Tag Archives: openoffice

OpenOffice needs volunteers – & a plan for future engagement

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I love FOSS software! FOSS means Free and Open Source Software. Open source software allows users (including online volunteers!) to study, change and improve the software at the code level, rights normally reserved for the copyright holder – usually, a large corporation. Free software usually refers to software that grants you the freedom to copy and re-use the software, rather than to the price of the software. But when I talk about it, I really am talking about cost-free-for-the-user software: it doesn’t cost a user money to use it, though donations are encouraged (and, yes, I donate).

As I’ve said before, It bothers me when I see people in countries where I work or visit – Afghanistan, Ukraine, Egypt, etc. – using pirated Microsoft software rather than LibreOffice or OpenOffice. Or when I see nonprofits struggling with expenses and spending huge amounts of money on proprietary software from multi-billion dollar companies rather than FOSS software. FOSS products are powerful, constantly debugged and upgraded, and feature-rich. The support forums for them are as good as anything large software corporations provide.

OpenOffice has been one of my favorite FOSS tools for years. It has word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation features every bit as powerful as Microsoft, at least for my needs, and it’s opened Microsoft files, and created them for me to send to others, as easily as it is for Microsoft to open old versions of its office suite, which many of the people I work with are still using.  But I also use LibreOffice, which is also a FOSS office suite, with all the same features. Why do I use both? Because, sometimes, one will do something the other won’t.

With all that said, there is a history behind these two FOSS efforts that is worth your reading, if you are interested in community engagement, volunteerism, responsive-management, transparency and mission-based organizations. The history shows how clashes regarding commitment and goals between paid leaders and devoted volunteers can lead in splits in programs, and shows the importance of ongoing cultivation of new volunteers – in contrast to assuming volunteers will just magically materialize, the way they always seem to have.

When the company that produced OpenOffice was purchased by the the for-profit corporation Oracle in 2010, Oracle became owners of OpenOffice. The thousands of volunteers that had been contributing to OO, constantly refining the product, as well as promoting it to others, were concerned at Oracle’s lack of activity on or visible commitment to OpenOffice. These volunteers are passionate advocates of FOSS, not just OO, and they were dedicated to seeing the tool not only continue, but continue to evolve, as all software must to survive. A group of OO devotees created the Document Foundation, a nonprofit organization to either manage OO once Oracle let it go – which everyone thought they would – or to create an alternative software. Oracle was invited to become a member of the Document Foundation, so that they Oracle could help with the transition when they discontinued OO. Instead, Oracle surprised everyone: the company demanded that all members of the OpenOffice.org Community Council also involved with the Document Foundation to step down from the council, claiming a conflict of interest, and things turned hostile. LibreOffice was born, and volunteers left in droves to join the effort to refine and promote it. In 2011, Oracle announced it was, indeed, ending development of OpenOffice and that it would give OpenOffice code and trademark to the Apache Software Foundation. OpenOffice continued to be refined and new releases came to fruition, but LibraOffice won the battle for volunteer developer participation.

From what I’ve read, I get the impression that the Apache Software Foundation folks envisioned that the developer pool for OpenOffice would come from seeded by IBM employees, Linux distribution companies and public sector agencies – in short, they thought other organizations would donate talent, because they had before, but they didn’t think about recruiting online volunteers themselves. And now the foundation is struggling with recruiting volunteer developers for Open Office. Things are so dire that the Apache Software Foundation recently outlined what discontinuing the product could look like.

Volunteers deliver the program of both of these foundations. Here’s what the Apache Software Foundation says on its web site:

All projects are composed of volunteers and nobody (not even members or officers) are paid directly by the foundation for their job. There are many examples of committers that are paid to work on the projects, but never by the foundation themselves, but rather by companies or institutions that use the software and want to enhance it or maintain it. Note that the ASF does contract out various services, including accounting, Press and Media relations, and infrastructure system administration.

I love that so many open office projects, including the Document Foundation/LibreOffice, have a commitment to their program being delivered by volunteers rather than paid staff, NOT because they want to save money, but because of the nature of their program itself, which they believe is best delivered by volunteers. They believe volunteer engagement is community engagement and that volunteers are the best people for program delivery – a radical idea I’ve promoted to a lot of nonprofits and gotten a LOT of pushback for.

One of the things I love about these FOSS efforts fueled by thousands of online volunteers all over the world is that they involve volunteers based on what they call meritocracy: new volunteers start by completing microvolunteering tasks, such as sending little patches for problems with the software they find, or sending helpful suggestions regarding improving the software, or replying to official online discussions about the software. Their micro contributions are valuable and consistent. When they have proven themselves to be reliable, trustworthy and helpful, they may be asked for more substantial contributions, or they may offer to take on a larger task themselves, and then complete it successfully. The core group of volunteers may feel the person has proven him or herself as a volunteer, that their commitment to the project is genuine and ongoing, and, therefore, their contributions merit their full inclusion in the development community, granting them direct access to the code repository and to conversations with other volunteers. This increases the number of volunteers and increases the ability of the group to develop the program, and to maintain and develop it more effectively. It’s a method of volunteer screening and recognition, all in one!

So, with all that said… can OpenOffice be saved? Yes – as long as the Apache Software Foundation leadership can make a strong case for OpenOffice to not only Microsoft, but LibreOffice as well. If they can, then attracting new volunteers is relatively easy – at least it would be for, say, me, to develop a very effective recruitment strategy for such, if they have a commitment to carrying it out. OpenOffice was downloaded more than 29 million times in 2015 – that to me says there is a lot of interest in this initiative continuing. Oh how I would love to help them make it so…

I love FOSS software!

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For more than seven years, I’ve been using FOSS software for all my office software needs:

  • I use LibreOffice and OpenOffice for all word-processing needs on my laptop, including opening and editing Microsoft Word documents sent to me by other, for creating slide show/presentation/stacks and editing Microsoft PowerPoint files sent to me by others, for all spreadsheets, simple databases)
  • I use Thunderbird, from Mozilla, for my on-my-computer email client and Roundcube for my webmail needs via my laptop.

Open source software allows users (including online volunteers!) to study, change, and improve the software at the code level, rights normally reserved for the copyright holder – usually, a large corporation. Free software usually refers to software that grants you the freedom to copy and re-use the software, rather than to the price of the software, and is often referred to as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). But in this case, I’m talking about cost-free-for-the-user software: it doesn’t cost a user money to use it.

It bothers me when I see people in countries where I work or visit – Afghanistan, Ukraine, Egypt, etc. – using pirated Microsoft software rather than LibreOffice or OpenOffice. Or when I see nonprofits struggling with expenses and spending huge amounts of money on proprietary software from multi-billion dollar companies rather than FOSS software. FOSS proves again and again to be just as secure, stable, frequently-updated, feature-rich and reliable as proprietary software. FOSS products are powerful, constantly debugged and upgraded, and feature-rich. The support forums for them are as good as anything large software corporations provide.

Sure, there are the occasional file translation issues — sometimes the fonts don’t translate ideally between FOSS and Microsoft Powerpoint, for instance, or the bullets in a word-processing document sometimes goes wonky from one software to another — you know, the same problems that happen between different versions of the same software from large, well-known corporations.

As I’ve said before, you evaluate and choose free software the same way you choose fee-based software:

  • how long has the software been around?
  • how often is the software upgraded?
  • how much documentation for the software is provided?
  • is there an online forum where users freely post questions and offer support to each other?
  • look for reviews of the software (these are very easy to find online). Read many different reviews from many different sources, not just one or two, and not just the “official” review from the software’s manufacturer(s).
  • is the software talked about by users on the TechSoup forum?

Beware of unsolicited email offers or web page pop-ups for free software. These are often associated with malicious software, viruses, and scams.

As I’ve said before, what’s most important in being able to work in the modern office is not a certain number of years using a particular office software. Rather, it’s for you to understand all that office software should be able to do, such as in a document:

  • using fonts appropriately and changing them as necessary
  • setting tabs and margins
  • creating and editing tables
  • adding headers and footers, page numbers, etc.
  • adding and editing tables
  • adding graphics and integrating them into a page’s design
  • recording and showing, or hiding or accepting, edits by other people
  • creating an automatically-updated table of contents based on headings and subheadings within a document
  • creating mail merges for customized text
  • etc.

What’s MOST important is that you understand the capabilities of word processing software, spreadsheet software, presentation software, web page creation software, etc. – having that understanding means you will be able to learn to use future versions of the software or any software produced by a different company that is designed to do what you want done, whether it’s to create a document or a web page or a database, whatever. The most important software skill you can have is the ability to learn new functions on upgraded software or ability to learn new software quickly or ability to figure out new software/upgrades, because software changes. And changes and changes. It gets upgraded. The IT manager decides to use something different. A board member can get a special deal on something different. The head of the organization has a personal preference. Whatever.

In short, don’t marry software. Because your relationship won’t last a lifetime. It just won’t. And it WILL break your heart at some point. Date it – and enjoy it while it lasts!

For more information, see these previous blogs and other web pages, where I talk more about FOSS options, including about entire country governments that have converted to FOSS use, and more about software choices:

UK Government adopts Open Doc Format for all sharable docs

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The Government of United Kingdom has adopted Open Document Format (ODF) for all sharable documents. That means government offices and employees must use PDF/A or HTML for documents that are to be just viewed (but not edited), and ODF for sharing and collaborating on gov docs.

It doesn’t meant that anyone has to give up Microsoft Office, but it does mean that, when creating a file in that office suite, it has to be saved in an ODF format:

.odt and .fodt for word processing (text) documents
.ods and .fods for spreadsheets
.odp and .fodp for presentations
.odb for databases
.odg and .fodg for graphics
.odf for formulae, mathematical equations

If any of those employees are, like me, using open-source office suites as LibreOffice and OpenOffice, they can stop having to save files as .doc (Word), .ppt (PowerPoint) and .xls (Excel).

From the ZDNet article: “All office-suite programs, which do not support ODF, such as Google Docs, must add support for the standard. Without it, they will find themselves unable to compete for UK government business now. And, in the future, they may find themselves unable to compete for other office contracts that will require ODF.”

Now, if I could just convince the United Nations, and all of the NGOs and nonprofits I work with, and all the local government offices in the USA, to do the same…

what’s most important about software experience

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Back in the mid 1990s, when I found myself jobless and was temping, my agency sent me to fill in for an executive administrative assistant that was going on vacation for two weeks. I read over the job description, and it said I needed to know Microsoft Powerpoint. I looked at the recruiter and said, “Oh, I haven’t used this much. I’ve used Aldus Persuasion for slide show presentations.” She shook her head and said, “Same thing. You know that, you’ll do fine with PowerPoint.” I went to the job terrified they’d boot me as soon as they figured out that I didn’t know Powerpoint. But the recruiter was right: it was most important that I knew how to lay out a slide show presentation properly; I figured out PowerPoint in just a few minutes, and put together slide show presentations for two weeks per the company’s specifications.

I’ve taken one software class in my life: it was for a new version of Aldus Pagemaker (oh, how I loved Aldus products back in the 1990s!). The class was all about how you did things differently in this version versus the last version – but it didn’t teach me anything about design. And during that hour-long class, I realized I could have figured everything out about the upgrade on my own – a book about the upgrade would have been cheaper, and always there, ready for reference.

I bring this up because of a discussion on an online community where someone said they were from a nonprofit that didn’t have the money to upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Office, a very old version of which they used to train their clients regarding how to prepare résumés, write formal correspondence, create simple business documents, etc. I responded that a great alternative for this nonprofit was OpenOffice or LibreOffice, both of which are free, both of which provide very powerful word processing, slide show/presentation, spreadsheet and database software, both of which are frequently updated, etc. I use OpenOffice myself.

Other people thought that the advice was outrageous, that if this nonprofit were to use anything but Microsoft, it would handicap their clients. But I stand by my advice: what’s important is not to teach someone how to use Microsoft Word or Microsoft anything. What’s important is for people to understand all that office software can do, such as in a document:

  • using fonts appropriately
  • setting tabs and margins
  • creating and editing tables
  • adding headers and footers
  • recording and showing, or hiding or accepting, edits by other people
  • creating mail merges
  • etc.

What’s MOST important is that you understand the capabilities of word processing software, spreadsheet software, presentation software, web page creation software, etc. – having that understanding means you will be able to learn to use future versions of the software or most any software produced by a different company that is designed to do what you want done, whether it’s to create a document or a web page or a database, whatever.

I bring this up not only because of that online community debate, but also because I see so many job postings asking just for advanced experience with Excel – rather than asking for experience with creating calculations on spreadsheets or producing a variety of graphs using statistical data. Or someone asking for experience with such-and-such database instead of asking for experience creating fields or customized reports in a database.

Another software skill that is just as important: ability to learn new functions on upgraded software or ability to learn new software quickly or ability to figure out new software/upgrades, because software changes. And changes and changes. It gets upgraded. The IT manager decides to use something different. The price gets too high and some board member can get a special deal on something different.

Give me a nimble learner over someone with 10 years of experience with ANY one software package! Give me a person who understands the basics of document design who has used a typesetter and hot wax for the past 20 years over someone who knows how to use Microsoft PowerPoint to create really ugly slide show presentations!

Also see:

Embrace FOSS and Open Source