Star Office in schools?

[James Knott]

Mike Newman wrote:
> On 9/13/05, James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>Last year, the Ministry of Edcation announced plans to use StarOffice in
>>Ontario schools.  Has anyone heard anything more about it?  With all the
>>talk about OASIS OpenDocuments etc., lately, I'm suprised I haven't
>>heard more about this item.
> Well from the press release it seems that we've already handed Sun the
> oversized novelty cheque. Even though StarOffice is in part
> proprietary, I support the move just to inject some heterogeny into
> public school IT.
> Now if only there was a high school media specialist who was
> brave/foolish enough to fiddle with this Lie-Nucks business...
> 

While there may be some propriety stuff in StarOffice, OpenOffice is
open source and available at no cost.  I was reading on Groklaw about
the problems in the various assistance groups exchanging documents and
people accessing FEMA web sites etc., which show the need for open
standards.

The nice thing about StarOffice and OpenOffice, is that they're
available on a wide range of platforms.

Also, I seem to recall reading that the students get to install the
software on home computers, though that may be OpenOffice.

I have installed OpenOffice for a few friends.  They seem to be happy
with it.  In fact, I often make up a CD with OpenOffice, Sun's JRE
(Java) and Mozilla, so that it's easy for others to install those
packages and get away from MS software, even if they're still running
Windows.  One company I used to work for has also switched to
OpenOffice, though it's probably because they were a damned cheap
company.  ;-)


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