Open Source Industry Australia Limited (OSIA) has welcomed Microsoft's move to create a "translator" that will allow people to use Office to open and save documents in the OpenDocument, or ODF, format.
Suncorp's CIO, Jeff Smith, says he would like the banking and insurance giant to use open source software for its 20,000 desktops, which currently run Windows XP.
IBM has launched a commercially supported version of its Lotus Symphony productivity suite, ready to take on Microsoft Office.
Microsoft on Thursday said it will make application programming interfaces (APIs) for Office and Windows Server available free of charge, in a move designed to make its products work better with software from other providers, including open-source communities.
Servers hosting the new version of OpenOffice.org have crashed, under the weight of demand for the latest version of the open-source office productivity suite.
Office 2007 continues to be the focus of discussion here at Big Deal, but the most recent crop of reactions to my postings have shifted from the possible nuisance value of interface changes to the potential upside for OpenOffice, the open-source rival to the desktop suite crown.
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Michael Meeks is a distinguished engineer at Novell. But his current project may be his toughest yet. He is in charge of tackling interoperability between Novell's OpenOffice.org productivity suite and Microsoft Office. And as with anything relating to Microsoft, this involves more than just technology.
The lax dress code of the open-source community is one of the reasons behind the software's slow uptake in commercial environments, says former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn.
Former Ximian chief executive David Patrick, now a general manager at Novell, says the Office productivity suite is the key to breaking Microsoft's hold on the desktop.
Redmond-based group project manager of Microsoft Office, Gray Knowlton, told ZDNet Australia that OOXML provides higher levels of security. "One of the benefits we have with the OpenOffice XML formats is that we know when we read and write and document because we have an XML based representation of what's in that content -- we know what should and should not be there," he said.
OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft's Office application suite. It is fantastic if you need basic office applications such as a word processor or spreadsheet at no cost. However, large organisations and power users may be disappointed by its lack of features and support.
The OpenOffice.org group announces a kit that lets programmers build new modules for open-source alternatives to the Microsoft Office suite.
Microsoft says it's opening its Office desktop software by adding support for XML--a move that should help companies free up access to shared information. But there's a catch: It has yet to disclose the underlying XML dialect.
While the interface of IBM's free office suite is sexy, its hunger for system resources and lack of features mean that OpenOffice.org 3 is still the best free office suite. Also, watch out for Symphony's lack of OOXML support.
OpenOffice.org 2.0, the freeware version of Sun's StarOffice 8, is a great deal for small-business users who don't mind browsing online forums for technical support. But enterprises are better served by StarOffice 8.
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