Posted 10/05/08 at 02:13:26 PM by Justin Kerr

Open Office has been around in one form or another for over nine years now. But the once little known productivity suite known back then as StarOffice has evolved considerably over the years. Today the Sun Microsystems freebee is admittedly a fairly full featured alternative to Microsoft Office. Open Office in fact has become so useful that Maximum PC Editor and Chief Will Smith has admitted its open source charm (and free price tag) has finally won over his home PC for casual word processing. Fans of the platform have another reason to get excited these days with the impending launch of version 3.0. The new version will further improve compatibility when working with Microsoft Office files and will include additional support for the open file format OpenDocument which is to be integrated into Office 2007. For those looking to give version 3 a try, a public beta is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. But for corporate users looking to implement Open Office you should follow the links instead to the version named StarOffice. The retail version will cost you about $69.95, but it includes technical support and intellectual property indemnification. For those keeping track Open Office 2 launched on October 20th 2005 and the latest stable version is 2.4.1 which was released in June.

So are you ready to abandon Microsoft Office?

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12

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Software, linux, open source, ogg, docx, xml, odf, free software, openoffice

Posted 09/18/08 at 09:00:00 AM by The Maximum PC Staff

I ran across a site that’s selling something called Opal Office. The site, OfficeBestDeal.com, says the suite is compatible with Microsoft Office, but in reality it’s just OpenOffice! You can find that out when you open the program and it says on the first line of text, “OpenOffice.” Apparently, they’re charging $11.95 for it. Is this even legal?

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Watchdog, gpl, free software, open-source software, openoffice, opaloffice

Posted 06/27/08 at 06:45:09 AM by Chris Moody

The University of Washington has developed a new tool called WebAnywhere that allows the blind and visually impaired surf the Web on the go.  It turns screen-reading into an Internet service that reads aloud Web text on any computer with speakers or headphone connections. For the past month that WebAnywhere has been available,  Bigham, has received inquiries from librarians and teachers who struggle to find the time to locate free software, get permission to install it and then maintain the program.  They plan to continue to update the program and make improvements.

Read more about WebAnywhere after the jump.

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Software, Google, email, free software, Braille, University of Washington, WebAnywhere, Blind

Posted 09/20/07 at 09:24:11 PM by Erin Simon

The first ever lawsuit alleging copyright infringement for a violation of the GPL was initiated today. Will courts enforce the GPL? Stay tuned.

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copyright, law, gpl, license, free software, infringemet, general public license, open-source software, BusyBox, Monsoon Multimedia, enforcement

Posted 07/24/07 at 07:46:48 PM by Erin Simon

The latest version of the GPL waffles on the question of user modification of software in consumer products. But what should they have done?

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copyright, law, contract, gpl, license, copyleft, tivo, tivoization, gplv3, fsf, free software