Open Source Office Suite
EDTECH Editor-Jones
My district is beginning to explore open source software as a means to cut
costs.
The current thinking from our IT director is to have both MS Office AND an
open source suite on new machines beginning next year.
We have BOTH Macs and PCs in our district. The current thinking is to have
StarOffice on the PC side and NeoOffice on the Mac side. We've heard that
StarOffice v9 is due out 4Q of 08 will have both a PC and Mac version (Linux
too!), but we're looking at an earlier deployment.
Does anyone have any words of wisdom or advice in terms of a specific open
source office suite for a Mac and PC environment knowing existing machines
will have MS Office and newly deployed machines will have BOTH MS Office AND
an open source suite as well?
Thanks!
-Roger
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Sevilla
Technology Integration Staff Developer
Ithaca City School District
1401 N. Cayuga St.
Ithaca, NY 14850
(607) 274-6805
rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us
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EDTECH Editor-Jones
Thanks!
-Roger
Roger Sevilla
ICSD Technology Integration Teacher
1401 North Cayuga Street
Ithaca, NY 14850
rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us (607) 274-6805
--------------------------------------
EDTECH Editor-Jones
> From: Roger Sevilla <rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us>
>
> My district is beginning to explore open source software as a means to cut
> costs.
>
> The current thinking from our IT director is to have both MS Office AND an
> open source suite on new machines beginning next year.
>
> We have BOTH Macs and PCs in our district. The current thinking is to have
> StarOffice on the PC side and NeoOffice on the Mac side. We've heard that
> StarOffice v9 is due out 4Q of 08 will have both a PC and Mac version (Linux
> too!), but we're looking at an earlier deployment.
>
> Does anyone have any words of wisdom or advice in terms of a specific open
> source office suite for a Mac and PC environment knowing existing machines
> will have MS Office and newly deployed machines will have BOTH MS Office AND
> an open source suite as well?
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Roger
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Roger Sevilla
> Technology Integration Staff Developer
> Ithaca City School District
> 1401 N. Cayuga St.
> Ithaca, NY 14850
> (607) 274-6805
> rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us
I'm sure you're going to be inundated with responses - but I just had to
put my two cents in....
StarOffice or OpenOffice both offer versions for the Mac and PC and
OpenOffice 3.0 / StarOffice 9 is scheduled for release September 2,
2008. The new version will have much better support and will run
natively on Mac's. StarOffice tends to have more frequent and smaller
updates to the code. It will be interesting to see what the
differentiation will be with the NeoOffice fork.
I can understand the hesitancy in moving to something new, but the real
worth of free and open source software (StarOffice is free to the
education market) is in the cost savings over proprietary packages. Is
there a plan to move over to open source or is this an experiment? Pick
a computer lab to be all open source office suite to help provide a
impetus to move over. Otherwise, the first question will be "How many
people use StarOffice / OpenOffice? - and you won't know. If you do
have one lab, then you can at least study the issues / responses from
that group of users.
I've been using only OpenOffice for the last two years and have never
had an issue reading or sending any office productivity file to a user
or school system.
Congratulations to you and your school district for having the foresight
and courage to save your schools some money. Please plow that money
back into more computers and technology for your students!
--
Matt Burkhardt, MSTM
President
Impari Systems, Inc.
Phone: (301) 644-3911
m...@imparisystems.com
http://www.imparisystems.com
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Hi Roger,
I think your district is making a wise decision here. You should be able to
realize pretty big cost savings once you stop buying MS Office licenses.
StarOffice is essentially the same thing as OpenOffice.org, and NeoOffice is
also derived from OpenOffice.org.
A major update of OpenOffice.org, version 3.0, is scheduled for release in
September. This version will run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other
platforms. For simplicity of managing your systems, you might want to use this
one on all your platforms. There is a beta of it you can use right now, and
which I've tested with positive results on my Mac. I've found it to be stable
enough for daily production use already, so you could probably start rolling
out whatever is current when it's time for you to begin deployment.
http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/
OpenOffice works very well in a mixed environment with MS Office. Better, in
fact, than any other alternative I have tried (and that's been many, over the
past decade), and sometimes better than you'll experience when trying to
interoperate between different versions of MS Office itself.
I do think that NeoOffice and StarOffice are quite good as well, but the
simpler management benefits of using a common app across your platforms may
make OpenOffice 3 the best choice for you.
Finally, I suggest you use ODF, the native document format of OpenOffice, as
your district's standard format. You can install a plugin for MS Office that
will let it read and write this file type as well:
http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/index.jsp
-Ben
> From: Roger Sevilla <rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us>
>
> My district is beginning to explore open source software as a means to cut
> costs.
>
> The current thinking from our IT director is to have both MS Office AND an
> open source suite on new machines beginning next year.
>
> We have BOTH Macs and PCs in our district. The current thinking is to have
> StarOffice on the PC side and NeoOffice on the Mac side. We've heard that
> StarOffice v9 is due out 4Q of 08 will have both a PC and Mac version (Linux
> too!), but we're looking at an earlier deployment.
>
> Does anyone have any words of wisdom or advice in terms of a specific open
> source office suite for a Mac and PC environment knowing existing machines
> will have MS Office and newly deployed machines will have BOTH MS Office AND
> an open source suite as well?
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Roger
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Roger Sevilla
> Technology Integration Staff Developer
> Ithaca City School District
> 1401 N. Cayuga St.
> Ithaca, NY 14850
> (607) 274-6805
> rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us
>
Benjamin Horst
bhorst at mac dot com
Freelancer, Author, "The Tiny Guide to OpenOffice.org"
EDTECH Editor-Jones
We have been using Open Office on our PC's and Neo Office on the Macs. The
only reasopn we continue to use Microsoft Office is Publisher. We use
think.com for online storage and for student portfolios. The open source
publishing software, Scribus just doesn't seem to work well with students.
The site licenses for a stand alone version of Publisher were not
significatly different from buying the site licenses for the entire suite so
that is why we installed Office. Other than that open source software has
helped us solve compatibility issues and has been accepted by both students,
parents and staff. We have encouraged parents to download Open Office at home
especially when the home computer has only Works installed.
Rick Davidson
Computer Technology Integrator
Kingswood Regional Middle School
Wolfeboro, NH 03894
rgdav...@govwentworth.k12.nh.us
> From: Roger Sevilla <rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us>
>
> My district is beginning to explore open source software as a means to cut
> costs.
>
> The current thinking from our IT director is to have both MS Office AND an
> open source suite on new machines beginning next year.
>
> We have BOTH Macs and PCs in our district. The current thinking is to have
> StarOffice on the PC side and NeoOffice on the Mac side. We've heard that
> StarOffice v9 is due out 4Q of 08 will have both a PC and Mac version (Linux
> too!), but we're looking at an earlier deployment.
>
> Does anyone have any words of wisdom or advice in terms of a specific open
> source office suite for a Mac and PC environment knowing existing machines
> will have MS Office and newly deployed machines will have BOTH MS Office AND
> an open source suite as well?
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Roger
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Roger Sevilla
> Technology Integration Staff Developer
> Ithaca City School District
> 1401 N. Cayuga St.
> Ithaca, NY 14850
> (607) 274-6805
> rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us
---
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Why not use Google Docs?
John
John T. Thompson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Coordinator
Educational Computing Program
Computer Information Systems Dept.
Chase 208, Buffalo State College
1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222
(716) 878-3531 thom...@buffalostate.edu
http://www.buffalostate.edu/depts/edcomputing/
"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed
until it is faced."
- James Baldwin
> Roger Sevilla
> ICSD Technology Integration Teacher
> 1401 North Cayuga Street
> Ithaca, NY 14850
> rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us (607) 274-6805
> --------------------------------------
---
EDTECH Editor-Jones
If you put both versions on the machine, no one will use Star Office. Why
should they change? If you want them to make the transition, remove MS-Word
and provide training.
Carla Beard
Web English Teacher
www.webenglishteacher.com
---
EDTECH Editor-Jones
We installed NeoOffice on our Macs this year in an effort to save money. While
the program has certainly been functional for us it hasn't always been, well,
smooth. The presentation program in particular hasn't worked very well in a lab
setting which was disappointing since many of our teachers were used to doing
multimedia projects with PowerPoint (we ended up buying a site license for
Apple's iWork for $250 just to get Keynote). The word processor in NeoOffice
has worked acceptably well, but with Apple's more polished Pages available as
well most teachers have opted not to use NeoOffice.
I'm hoping the Mac-native version of OpenOffice lives up to expectations
because an office suite that works the same on school computers as it does at
the students' homes would be very useful.
Christopher Ozias
-------------------------
Technology Teacher
Navigator School, Pinckney Community Schools
coz...@pcs.k12.mi.us
EDTECH Editor-Hogan
We have chosen to roll out versions of OpenOffice to most student
computers as our MS Office licenses expire. We now have about 5,000
office suite installs on student computers. MS charges about $40 for a
student license, which brings the cost to $200,000 for student office
suite for the life of that suite. A lot of money. We will be replacing
MS Office with NeoOffice on Macs and OpenOffice on Windows. StarOffice
and NeoOffice are both based on OpenOffice so they are all basically the
same thing, but OpenOffice always has to most recent updates since that is
the base of all three products.
You are right that OpenOffice does not have a fully released Mac version
yet, which is why we use NeoOffice on the Mac. We may switch to
OpenOffice on the Mac when OpenOffice finishes their Mac version.
We will still install MS Office on staff computers because we still need
Entourage/Outlook at this point for staff email. Also, we will continue
to support MS Office on some high school computers that are used in a
vocational setting, where students need to learn "industry standard"
software skills, like MS Office. We don't see any vocational need for 3rd
graders to learn Excel since the current version of Excel will be obsolete
before they ever get a job. Most students just need to learn basic office
suite skills, and Writer/Calc/Impress/Base are more than adequate for
those needs.
So we will replace MS Office on student computers as the licenses expire.
Now we just have to figure out how to spend that extra $200,000 that will
be coming!
--
Curtis Griesel
Technology Information Services
Hopkins Public Schools
Hopkins, Minnesota
952-988-4111
EDTECH Editor-Jones
OK, cost savings for purchasing the application...but how does this pencil
out in terms of total cost of ownership for the school district? I've been
thinking about moving our student computers to OO, but I then loose the
benefit of my free patch management tool. (OpenOffice has security
vulnerabilities that need to be addressed, too.) The additional expense to
retrain staff to a new app/suite isn't trivial either. Moving to OO will
require a *significant* investment in labor in order to standardize across
the district.
I guess I just need to get my spreadsheet out and run the numbers...but so
far, I'm still skeptical that there are real savings for my district in
changing the standard install to OO.
Bob Kehr
Davis Joint Unified School District
---
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Roger,
I've just heard about Virtual Box. If you look it up I think it is self
explanatory. Anyway as I understand it, you can run your base on linux.
You can run XP, Mac or whatever--even all at the same time on top. I
understand that it is faster to run programs on XP this way than without
the linux background. VirtualBox.org
Jo Reinmiller
Country Day School
Costa Rica
> Roger Sevilla
> ICSD Technology Integration Teacher
> 1401 North Cayuga Street
> Ithaca, NY 14850
> rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us (607) 274-6805
> --------------------------------------
---
EDTECH Editor-Jones
We deployed OpenOffice three years ago... after getting out the pencil and
crunching numbers. Prior to my arrival, Microsoft Office was deployed ille
gally throughout campus. So legalizing would have had an immediate budget
impact. You never know when a Microsoft regional manager's child is going
to enroll.
We deployed OpenOffice not only on student computers, but teacher machines
as well. The only place MS Office remains is on a few computers in the lib
rary for people who need to work with Publisher files basically. We're a s
mall American international school in China with just 1,100 students, so o
ur situation is perhaps slightly different than a Stateside environment. W
e also distributed a CD to all students and staff in advance to get the wo
rd [and software] out to our community about what was coming that August.
Now three years later I've noticed specific personality types are unsatisf
ied having to use OpenOffice. People with a disposition for black and whit
e versus shades of gray continue to speak out vocally about it. A year, or
two and now starting on three later, the school is moving along, test scor
es and enrollment are up. But those vocal individuals are unable to accept
the decision to continue with OpenOffice. By now their entire library of t
eaching resources have probably gone through OpenOffice numerous times.
What is really interesting is when I get into specifics. For example, some
math teachers, but not all, are very annoyed by the extra step of getting
a MathType equation into Writer [the word equivalent].
Others staff are disappointed by Impress' [Powerpoint equivalent] inabili
ty to play a song through the entire presentation.
In some ways the work-arounds or outright improvements we've got have help
ed us. OpenOffice's ability to export directly to PDF is a major feature t
hat more people should use. The workaround for people who unfortunately w
ant to make "movies" in Powerpoint is to direct them to Micorsoft Photost
ory or get them into MovieMaker or our other multimedia titles. Our elemen
tary students use Photostory all the time, though Photostory is hardly an
elementary only application.
On the down side, there is training to offer new users. But by developing
a FirstClass conference over a three year period, we pretty much can antic
ipate all the questions that are going to come from a new user.
Anyhow, we are moving into year three now and don't anticipate turning aro
und. This year's Microsoft School Agreement went into 24 new projectors, 6
more document cameras and more.
But the real savings have been in our departure from Adobe to Serif produc
ts [the retail versions, not the freebies]. The high school just finished
a 320 page yearbook on Serif Page Plus. Serif costs me about 95% less than
Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and the rest [the Serif suite versus the Adobe s
uite that is to say].
In fact about 90% of our photo editing needs are handled by the ultra fast
and free FastStone Imageviewer. Kids can get red eyes out of a photo, twe
ak contrast and resize before Photoshop is even open.
Bob
.......................................................................
Robert Bauer
Information Technology Director
American International School of Guangzhou
Tel: (8620) 8735-3392 Fax: (8620) 8735-3339
rba...@aisgz.edu.cn
---
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Hello, Bob,
Could you be more specific regarding the OpenOffice security issues you
reference? *Every* software package has security issues, regardless of whether
it's open source or proprietary -- it feels like just about every other day
when I turn on my Windows box, I'm getting some patch or another pushed at me.
WRT the time needed to retrain staff: over time, how does this compare to the
time you spend on managing licenses?
WRT "but so far, I'm still skeptical that there are real savings for my
district in changing the standard install to OO" -- technology will also cost
money. Many people are drawn to open source by the magic word: free. However,
this is inaccurate. You still need to spend money when using open source tools.
However, eliminating license fees from your budget frees you up to reallocate
that money into other things: hardware, staff, professional development, etc.
Open Source does not eliminate the expenses related to running a technology
program; it does, however, allow you to spend that money in a way where it
stays closer to your district, instead of into Redmond's coffers.
Cheers,
Bill
> From: Bob Kehr <b...@bobkehr.net>
>
> OK, cost savings for purchasing the application...but how does this pencil
> out in terms of total cost of ownership for the school district? I've been
> thinking about moving our student computers to OO, but I then loose the
> benefit of my free patch management tool. (OpenOffice has security
> vulnerabilities that need to be addressed, too.) The additional expense to
> retrain staff to a new app/suite isn't trivial either. Moving to OO will
> require a *significant* investment in labor in order to standardize across
> the district.
> I guess I just need to get my spreadsheet out and run the numbers...but so
> far, I'm still skeptical that there are real savings for my district in
> changing the standard install to OO.
> Bob Kehr
> Davis Joint Unified School District
>
>> From: Benjamin Horst <bho...@mac.com>
>>
>> Hi Roger,
>>
>> I think your district is making a wise decision here. You should be able to
>> realize pretty big cost savings once you stop buying MS Office licenses.
>>
>> StarOffice is essentially the same thing as OpenOffice.org, and NeoOffice is
>> also derived from OpenOffice.org.
>>
>> A major update of OpenOffice.org, version 3.0, is scheduled for release in
>> September. This version will run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other
>> platforms. For simplicity of managing your systems, you might want to use
>> this one on all your platforms. There is a beta of it you can use right now,
>> and which I've tested with positive results on my Mac. I've found it to be
>> stable enough for daily production use already, so you could probably start
>> rolling out whatever is current when it's time for you to begin deployment.
>>
>> http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/
>>
>> OpenOffice works very well in a mixed environment with MS Office. Better, in
>> fact, than any other alternative I have tried (and that's been many, over
>> the past decade), and sometimes better than you'll experience when trying to
>> interoperate between different versions of MS Office itself.
>>
>> I do think that NeoOffice and StarOffice are quite good as well, but the
>> simpler management benefits of using a common app across your platforms may
>> make OpenOffice 3 the best choice for you.
>>
>> Finally, I suggest you use ODF, the native document format of OpenOffice, as
>> your district's standard format. You can install a plugin for MS Office that
>> will let it read and write this file type as well:
>>
>> http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/index.jsp
>>
>> -Ben
>>
>>> From: Roger Sevilla <rsev...@icsd.k12.ny.us>
>>>
>>> My district is beginning to explore open source software as a means to cut
>>> costs.
>>>
>>> The current thinking from our IT director is to have both MS Office AND an
>>> open source suite on new machines beginning next year.
>>>
>>> We have BOTH Macs and PCs in our district. The current thinking is to have
>>> StarOffice on the PC side and NeoOffice on the Mac side. We've heard that
>>> StarOffice v9 is due out 4Q of 08 will have both a PC and Mac version
>>> (Linux
>>> too!), but we're looking at an earlier deployment.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have any words of wisdom or advice in terms of a specific open
>>> source office suite for a Mac and PC environment knowing existing machines
>>> will have MS Office and newly deployed machines will have BOTH MS Office
>>> AND
EDTECH Editor-Jones
You certainly can save some money moving to OpenOffice - but if you
really want to save some cash - look at moving to open source for the
desktop.
There's been several studies that have occurred - BECTA, the British
Educational Communications and Technology Agency, did a study on the
savings from moving to open source in several schools and found it
ranged from 20% up to 50% - it was a fairly small study and done in May
2005 - but they also found the TCO was the same. For elementary schools
it was lower, but for secondary education it was slightly higher - but
they found that the spending on training was extremely low at the
secondary schools.
The Geneva newspaper Tribune de Geneve (in French) reports that from
September 2008 all computers at schools that currently are dual-boot MS
Windows and Linux will have MS Windows removed and become FOSS (Free
Open Source Software) only. They're doing it because of the
capabilities of Linux and the cost savings. In my book, the Swiss are
some sharp cookies and I'm sure they investigated the issues and costs
before jumping on FOSS.
Why not try putting Ubuntu or another distribution on all the machines
in one lab, set up Clonezilla so you can re-image them easily. Ubuntu
supports automatic updates, you no longer need anti-virus software
running and you might be surprised with the speed increase for some of
the older machines.
Good luck and don't hesitate to ask if you want more info - I could go
on for hours!
--
Matt Burkhardt, MSTM
President
Impari Systems, Inc.
Phone: (301) 644-3911
m...@imparisystems.com
http://www.imparisystems.com
kk
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Hey Bob,
I'd love to see the spreadsheet you develop and how you would analyze the TCO
for your district. And if you do want to run a pilot test, I would be happy to
advise you from what I've seen in recent migrations.
I'm not sure what patch management tool you are using, but most management
tools should easily accommodate OOo as just another program in the image they
maintain and push out to client machines. (I haven't used these tools
personally, though, so I can't comment directly.)
I'm working on a project now where we'll be migrating several tens of thousands
of computers to OOo, and our client feels that OOo is similar enough to MSO
that retraining will be very small. We have found this to be the case in
precedents we've looked at, especially the major migrations among government
agencies in Europe and elsewhere. I know different audiences will respond
differently, but in general the retraining is not a barrier. (In fact, it's
much easier than retraining for MSO 2007!)
I don't know what your district pays, but I know that large companies generally
have licensing subscription fees of about $130/year/user (according to
published numbers on MS' website), and more and more are jumping to OOo for the
permanent cost savings they'll enjoy. Even with the upfront costs to make the
switch, that cost is amortized over an essentially unlimited timeline, so it
seems very cheap when looking 5 or 10 years into the future.
-Ben
Benjamin Horst
bhorst at mac dot com
Freelancer, Author, "The Tiny Guide to OpenOffice.org"
---