city govt in Texas, somewhat smaller (pop 100K) and a couple hundred miles north of Austin, and I'll bet that his council agenda system is based on MS Word templates instead... exactly just like ours is... and derived from the same council agenda management system project that about a dozen other Texas cities adopted (and adapted) a few years ago from a demo we saw at a TML conference.
We'v
The FOLLOWUP question is... (Score:5, Funny)
In my experience, most city employees really only need a good Solitare implementation to accomplish their day-to-day work. Given the number of quality Solitare packages for Linux, it would probably be no issue to get everyone moved over.
Seriously though...for many, the hassle of setting up MS Office under WINE is a major stumbling block to moving to a Linux desktop. With the removal of MS Office from the equation, I would think that Austin may want to give Ximian Desktop or something of the sort a closer look.
-JT
Re:The FOLLOWUP question is... (Score:5, Funny)
Austin is a very tech town (Score:5, Interesting)
The government also has pockets of very tech-savvy people, but they are often hampered by a lack of support. A current canidate for state representative Mark Strama [markstrama.com] is pretty "with it" technology-wise. (Founded NewVoter.com which was the first online voter registration in the US, and whose tech resulted in over 700K voter registrations in 2000.) Strama really wants to leverage new technology and open source where possible in his campaign, but hasn't had a lot of luck finding a full time technicial manager to oversee things.
Moving groups of non-technicial people to a new product (be it OpenOffice, Linux, or anything) requires some sort of on site advocate. The key to transition is having a knowledgable support person to make the technology "just work" as opposed to leaving the user to struggle on his or her own.
If you're interested in seeing open source succeed, consider helping out your local canidate use it in his or her race. Teach the leaders, the people will follow.
possible motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
Austin had a good scare a while back, with rumors of a Microsoft/BSA audit of the city's computers. The BSA is based in Austin, BTW. Anyway, I'm willing to bet that Austin didn't take too kindly to the hassles that Microsoft put them through, and are now happily giving them the boot up their ass.
Good for them.
what about educational institutions? (Score:3, Insightful)
A more dramatic and interesting revelation would be if University of Texas at Austin declared a university-wide preference for nonproprietary file standards for school assignments. Up until now, their agnosticism on the proprietary/nonproprietary standard issue (because of educational discounts and the available of MS Office support) have implicitly propped up the market for MS Office. A UT graduate who uses MS Office for four years is more likely to prefer it at the office or at home later on.
I would like to see more evidence that public educational institutions are shifting to software with more open standards.
Re:what about educational institutions? (Score:4, Interesting)
While teaching any classes (at brooklyn college), for assignments that are electronically submitted, I specifically say that MS Word format is not allowed. (I run Linux - so Word docs would look ugly when viewed in OO.o)
Students have a choice of either: submitting it in plain text (most do, but some can't live without the formatting), or PDF docs. They can either create PDFs via LaTeX (my preferred method) or (now) exporting from OpenOffice
Slowly but surely, every semester, I get a few people to install OpenOffice on their system (and many seem to like it quite a bit).
Austin is a Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
Ways to make the transition smoother. (Score:5, Interesting)
So, if everyone has been using Office for the last 10 years, they aren't going to want to try anything new, irregardless of the benefits of said change.
When this is the case, I find that users will suddenly get stupider. As dumb as they were before, and as clueless as they were before, they are now clueless with a purpose. That purpose? To make you regret making them change their desktop. Suddenly many will be looking for reasons to have things not work. The simplest of these being folks who think something doesn't work at all now, just because it doesn't work exactly like it used to. Others being the type who actively search for weak areas in the software so they can bitch about the lack of some arcane/unused feature that used to be available.
So, the solution to all this? Cut 'em a check. That's right, instead of just switching them over and telling them it's for the good of XYZ, figure out how much money you'll save to switch over to Open Office. Then take about 70% of your savings the first year and cut a check to be split up amongst your users. I would think that if everyone got a $100 in cash on the day you put Open Office on their machines, suddenly the guy installing OO around the office would be getting calls left and right by people who can't wait to get updated, vs. the grumblind you'd otherwise face.
After the first year you're still saving a bundle, everyone is used to OO, and the County can pocket the savings, all with a lot less headache.
Re:Ways to make the transition smoother. (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what, people hate changing from version to version of MS Office too. You should have heard the moans of fear in my workplace when it was rumored that we were going to be upgrading. You could just wait until the next major MS Office upgrade and give them a choice
Re:Ways to make the transition smoother. (Score:3, Insightful)
Much like WordPerfect users didn't want to switch to Office (who can blame them) because they'd been using Word Perfect forever (and it actually funtioned properly, and could show codes). That doesn't mean they're still using version 3.1 though.
And some tried Open went for MS Office. (Score:4, Informative)
See the comment of janderk at the end. Essentially, he tried to convert a Dutch school but because of this bug, he failed.
OpenOffice question. (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anybody tell me why the OO team decided not to use the Win-Print.api that MS has available in the SDK?
I work for a printer company and I would _LOVE_ to use and show OO in our showroom but OO does not allow access to the WIN-print.api (therefore not allowing us to use the extra features/functionality that our devices offer).
OO is great if you have a 1-tray laser/inkjet printer. I could convert our office (and probably our corporation (still using Office97)), and my customers; by showing the cost savings that OO will provide, but dammit the drivers don't work.
Re:OpenOffice question. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wrote the initial prototype in perl a few years ago and apparently they've redone it in C or C++. It's not a perfect solution but it works pretty well for their printers. There's no reason why the entire concept couldn't be expanded to work with any PostScript printer (or through their omni driver with ANY printer that omni drives.) I think the CUPS guys were working along these lines as well.
UNIX printing still sucks though. XPRT is the closest thing I've seen to what Windows and OS/2 do for printing, but no one seems to be on board with it. I believe gnome and KDE are both working on their own library-level solutions to the problem as well, but it'd kinda suck if you liked Gnome and the only driver available were for KDE or vice versa.
Yes, it's cool (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I see a lot of experimentation going on and it's not really a surprise to see a gov agency switching over. It will save them millions. This is only news because it's one of the first. Always thought Austin was a very cool town. Sort of out of place in Texas.
Texas or Minnesota? (Score:4, Funny)
"City Of Austin (Texas) Migrating To OpenOffice.org."
Otherwise there may be confusion with Austin, Minnesota [spamtownusa.com]
-kgj
Texas or France? (Score:3, Funny)
Who (Score:3, Interesting)
He also pointed out that not everyone can be converted yet because of one application (the City Council's Agenda Management System) that requires MS Office to run.
I'm sure it could be run on a cheaper and more open system that didn't require M$ applications to run it. MySQL/PHP or FileMaker would both be good database apps to use.
The web should be platform and application independent, even for management systems, but Bill's insistance on Microsoft products on both the client and sever sides will only limit the use of his products, not expand his market share.
This is what you call a... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's odd that that such an old Office Suite that was struggling so hard comes to be such a success years later. And that the reason it does is so mundane does make me wonder even more: It simply offers the very same (or even better) performance that an established competition and is dirt cheap. Free as in beer, actually.
Coming to think of it, that actually isn't a bad reason to become a Killer Application.
What I really find astounding is that Open Office actually tries to emulate MS Office and thus isn't half as intuitive and performant as Lotus Smart Suite, imho.
Anyway: OO.o combined with the new KDE 3.2 is the next big step in toppling a monopoly. I expect Linux to reach critical mass in germany any time soon (within the next 12 months or so).
City of Largo: Migration to OO Finished Last Week (Score:5, Interesting)
The comments about users not liking change is true, and it's true that they complain no matter what you do---even upgrades of the same product.
We got word of a location that moved to OO on Win32, and they had a brilliant idea. OpenOffice was provided to them for use for free, if they wanted to continue to use Office they had to *buy their own copy* (~$399 payroll deduction + upgrades + support costs).
Dave Richards
City of Largo, Florida
drichard@largo.com
Re:why not 100%? (Score:5, Informative)
Certainly makes sense that they're going to need to solve that dependancy before they switch those people to OO.org...
Not the same (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not the same (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm surprised OEMs haven't started loading it by default(unless office is specified), apart from some speed issues, it does just about everything a typical home user needs.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:80%? (Score:3, Funny)
Someone should read the article, where they would find the following:
Re:80%? (Score:3, Informative)
Sectional word counts?
*.CHM export?
Auto-insert of date and time in an excel spreadsheet with "Ctrl +
Managed website (not single web-page) updates?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:80%? (Score:3, Insightful)
Weird, yes. But I see it as an opportunity for a small development shop in Austin to score a nice project.
Re:80%? (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, migrating the easy 80% gives OOo the dominant desktop position. Certainly any new apps will be written to be OOo-friendly, and there will be pressure to port the old ones. I'm sure they have their IT people looking at what it'd take to do that. Might be an opportunity there for developers or companies in the Austin area with migration/porting experience.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:80%? (Score:4, Informative)
learn it, love it.
Re:Windows 101 (Score:3, Informative)
Well, it exists [openoffice.org] (it's called UNO), but quite obviously it is not the same.
At least it comes with nice bindings for Java, C++, Perl and Python.
A UNO-CORBA bridge was in the works, but I believe there is little interest in this.
Re:Windows 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
You obviously never used OpenOffice before. You can work with OOo through COM under MS Windows just as you can with MS Office.
Here is a little VB Script example, copy n paste the text below into a text file and save it as ooo.vbs, then just double click it and watch.
office_automation [openoffice.org]
writerdemo [openoffice.org]
There is nothing open about MS Office. Where can I download the specs of the MS Office formats? Oh, that is right, they are proprietary "IP". But wait, MS Office 2003 uses "open" XML. Gee that is just great, too bad the encoded data in the XML is proprietary "IP" and the XML wrapper is more of a PR stunt then MS truly opening up the MS Office documents formats.
A better solution is to use OPEN STANDARDS. Instead of having your application spit out some MS Word doc, have it spit out HTML or PDF. Then anyone, anywhere can read it. Instead of spitting out an MS Excel file, have it spit out a plain ole CSV file. Then you can import it to just about any app or DB and work with the data any way you want.
Re:It's a miracle! (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people in Austin moved there from other places in the 1980's. Most of the natives
got disgusted and left.
Re:It's a miracle! (Score:2)
Nice to see a city that sucks up to Dell/AMD/IBM go away from M$
Re:Don't bother RTFA, this arcitle is FUD, here's (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't bother RTFA, this arcitle is FUD, here's (Score:4, Funny)
Well obviously it's anti-Microsoft FUD, trying to convince people that not every business computer runs Office. Silly, I know, but there are probably some managers out there feeling uncertainty and doubt about the hegemony of Microsoft, and wondering why they don't switch.
Re:Don't bother RTFA, this arcitle is FUD, here's (Score:3, Informative)
Ummm... no.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
Intentionally harming your competition by ispiring those feelings about a product/program through public announcements is FUD.
A good example would be what Microsoft has been saying about viral licenses and the GPL. All they need to do is get a good buzz going about "viral licenses", and wheher it is true or not, the competition has to waste time addressing their customer's fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Re:Don't bother RTFA, this arcitle is FUD, here's (Score:2, Funny)
Hahahahahahaha. Thanks, I needed that.
Re:Don't bother RTFA, this arcitle is FUD, here's (Score:3, Funny)
Calm down now, Steve. You know that the heart doctor told you about getting so worked up.
Yes, even about developers...
Re:Don't bother RTFA, this arcitle is FUD, here's (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent appropriately (Score:4, Interesting)
When exactly did the Gannett owned, Reuters dominated USA Today become a credible news source? Or CNN, notorious for parroting the positions of those with vested interests without even bothering to check if it makes sense or contradicts earlier statements? All of the mentioned periodicals are tertiary news sources... They rely upon other people who have seen the news, and are willing to talk about it. USA Today is arguably a quadiary news source, as it just recycles tertiary articles from other sources. The e-mail posted from the initiator of this project is a primary news source, and an article posted by someone who has seen this e-mail is a secondary news source. Primary and secondary news sources, while necessarily less well known as they do not focus on the dissemination of news, are a far more accurate source of information than those who re-release pre-digested data.
You just got the best news source you could hope to get, and you complained because it wasn't USA Today.
Re:why, why, WHY (Score:5, Informative)
The reason is because Open Office would conflict with the trademark of some Korean office suite.
If more open source software projects would name themselves after their domain name, it would make it really easy for customers to know where to go for information. Imagine if Mozilla.org would do this.