Archive for the 'Open-source' Category

From Open to Libre

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

I see an announcement that LibreOffice has now passed its QA process, and has now been officially declared stable and ready for general use by the folks at The Document Foundation. The open-source community has been waiting for this announcement with interest. In its previous incarnation as OpenOffice.org, the software was an essential free replacement [...]

There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Mythology has it that software development thrives on caffeine, so today’s announcement that The Document Foundation has secured support for a LibreOffice software development team in Brazil can only be good news for the Foundation (for as the old song goes: There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil). OpenOffice.org – the previous incarnation of [...]

Strictly open source

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

My mum was in hospital for a couple of weeks, and she was annoyed that she’d miss out on Strictly Come Dancing. As it’s a BBC programme, it’s available on iPlayer, but only for a short period of time. The iPlayer route would also mean playing it to her on my laptop via a wireless [...]

“Breaking up is never easy to do…”

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

(Damn, I’m going to be singing Abba all day now…) From their official reaction, it looks as though Oracle haven’t yet decided how to respond to their adult child leaving home unilaterally. It’s a bit naive to expect them to be wildly enthusiastic. However, having an active community is what makes OpenOffice.org special, and Oracle [...]

They’ll miss you when you’ve gone…

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Further to my note yesterday about the OpenOffice.org Community leaving the parental home at Oracle and setting up their own place … One of the key jobs they used to do was Quality Assure OpenOffice.org (QA is a huge and boring job, ideally suited to a worldwide network of enthusiasts). From this Oracle blog posting, [...]

Leaving home

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Our house is very quiet this morning – for the first time since we moved here, there’s just my wife and me in residence. Our offspring, both in their twenties, have flown the nest. Our friends report this is happening later and later in their families, with adult children finding it more and more difficult [...]

Conspiracy? afraid not

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Since I made public my decision not to stand again for the OpenOffice.org. Community Council I’ve had a flurry of emails from people asking what the ‘real’ reason is: is it a consequence of the Oracle purchase of Sun Microsystems? and I disillusioned with the whole Council process? have I been offered a job by [...]