[plug] Denmark switches schools to OpenOffice.org

[Leon Brooks]

Danish link:

    http://www.jp.dk/itogc:aid=1585658/

(Anonymous) Translation into English:

<quote>
Denmarks 1,1 million school students and teachers can now turn their backs to 
Microsoft Corp. At least when it comes to officeprograms.

An agreement between Sun Microsystems and UNI-C implies that the students and 
teachers at all levels can download StarOffice 6.0 for free and install it at 
their homecomputers at no cost. Alternativily they can buy a cd-rom at the 
pure cost which is set to 10 danish crowns (1,5$ or so). The schools can buy 
StarOffice in bulk (50 cd's).

The agreement has been made with UNI-C according to the rules of guidance that 
the minister of teaching Ulla Tørnæs (liberal party) published the 30. 
october. These rules describe who schools and universities must act when 
offered free office-programs. Among the demands are, that such gifts are 
truely free to the state and that UNI-C, the danish IT-center for research 
and education must distribute the licenses.

UNI-C get their expenses covered by the 10 crowns that the distribution of the 
cd's earn them. Sun provides a server with StarOffice and Linux so that 
students and teachers can download these programs for free.

UNI-C is here to help the educationenviroment in Denmark, so we are of coure 
happy to be able to provide such an initiative from Sun, the CEO of UNI-C 
Dorte Olesen states.

The most common office-system in the world is Microsoft Office which does not 
exist in a version that can be run on a Linux OS.

Due to the dominance of Microsoft within office-programs as well as OS more 
and more public authorities are working to create alternatives, primarily the 
combination of Linux and StarOffice.

If all 1,1 million students and teachers were to take the offer of Sun, the 
total value would be approx. 200 million danish crowns (28 million $).

Sorry for bad language, spelling errors and misprints.
</quote>
 
Cheers; Leon

-- 
http://www.cyberknights.com.au/  Modern tools, traditional dedication
http://slpwa.linux.org.au/       Member, Linux Professionals West Aus
http://conf.linux.org.au/        THE Australian Linux Technical Conf:
                                 22-25 January 2003, Perth: be there!