City of Austin pilot proves OpenOffice.org works

SourceForge ^ | December 17, 2003 | Joe Barr

[antiRepublicrat]

The City of Austin recently completed a group of pilot studies on the use of open source software in its day-to-day business. According to a message posted this morning on the Austin LUG mailing list by Scott Brown, the results are in, and as a result, as many as 80% of the city's desktops will be migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org.

Brown noted in his email message that his department (Communications and Technology Management) will be the first to convert by uninstalling MS Office and putting OpenOffice.org in its place on about 300 desktops. The city has more than 5,000 desktops in total.

He also pointed out that not everyone can be converted yet because of one application (the City Council's Agenda Management System) that requires MS Office to run.

Brown also told the mailing list that "Training programs and help desk support is being put in place so it looks like OO will be there for the long-term."

[antiRepublicrat]

4,000 seats less of MS Office -- I wonder what the taxpayer savings can be? Apparently the only reason this isn't a total switch is because of one legacy application, which will probably be ported.

This happened because the local Linux user's group has been pressuring the city to switch, but that's not much different from Microsoft's high-pressure salesmen coming around. Then again, any taxpayer should be calling for a switch if one is viable for that particular situation.

[4CJ]

I use OpenOffice with Linux and Windows.

[Hurricane Andrew]

I've been using OpenOffice for nearly 3 months now at both work and home. I've been quite pleased with it as a replacement for Office. My new work PC I didn't even load Office, and at home I removed Office from my second WinXP install, soon to be gone from the first.

The compatibility is amazing. The only thing missing is an "Outlook replacement", but I've never liked Outlook anyway. The only issues are some minor formatting issues in a handful of existing docs and templates with lines/boxes/tables. Nothing major.

One of the nicest features is the export to PDF feature, without an Adobe add in. One click and you can export any document/spreadsheet/etc to a PDF file. Sweet. I may migrate my entire company in the not too distant future. You sure can't beat the price.

[lelio]

Already posted

[dano1]

I'd like to try Open Office. Word drives me crazy with the constant changes with every new version and the annoying useless features they add, such as autoformat.

[Guvmint_Cheese]

I use OpenOffice as well, but besides an Outlook replacement, it doesn't come with a database program like Access. They'd have to find something compatible.

[antiRepublicrat]

Sorry, I did search.

[Ramcat]

"I'd like to try Open Office. Word drives me crazy with the constant changes with every new version and the annoying useless features they add, such as autoformat."

You may be disappointed. Open Office is little more that a MS Office clone. The word processor is very similar to word and the office suite seems to update to office updates.

I use it for some things and it's OK.

[antiRepublicrat]

It's one quick download away.

[ShadowAce]

...it doesn't come with a database program like Access...

Well--yes and no. No, there is no easy-to-use interface that looks like Access.

However, OOo does use Data Sources, which can read and write to just about any database format out there. You just have to configure it properly under the Tools-->Data Sources menu. It will access MySQL, dbase, any ODBC or JDBC database, plus a few more.

[Turbo Pig]

My company has been using OpenOffice as our primary Desktop Suite for over 6 months. as stated, legacy needs and the fact we have paid for so many MS Office licenses is the only reason MS Office is still around.

So far this year it has saved us about $120K. We do a lot of document generation, so combine that with the open source PDF distiller we implemented and out savings are closer to $140K

[Clara Lou]

I also use Open Office in Linux and Windows. Works great for me. Opens anything that's MS Office.

[The_Reader_David]

I've got OpenOffice running in Linux on my desktop at work, and in X11 on my (OS X) Mac at home. Works great both places.

What's more, our department's computer expert has gotten most of our secretarial staff to switch from MSWord in Windows to OpenOffice in the KDE GUI for Linux!

[lelio]

We do a lot of document generation, so combine that with the open source PDF distiller we implemented and out savings are closer to $140K

Check out Apache's Cocoon and Batik projects. Pretty interesting stuff. It changed my worldview (ack, that's an overused term) from document format centric (ie "This is a Word Doc" "This is an HTML page") to document data centric. The format's just an XSLT away.

[lelio]

No, there is no easy-to-use interface that looks like Access.

The problem is that there's 519 of them. Of that 500 either suck or are special use cases for someone's database.

That's the trouble with open source people -- everyone thinks that their idea is the best thing since sliced bread and you end up with hundreds of projects that reinvented the wheel, each with their own quirks. While that might seem good for some people ("Look at all the choices you have") its also bad -- and is why a lot of people use Access. It does one thing, does it pretty well, and everyone uses it.

If the Open Office people picked out one database GUI and promoted that then there would be one product to rally around and put effort into.

[antiRepublicrat]

If the Open Office people picked out one database GUI and promoted that then there would be one product to rally around and put effort into.

There is one on the admin side: MyPHPAdmin. I've always managed my MySQL server through the command line over SSH and hated the OSS GUIs for it, but this one changed my mind.