Good news from the open source in education front. ZDNet reports,
Sun Microsystems has recruited one of its biggest customers yet for its StarOffice software, signing a contract with the Ontario Ministry of Education covering 2.5 million students.
The deal, signed May 27 but not announced in the United States until Monday, covers 72 public and parochial school boards in Ontario. All will be licensed to use StarOffice 7, the current version of the package, on all school-owned PCs.
For those that don't know, Star Office is the pay version of the open source OpenOffice. It includes a few non-open source apps, but the difference is neglible for most users. And from an educational point of view, it makes sense over the straight open source version because Sun offers support for Star Office. Since Sun does not charge for educational licensing, it's probably a great money saver with whatever they are paying for the added support when compared to MS Office or WordPerfect.
While some might point and say that it's not quite open source, remember that students can download OpenOffice and have the same word processor and spreadsheet package for their own use. To me, this is a good economic model where open source initiatives make their money, not by restricting access to the code as with proprietary software, but through service. Note that this model is similar to what RedHat has moved to with Fedora Core.
Open Office
Charlie, I'm really curious about Open Office. Do you think it can hold its own against Windows Office Suite? Also, how compatible is the open office WP with Word? Does it do comments/track changes?
OpenOffice
I have never used Word except on one revision project where the original, lengthy text was in Word format. Up until OpenOffice, I was a WordPerfect user. And it's been a comparable replacement for WordPerfect. It also has done a better job of translating to and from .doc than WordPerfect did.
And yes it has a comments and track changes function. You really ought to try it for a while.
Will do
Will do. I downloaded Abiword but wasn't too impressed. Maybe open office will suit me better.
I've been reading on Slashdot that most people stick with Windows because of Adobe Photoshop (they hate the GIMP). I wonder if this is also true for word processing.
abiword is a much simpler app
abiword is a much simpler app. openoffice is easily on par with ms office. try for awhile. you'll see :)