• Business adoption - how to make/save money and gain profit using Open and Free Technologies;
• Government, administration and public schools - the importance of Open and Free Technologies;
• Professional growth participating in the FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) community;
• Break the code - tips and tricks, things you will not find in IT bocks.

High profile keynote speakers from: Google Inc. - IBM - MySQL AB - Mozilla Messaging (the latest Mozilla Foundation subsidiary) - European Commission - Gartner, Inc. - Python Software Foundation - Romanian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology - eZ Systems AS - OpenOffice.org - Mozilla Foundation - Navarik Corp. - ActiveState Software Inc. - Free Software Foundation Europe - APTI Romania (The Association for Internet and Technology) - Mozdev Community Organization and more.
For more information you can check http://eliberatica.ro website.

This year we have received a record six proposals from teams competing to
host this prestigious event. In alphabetical order, they are:

* Amsterdam, The Netherlands
* Beijing, China
* Bratislava, Slovakia
* Budapest, Hungary
* Dundalk, Ireland
* Orvieto, Italy

If you were a registered member of the OpenOffice.org community on January
1st 2008 then you are entitled to vote. Please read the details of each
venue carefully, and decide where you would like to attend OOoCon in 2008.
Once you have made your choice, please cast your vote.

For full details, please visit: conference location proposals page

Voting closes at midnight UTC on February 29th., and the winner will be
announced shortly afterwards once all the votes have been verified.

For more information about OOoCon please visit: OOoCon pages.

The OpenOffice.org Conference Team

You can read the whole article which brings in splits by geographical area and all sorts of interesting data here.

Being curious about how stats are doing in my country, Romania I decided to attempt a small and perhaps insignificant analysis.

What I did:
I just took the December 2007 stats for the most visited website in Romania according to the most popular Romanian traffic ranking website and compared with stats from December 2007. The shift in the market share looks consistent here too:

Number of visitors:

• December 2006: 2.434.241
• December 2007: 3.115.951

Browser percentages december 2006:

• Internet Explorer 6.x - 59,48%
• Firefox 1.0 - 15,28%
• Mozilla - 8,83%
• Internet Explorer 7.x - 7,88%
• Opera - 7,22%
• Internet Explorer 5 - 0,88%
• Internet Explorer 5.5 - 0,24%
• Others - 0,18%

Browser percentages December 2008:

• Internet Explorer 6.x - 42,91%
• Firefox 2.0 - 28,52%
• Internet Explorer 7.x - 18,05%
• Opera - 6,75%
• Firefox 1.0 - 2,54%
• Mozilla - 0,43%
• Safari - 0,38%
• Internet Explorer 5 - 0,21%
• Internet Explorer 5.5 - 0,08%
• iPhone - 0,07%
• Others - 0,06%

Curiosity satisfied. Conclusion: 2007 was indeed a good year for open source and community based work.

Click here for OpenOffice.org Marketing Blog
Click here for OpenOffice.org Planet

The author - a satisfied Microsoft Office user - expresses his pleasant surprise about OpenOffice.org.
He outlines the fact that OpenOffice.org installation process went smooth, simple and didn’t take over the file associations of Microsoft Office and the installer even recommended not associating MS files if one is only evaluating OpenOffice.org.

In a world in which every program you install literally attempts to take over your entire computer and life (See default options in instant messengers, various audio players, Adobe Acrobat, etc. which bring together tons of browser toolbars and stuff which make your computer slower), what the guys from Installation project of OpenOffice.org did, a simple, clean, non-intrusive installation process is a big plus.

You can read the original posting in The Kratzers blog.

Way to go OpenOffice.org!

P.S. If it were a contest, I’d propose their posting for a prize.

Read the story in ITwire here: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/16132/1090/ and also in Kaj Arno’s blog here.

Judging from the comments on articles and blogs, many Open Source fans are happy with the move.

This tutorial is inspired by How to extract the images from a .doc file using OpenOffice.org Writer tutorial which explains another way of extracting the images through exporting the pages as HTML document. The HTML method is good especially if the images are .GIF or .JPG files. But if you have for instance .WMF files in the Word document and you want them in the original scalable format or without loosing information through compression, you need another way of extracting them:

Ingredients:
- the OpenOffice.org free office suite, either installed or the portable version available at PortableApps.com website.
- a .DOC document containing the images (here is a sample DOC document we prepared for you sample-images.doc which contains two cliparts in form of WMF files and one PNG image)

The few simple steps:

1. Converting the .DOC in .ODT files:
–> Open the document in OpenOffice.org Writer
–> Save the document in ODT (Open Document Text) file, the native OpenOffice.org file format (from the File menu choose Save As and in file type select .ODT)

2. Use a file manager/browser to rename the saved ODT document to .ZIP and unpack it
–> Open a file browser and go to the ODT document (sample-images.odt)

–> Rename the .ODT document to .ZIP (sample-images.odt –> sample-images.zip)

–> unzip the document in a folder

3. Get your original embedded and uncompressed images from the PICTURES folder inside the ZIP you unpacked.

THIS IS IT! As simple as easy.

Explanations:
This tutorial takes advantage of the (ODF) Open Document File format and the fact that the document is in fact stored as a ZIP archive, containing the original texts and styles as XML files and the Pictures in their original format in a sub-folder in the archive.

Open and Free:
Of course, the openess of the file format “opens” endless possibilities for creating applications to interact and use the documents you created in OpenOffice.org office suite and the documents you imported from Word.

Unlike the MS-Office file format which is closed, using an ODF based office suite (like OpenOffice.org) means - as you have seen from this tutorial - the freedom to do whatever you like with the files and documents you have created, even without waiting for the developers to create a special tool for extracting the images from the document. Such a feature is missing from Word too.

Enjoy the taste of freedom! …and please drop a comment and tell us your experience and opinion with the above.

This short tutorial will show you how to create dynamic presentations in OpenOffice.org Impress able to display graphical images (figures, charts, etc.) which incorporate latest changes in the reality back at home. You can have last minute information which you had no time to update, presented live to your audience at conferences through your slideshow. You can have your team back in the office assembling last minute charts for you and when you start your slideshow, the charts will show up in your presentation.

Ingredients:
1. The OpenOffice.org office suite. I use to carry with me a portable version of the application on an USB stick, available from http://www.portableapps.com
2. An internet connection
3. A web server which either automatically generates the needed images and charts or where your team uploads by FTP the images having a predefined filename.
4. You need to know the exact URL of the images you are going to display

Creating the presentation:
1. Make sure your internet connection is opened and that the images are available on your web server.
2. Create a new presentation in Impress with the layout you desire. Reserve the space in your slides for the dynamic images you are going to insert.

3. Go to Insert menu and select: Insert -> Picture -> From file…
4. In the file selection window check the “LINK” checkbox so that images are not cached locally and then type in the “File name” box the exact URL of the remote image you want to insert (e.g. http://www.yourserver.com/dynamic-img-1.png)

5. Click the Open button and wait until the remote image appears in your slide.
6. Resize the image as needed, test the presentation and then save your file.

Note: each time you open up the presentation in Impress, the images will update from the Internet presenting you the latest data (for instance: the hit counter from the website).

If you need to update the images without closing and re-opening the presentation, simply follow these steps:
- go to the Edit menu and select Links: Edit -> Links…
- in the links window, select the images you want to reload from the internet and click the Update button

- close the window and you will see the updated images in your presentation

Show time:
- In conferences make sure you have internet connection available on the computer you are using for presentation.
- Open up the presentation in Impress and start conferencing. Of course you need to pay attention to the updated figures or charts too, in order to adjust the comments.

This tutorial takes advantage of a less documented feature in OpenOffice.org which allows you to deliver valid Internet Addresses (URL) instead of a file name in the Insert Picture dialog box.

There can be various usage cases for this feature and different technical ways of having new data created on the server which delivers you the images. You can either have a web script dynamically generating the images you need or you can have an operator in you office uploading the images you use in the presentation.

Good luck with your presentations and please drop a comment if you encountered problems or if this worked for you. Having friends traveling and conferencing ? Send them this article.

Have fun!

The reason why many new software implementations in a company (for example a new intranet infrastructure) fail is the human nature which tends to avoid in the daily life procedures that are different than what we are used with from the past. The effort for learning a new way of doing simple things has the cost of slowing down work and reducing concentration on the work itself. And I, as a worker, want to get things done easier and therefore I’ll preffer older procedures rather than learning new ones.

Of course, in a company it’s easier to start learning something if the alternative is firing and loosing the job. You’ll have to do it. But a resistance to change still exists.

In the daily home computing life things are different.
Nobody forces you to learn anything new if you don’t want to. And this is the place where Linux makers still fail with costs also in their large scale corporate implementations, because if a user hasn’t tasted something from home first, will try and resist to changes at work too.

Here is where Windows still wins: Many Linux users and contributors struggle to make Linux different than the ‘old way of doing things in Windows’. The fight for offering something different goes too far in many cases with the cost of loosing prospective new users for this great operating system. Until Linux reaches 50% + 1 desktop market share, Windows users must be taken into account.

Different programs.
I am not going in deep examples, I’ll point out some which I commonly met:

Take for example the music player Winamp. It is used by all my coleagues, friends and my relatives on Windows. I am not a reference and perhaps milions of other Windows users use something else for playing music. This is where the trends must be carefully watched when making decisions in softare bundling.

BUT: One powerfull point in migrating my friends (read ‘home computer users’) to Linux was the good old XMMS player which resembles Winamp looks and functions and which I saw removed from many Linux distros. It made it easier for them to accept the challenge of trying to get used with the many other smaller or bigger differences between Linux and Windows.

Small but annoying differences in simple procedures:
I’ve heared Linux arguments that Microsoft had not researched the most ergonomic way of placing the buttons in a dialog box. OK. I agree. But when I want to convince one of the bilions Windows users to try for one day to use Linux, I always get the same upset response: “I had to concentrate where to click in simple things like saving something and lost a lot of concentration from my work“. Some of my former employees in a small company I worked with simply paniked and refused to work anymore because of these small but annoying things.

Some examples here:
- you will find the Cancel button in a dialog box named in different ways: Cancel, Discard, etc and you have to actually read it. When you don’t and press from a reflex move, you get a non-desired result for sure.
- dialog boxes text: Some ask you if you want to leave without saving the work and others ask you if you want to save. YES has different meanings from one program to another at the same dialog box.
- Mozilla Firefox changed the “close Tab” button position recently from the end of the tabs row to putting as many buttons as one on each tab. I don’t follow the discussions on the Mozilla lists to know the reasons, but this generated the need to do extra efforts to spot the right button to close the current tab, especially because these buttons change positions by each tab you close.

Solutions ?
1. Assemble Linux desktop distributions with options to have familiar programs installed right from the start. I don’t own a company living from maintaining Linux distributions, but if I did, I would try and have a separate installation kit bundled with the programs that most resemble the ones Windows users are used with. I have not tested Ubuntu yet, I am writing from my experience with other Linux distros, so please correct me with a comment if I am wrong.

2. Double the efforts towards standardization. There are still too many different Linux programs in which the same simple procedure (for instance the “Exit program with or without saving a document” have different names, differen texts on the buttons or different button positions). These are small but very annoying things which contradict the human nature of a computer worker who tends to do small things automatically by already knowing where to click.

Linux distributions maintainers: try and agree on a standard inside your distributions if doing it globally in all Linux distributions is not possible at this stage. Have at least the same buttons positions and agree on the button texts. Make it so that writing a manual for operating a desktop Linux works the same in all programs. This is somehow the message I got in my numerous attempts on migrating people to Linux.

Being different: if you are different, keep the same difference in all places. A human is able to learn, but a teacher has to give simple and clear indications that can be followed throughout the entire object of learning. Decide and stick with it.

Have fun, and as always, you are welcome to drop a line in a comment. I am for sure wrong in many places accross the article. Let’s talk.

The exact question was: “Is selling used Microsoft office software legal ?”.

Well, Is it legal to sell used copies of Microsoft software ?
Microsoft licenses forbid selling copies of their software, especially after upgrading (forced or not), like in the situation described in my previous article. They will tell you that if you upgraded and payed less than for a normal license, you have not given up your previous license and copy of software, but rather you got something better for less money.

If you gave up using Microsoft software and want to dispose off the old licenses and media copies, I know you would like your money back. As far as I know you cannot sell them. It is anyway safer not to.

Still, you have a solution to get your money back:
You can sell copies of OpenOffice.org office suite and also of Linux and some many other open source programs and earn the money that Microsoft will never give you back. Many open source licenses permit it. Yes, it is legal to sell copies of the free office suite OpenOffice.org. There are many people still on phone line connections to the Internet who cannot afford downloading the whole office suite. You can help them this way. Even if you charge 1 extra cent above the price of the CD media.

One condition from OpenOffice.org license is that you also give the user a copy of the license and link back to the project’s website. Many other questions are answered on the OpenOffice.org Distribution Project pages.

GETTING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL QUESTION
I am trying to compile below the answers I find to the initial question:
1. OEM licensed software: generally speaking, a piece of software licensed for a certain hardware equipment, has the license tied to that hardware. This means you cannot sell or otherwise copy, transfer, give the software license without the hardware itself.

2. Software upgrade: the answers I found so far state that UPGRADING means keeping the same old license and that the old installation kits you received are voided of any license. Even if you have received a new serial number with the upgraded software. You cannot sell, give, donate, etc.. the old software for which you have purchased an upgrade.

I am trying to find answers for the rest of the possible scenarios and will update here asap.
BEWARE: The best way of finding out is still reading the entire license that came with your copy of the software. If you still cannot find the answer, call the toll free phone lines for support from Microsoft. It’s a fact that a license text may vary from one version of the software to another, so this is why you should first read the license you got for your particular case.