Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Open source software


I've always been meaning to check out free "open source" software, and the timing is right. Been having trouble installing the latest Word since my crash, though I have an older version uploaded fine. This advertises being able to read Word files, so we'll see. It's a huge installation file, over 90M, but I'll download it at the office tomorrow and check it out. I also ordered a CD for five bucks. Really hope this works out. I like the spirit of these software guys fighting the big corps by designing and giving away similar products. I already prefer Firefox to Explorer. Might as well check out the word processing and more.
clipped from why.openoffice.org
OpenOffice.org 2
is the leading open-source office software suite
for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations,
graphics, databases and more. It is available
in many languages
and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an
international open standard format and can also read and write
files from other common office software packages. It can be
downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

OpenOffice.org 2 is the result of over twenty years' software
engineering. Designed from the start as a single piece of software,
it has a consistency other products cannot match. A completely open
development process means that anyone can report bugs, request
new features, or enhance the software.
The result: OpenOffice.org 2 does everything you want your
office software to do, the way you want it to.

Best of all, OpenOffice.org 2 can be downloaded and used entirely
free of any licence fees.
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2 comments:

Kaj Kandler said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kaj Kandler said...

The origin of open source software is not so much in giving things away for free, but in sharing the burden fairly.

The process is everybody does produce that extra feature that one needs and shares it with everybody else. That way no one has to bear the whole burden of developing the software just for himself, but everybody gets some really sophisticated software to use.

Try to support your favorite projects with a little money and some changes you'd like to see happen, so they can feed their families while developing the software you need.

K<o>
Busy, supporting non technical users of OpenOffice and Star Office