[plug] Norwegian Gov Ditches MS Contract, rumbles about Open Source

[Jacqueline McNally]

At 09:10 PM 07/13/2002, Leon wrote:

>     To stimulate the use of open source software in public administration,
>     the Minister of Labor and Public Administration Mr. Victor D. Norman
>     has decided not to enter into a new Select 5.0 agreement with
>     Microsoft Norway through the Adminnet cooperation.

[snip]

There is a lot of activity on the OpenOffice.org lists initiating 
translation and localisation projects.

Recently there have been a number of messages from many different European 
countries, where volunteers report that they have managed to secure funds 
for the production of these lang projects.

Fortunately, I only have to worry about english, with the added flavour of 
*robust discussion* over an Australian dictionary :)

Apart from the lang projects, another project that is being funded with 
real money is the filter and necessary utilities (perhaps hide/show) for 
WordPerfect files.

I think what is driving the funding, is the sense of immediacy of wanting 
the development completed in a particular time frame. A particular 
organisation or country can then schedule moving over to an open source 
environment.

Last week I was contacted by a state department (not WA) to provide 
information for research and reporting on using OpenOffice.org on 4000 
desktop machines.

All the best
Jacqueline McNally
http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/users/zenryaku/

Community Contact, Australia/New Zealand
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project
(www.openoffice.org)

Are you a computer angel? (www.ca.asn.au)