අපි විතරද?

ලංකාවේ බොහෝ දෙනා සිතන්නේ ලංකාවේ සිටින සුලු පිරිසක් පමණක් විවෘත සම්මත (Open Standards) සහ නිදහස් සහ විවෘත මෘදුකාංග ජනප්‍රිය කරවීමට වලිකන බවයි. මෑත කාලයේ කියුබාව නිදහස් සහ විවෘත මෘදුකාංග වැදලගත් අතර අලුත්ම මුහුණු දෙකක්ද මේ අතරට දැන් එක් වී ඇත.

පසුගිය දිනෙක ඉංදියාව සිය විවෘත සම්මත යන් පිළිබඳ පිළිවෙත (Open Standard Policy) නිම කළ අතර. නොර්වේ රාජ්‍යද ඉතා වේගයෙන් මෙම නිදහස කරා ඇදියන්නට පටන්ගෙන ඇත. නොර්වේ රාජ්‍ය තුළ පාසැල් සහ පලාත් පාලන ආයතන තුළ මේ වන විට OpenOfffice.org සහ අනෙකුත් නිදහස් සහ විවෘතු මෘදකාංග භාවිතය ප්‍රවර්ධනය වෙමින් පවති.

අදාල ලිපිය:

Public administrations in Norway are increasingly turning to open source, says Martin Bekkelund, business developer at Friprog, the country's open source competence centre. This year, all ninenteen county administrations are using open source in some form, compared to 76 percent in 2005.

Uses varies from server operating systems , content management systems to OpenOffice. A recent example is procurement of an open source telephone system based on Asterisk in the county of Akershus. "Moreover, now 75 percent of all 430 municipalities are using this type of software, including for example OpenOffice in high schools and a complete stack of server software."

Five years ago, a little less than 60 percent of municipal administrations used open source. In Norway there are roughly a thousand public offices, which includes government offices, municipalities and counties, now more than 60 percent uses open source, compared to 34 percent in 2005.

Bekkelund says public administrations should work together to reuse data, knowledge and software. Failing to collaborate on this will result in increasing IT costs and mounting bureaucracy. "This in turn leads to decreasing quality and a loss of knowledge."

"On the other hand, forcing public administrations to switch to open source is not the way to go, public sector need to see the benefits of sharing and collaboration for themselves." This explains why Friprog is working on incentives to make open source more attractive. The cente has created a site where public administrations and IT service providers can work together, called Delingsbazaren.

A similar website focusses on sharing documentation, research, case studies and data, Kunnskapsnazaren. Friprog also organises conferences, such as the GoOpen conference taking place in Oslo in March next year. "Free and open source has become a natural part of the market."

Bekkelund presented on Friprog's progress 25 September at the Kosova Software Freedom conference that took place in the city of Prishtina.

ලංකාවේ දැන් සමෘදි නියාමකයින් හරහාපවා බලපත්‍ර සහිත මෘදකාංග ප්‍රවර්ධනය සිදුවෙමින් පවති.
http://itpro.lk/node/7864

මේක වැරදියට තෙරුම් ගන්න එපා. බලපත්‍ර සහිත මෘදුකාංග ප්‍රවර්ධනයේ වැරද්දක් නැ ඒ සඳහා යන මුදල් අපිට දරන්නට හැකිනම්. ඉපදෙන්නට ඉන්න ළමයිනුත් ණයකාරයින් වෙලා ඉන්න අපේ රටට ගැලපෙන්නේ මොකක්ද කියලා මොහොතක් හිතන්න.

ඒවගේම සෝබනේට වෙජිටෙරියන් වගේ දැන් සෝබනේට FOSS හැදිලා වගේ. මම භාවිත කරන්නේ FOSS කිමෙන් අමුතු පිළිගැනීමක් නැ. මොකද මේ මෘදුකාංග වලින් සමස්තයක් ලෙස වන්නේ අපේ කාර්යය පහසු කිරීම. අවශ්‍ය වෙන්නේ අදාල පුද්ගලයා තම ප්‍රජාව තුළ නිදහස් සහ විවෘත මෘදුකාංග අවකංව ප්‍රවර්ධනය කරනවා ද නැද්ද යන්න.

අනෙක් කාරණය වන්නේ මෙලෙස නිදහස් සහ විවෘත මෘදුකාංග කෙරෙහි කටයුතු කළ යුත්තේ නොමිලේම කියලා හිතන් ඉන්න එක. FOSS භාවිතයට සහාය දෙන හෝ ඒ අශ්‍රීතව කටයුතු කරන අය නොමිලේ නම් ඒ අයගේ ගෙවල් වල අයට කන්න දෙන්නේ ගමේ ග්‍රාමසේවකද?

ගොඩක් තැන්වල Open Source වලට නිසි සහායක් නැ කියනවා. මේකට හේතුව නොමිලේ සහාය ලබා ගන්න බැලීම. මෘදුකාංග සඳහා බලපත්‍ර අවශ්‍ය නැති උනාට ඒ සඳහා කටයුතු කරන අයගේ කාලය සහ දැණුම අවතකසේරු කරන්න බැ නේද?

LibreOffice FTW!

LibreOffice 3.3 beta1 on Fedora 13 64bit system

LibreOffice Writer

LibreOffice Calc

LibreOffice Impress

OpenOffice.org Community announces The Document Foundation

Original post

The community of volunteers developing and promoting OpenOffice.org sets up an independent Foundation to drive the further growth of the project. The Internet, September 28, 2010 - The community of volunteers who develop and promote OpenOffice.org, the leading free office software, announce a major change in the project’s structure. After ten years’ successful growth with Sun Microsystems as founding and principle sponsor, the project launches an independent foundation called "The Document Foundation", to fulfil the promise of independence written in the original charter.

The Foundation will be the cornerstone of a new ecosystem where individuals and organisations can contribute to and benefit from the availability of a truly free office suite. It will generate increased competition and choice for the benefit of customers and drive innovation in the office suite market. From now on, the OpenOffice.org community will be known as "The Document Foundation".

Oracle, who acquired OpenOffice.org assets as a result of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, has been invited to become a member of the new Foundation, and donate the brand the community has grown during the past ten years. Pending this decision, the brand "LibreOffice" has been chosen for the software going forward.

The Document Foundation is the result of a collective effort by leading independent members of the OpenOffice.org community, including several project leads and key members of the Community Council. It will be led initially by a Steering Committee of developers and national language projects managers. The Foundation aims to lower the barrier of adoption for both users and developers, to make LibreOffice the most accessible office suite ever.

The Foundation will coordinate and oversee the development of LibreOffice, which is available in beta version at the placeholder site: http://www.libreoffice.org. Developers are invited to join the project and contribute to the code in the new friendly and open environment, to shape the future of office productivity suites alongside contributors who translate, test, document, support, and promote the software.

Speaking for the group of volunteers, Sophie Gautier - a veteran of the community and the former maintainer of the French speaking language project - has declared: "We believe that the Foundation is a key step for the evolution of the free office suite, as it liberates the development of the code and the evolution of the project from the constraints represented by the commercial interests of a single company. Free software advocates around the world have the extraordinary opportunity of joining the group of founding members today, to write a completely new chapter in the history of FLOSS".

FSF President Richard Stallman welcomed LibreOffice release and it's stated policy of only recommending free software. "I'm very pleased that the Document Foundation will not recommend nonfree add-ons, since they are the main freedom problem of the current OpenOffice.org. I hope that the LibreOffice developers and the Oracle-employed developers of OpenOffice will be able to cooperate on development of the body of the code".

"The Document Foundation supports the Open Document Format, and is keen to work at OASIS to the next evolution of the ISO standard", says Charles Schulz, member of the Community Council and lead of the Native Language Confederation. "The Document Foundation brings to the table the point of view of developers, supporters and users, and this might accelerate the adoption process of ODF at government and enterprise level".

Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google, Inc., has commented: "The creation of The Document Foundation is a great step forward in encouraging further development of open source office suites. Having a level playing field for all contributors is fundamental in creating a broad and active community around an open source software project. Google is proud to be a supporter of The Document Foundation and participate in the project".

"Viva la LibreOffice", said Guy Lunardi, product management Director at Novell. "We look forward to working with the Document Foundation to help develop a solid open source document software offering. Ultimately, we envision LibreOffice do for the office productivity market what Mozilla Firefox has done for browsers".

Jan Wildeboer, EMEA Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, has commented: "All over the world, users, companies and governments are moving to innovative technology solutions based on Open Standards. Red Hat is proud to join this effort".

Mark Shuttleworth, founder and major shareholder of Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, has declared: "Office productivity software is a critical component of the free software desktop, and the Ubuntu Project will be pleased to ship LibreOffice from The Document Foundation in future releases of Ubuntu. The Document Foundation's stewardship of LibreOffice provides Ubuntu developers an effective forum for collaboration around the code that makes Ubuntu an effective solution for the desktop in office environments".

"The Open Source Initiative has observed a trend back towards open collaborative communities for open source software", said Simon Phipps, a Director of the Open Source Initiative. "We welcome The Document Foundation initiative and look forward to the innovation it is able to drive with a truly open community gathered around a free software commons, in the spirit of the best of open source software".

"We welcome the LibreOffice project to the free software community as we believe there is a great opportunity for them to enrich the free desktop experience." says Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. "Over the years the GNOME community has been supportive of OpenOffice together with applications in the GNOME Office suite, such as Gnumeric, GnuCash and Abiword. As LibreOffice joins the free software community, we believe that free desktop users will benefit from a rich set of choices."

Patrick Luby, Chief Engineer of NeoOffice says "I am happy to see a new, independent LibreOffice foundation to continue creating an office suite with enhanced features, pushing OpenOffice.org in new, exciting directions". Ed Peterlin, Chief Visionary at NeoOffice says "I am excited we will be able to continue bringing excellent features from LibreOffice to the Mac platform. In the future I also hope to extend our web based collaboration tools to support LibreOffice users on all platforms".

Chris Halls, UK Managing Director of Credativ, an independent consulting and services company specialising in the development, implementation and support of open source solutions: "Welcomes the foundation as an opportunity to provide a new focus for the community contributors and allow them to move the project forward together. In our business, we support thousands of office desktops in many different environments. It is vital that the feedback and code that we can contribute as part of our day to day work can flow easily into the project".

"The creation of The Document Foundation is in line with the vision BrOffice.org - Projeto Brasil has for the Brazilian OpenOffice.org community. Our country already has a large investment in the Open Document Format and the software tools fully suporting it. BrOffice.org and The Document Foundation share the same values and objectives and we are more than happy to be part of it.”, says Claudio Filho, Chairman of the BrOffice.org NGO of Brazil.

The Norwegian foundation "Åpne kontorprogram på norsk" ("Open Office Suites In Norwegian") is responsible for the Norwegian translation of OpenOffice.org, and for promoting OpenOffice.org in Norway. So far the Norwegian project has been administered and financed mainly by counties and municipalities, but recently the foundation has started a process for getting commercial companies more actively involved. We realise the need for a more substantial commercial participation to establish a long-term sustainable project. Our foundation notes that the other Nordic countries, a majority of the European countries, as well as a range of worldwide big companies like Google, Novell, Canonical and Red Hat are now cooperating with The Document Foundation. We believe this is the right way forward also for Norway. A cooperation with The Document Foundation will make it easier to create more innovative and user-friendly solutions integrated with the LibreOffice suite. Eliminating license barriers and obtaining easy access to source code and standards will facilitate further development of related and integrated surrounding products.

Additional information, including the mission, are available on the web site of The Document Foundation: http://www.documentfoundation.org
Biographies and pictures of the founding members of The Document Foundation are available here: http://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/
There is a specific page for people interested in contributing to the development of the code: http://www.documentfoundation.org/contribution/

The Document Foundation has a Twitter account at http://twitter.com/docufoundation and an Identi.ca account at http://identi.ca/docufoundation

The announcements mailing list is at announce+subscribe@documentfoundation.org
The discussion mailing list is at discuss+subscribe@documentfoundation.org
The IRC channel is #documentfoundation at irc.freenode.net

The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation is an independent self-governing democratic Foundation created by leading members of the OpenOffice.org Community. It continues to build on the Foundation of ten years' dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org community, and was created in the belief that an independent Foundation is the best fit to the Community's core values of openness, transparency, and valuing people for their contribution. It is open to any individual who agrees with our core values and contributes to our activities, and welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community.

Media Contacts

Florian Effenberger (Germany)
Phone: +49 8341 99660880
Mobile: +49 151 14424108
Skype: floeff
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org

Olivier Hallot (Brazil)
Mobile: +55 21 88228812
E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org

Charles H. Schulz (France)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424
E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org

Italo Vignoli (Italy)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829
E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org

Oracle veep backs software revolution at historic anniversary OpenOffice.org global conference

OpenOffice.org, the Open Document Format and their customers are equally important, Michael Bemmer, the Vice President and General Manager of Oracle Office, said at the annual international OpenOffice.org Conference on Wednesday 1st September. Although Bemmer did not divulge details of his company's future strategy he made it clear that the inexorable rise of OpenOffice.org will continue in the years ahead, in a speech entitled “A Decade of Success” at the plenary session of the annual international OpenOffice.org Conference in the Hungarian Parliament building.

This year's event was seen as the most important to date, as the international IT community awaited US industry giant Oracle's first statement on the future of OpenOffice.org since its acquisition of Sun Systems earlier in the year.

Zsolt Nyitrai, State Secretary of IT Communications at Hungary's National Development Ministry, asked participants of the conference to become partners with the government in the task that “aims to open the closed doors of administration in the world of Open Source office softwares”.

Nyitrai's presence at the event indicated a sea change in government policy on Open Source software in the country that spawned John von Neumann, arguably the most important figure in the history of computing. Only two years ago Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was invited to Parliament by Hungary's then prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany. However Ballmer's visit is better remembered for the incident when he was pelted with eggs by a local student wearing a shirt bearing the slogan “Microsoft = Corruption” while delivering a lecture at Budapest's Central European University.

Numerous European Union member states, including the Netherlands, France and Poland, have insisted on the the use of open standards-based software at all public offices since 2006. The EU has officially endorsed the use of Open Source software since 2002.

Open Source software adoption at international companies has maintained its remarkable pace of growth in recent years. IT market research and consultancy firm IDC calculates that Open Source software revenues will exceed $8 billion by 2013, with an annual compound growth rate of 22.4%, putting it way ahead of almost every other software category.

Some 5,000 IT professionals have worked as volunteers on the OpenOffice.org project since Sun Microsystems launched it in the autumn of 2000. The latest version of the office software suite is used by hundreds of millions of people, with a 15-20% global market share, and is available in over 100 languages. More than a 100 speakers and around 300 guests are currently in the Hungarian capital for the three-day event, which has been organised by ODFA Hungary.

Links related:

The conference's website:
www.ooocon.org

Openoffice.org's website:
www.openoffice.org

OpenOffice 3.2 QA Workshop 2010 - Sri Lanka

It was a great pleasure to have the first QA event of the OpenOffice.org Sri Lankan Community and the first gathering of the community.

Event was held at The ICTA Auditorium from 8.30AM to 4.00 PM (+5.30GMT) on 25th March 2010.

Contributors:

1. Kalpa Pathum
2. Gayan Kalhara
3. Prabath Galagamage
4. Bandula Pushpakumara
5. Bandula Ranathunga
6. Dasun Lokuhetti
7. Gayan Tharaka
   
8. Rajeen Pranna
9. Chanaka Madushan
   
10. Anushka Lakmal
11. Prabash Rajarathne
12. + /me
    

The team consisited of school students, university students, school teacher, government and private officials and software developers.

These people were selected based on the first come first serve basis. The first 12 people who replied to the mail I sent to the openoffice-lk mailing list were given the chance.

Wasantha Deshapriya (Director- Government Re-Engineering), Sujith Jayasooriya, Mahesh Kooragama and Sameera Shakunthala (Intern) who were from ICTA also joined to the team.

Booting up... Introduce yourself :) Prabash is introducing himself

Let's start...

I gave an introduction on Sinhala Native Language Project
http://si.openoffice.org

and...progress of OO.org Sinhala l10n and the what we are going to do

We were working on pootle to minimize l10n issues. Specially we found few buttons with partial text, due to lengthy Sinhala strings. Before the 3.2.1 l10n freeze we had been translated 95% of the work load. Right now we are working towards 100% completion of the translation.

Many thanks to qa.openoffice.org team including MechtiIde and Sophie and the ICTA SystemAdmin team including Himira and Malaka,... opening required ports, wifi, etc....

I group them in to Six teams. Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw and Math. Each team tested their application on both Windows and GNU/Linux and it was much effective and convenient to test in groups as it was easy to solve a common matter that arise in the relevant application. Further it was easier to manage 6 groups instead of 15 individuals.

using Kate & Pootle

Enjoying the QA

When they found typos: next step was to correct each typo in all files where it repeats. We used Kate (comes with kdesdk) to find required patterns and finally updated in pootle. Still we are updating pootle. We expect to finish this before l10n freeze for the upcoming 3.2.1 release.

end of productive workshop
I understood.. team photo should take in the begin of an event. ;-)

Wasantha was out for a meeting. Nevertheless he spent half the day with us.