2010.09.14
The Corporate Group of Japan OpenOffice.org & OpenDocument Format Promotion Is Established
== Aims to promote the software for corporate entities and organizations and to support the community activities in Japan ==
K.K. Ashisuto (Head office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, President: Bill Totten), NTT Comware Corporation (Head office, Minato-ku, Tokyo, President: Michio Sugimoto), Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (Head office: Chuo-ku, Osaka-shi, President: Masayoshi Matsumoto), Sumitomo Electric Information Systems Co., Ltd. (Head office: Yodogawa-ku, Osaka-shi, President: Kiyoshi Shirai) have formed JapanOpenOffice.org & OpenDocument Format Promotion Group (below ODPG, OpenOffice.org (*1) and OpenDocument Format Promotion Group, Japan) on September 14, 2010. The corporate group is a joint project for further promotion of OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument Format (*2) (below ODF) in Japan. The four companies will corporate on various projects as ODPG, such as sharing knowhow of companies and organizations using ODF, collecting information on various issues and proposals in use of the systems as well as supporting the community-based related activities in Japan.
[Background]
Due to the recent stagnant economy, companies and organizations strictly are considering their IT investment that would increase year by year. In the trend, the open source software and open standards are gaining attentions as one of the aspects to review the corporate resources.The new trend of open source software has emerged in the area of database and servers such as application server. This trend shifts to Client items, as every employee now has a personal computer in the workplace, which makes the companies to be more conscious about the expenses and operation/maintenance costs. One of the functions that gains particular attentions is OpenOffice.org, the alternative Office software for word processing, spreadsheet and presentations. However, as only few large-scale organizations used the software, its usage or knowhow remains unclear as specific corporations or organizations used the software only internally.
As the document file format supported by Office software, the open standards such as ODF are now the mainstream of commercially-available software. In the meantime, the software is still in the process of development, even though it is called an open standard, and there are many issues unsolved in terms of exchanges of the document files created by different Office software. This means that corporations and organizations are still required to use specific commercial software to use their existing data files or to exchange the document files with others.
Even with such a situation, the number of OpenOffice.org and ODF used in Japanese major companies and municipal bodies are gradually increasing in fact. This is because of: 1. cost saving (for saving license fees of Office software and its maintenance fees), 2. risk management of full-dependency on a specific vendor for the workplace PC's desktop environment (for providing the environment flexible to use a system with multiple options, including Desktop OS) and 3. standardization of document resource management (to avoid the risks that the document files in an original format may be unavailable to use because of any reasons at the commercial software vendor's discretion or more license fees may be requested than actually required). Likewise, the open software has a potential for short-term and even mid or long term benefits to the users.
[Objectives]
Accordingly, the four companies above have decided to establish ODPG for the users of Office software, or private companies and organizations, in order to further promote OpenOffice.org and ODF. Sharing the usage or processes of the use of the user companies and organizations should encourage other companies and corporations to use the system. Moreover, such a group of Japanese user companies and organizations may propose their expectations or proposals on the open source software and open standard for improvement of the user environment. The activities are also aiming to create a positive and open user community to contribute to the development of OpenOffice.org community and ODF standards.As one of the starter activities, ODPG will support the establishment of new volunteer programs to support and encourage the activities to develop Japan OpenOffice.org Project (*3), which is currently operated by only a few volunteers. This public announcement is to provide a training program for new volunteers who have know the promotion through this announcement to easily participate in the community activity, such as the product release test or technical document translation, as well as to encourage them to improve their skills on the software through various activities. ODPG will also propose requests for quality improvement and document development from a user's viewpoint in order to complete the mission in an effective way, for supporting Japan OpenOffice.org Project for the start year of 2010 and improvement for the years to come.
[Stakeholder's Comments]
"Japan OpenOffice.org" project represents the activity to develop Japanese version of OpenOffice.org in the community, which includes translation, quality assurance and marketing. Since this project was only supported by a few volunteers, their contributions unfortunately only limited to a small number of user companies and organizations of the OpenOffice.org community. We hope to have a cooperative relationship with ODPG for sustainable development of OpenOffice.org and ODF. (Masahide Nakata, OpenOffice.org Japanese Project, Project Lead)This year is a commemorative year as the 10th anniversary of OpenOffice.org community and the 5th anniversary of ODF certified by the State of Massachusetts as a recommended standard. We are glad to see that ODPG is established in Japan in the anniversary years. As the future success of ODPG should contribute to promotion of the open standard all over the world, not only Japan, we hope many people would be interested and participate in the activities. (Florian Effenberger, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead)
[Terminology]
*1 OpenOffice.orgThe generic term of open source-based Office software and its community. It is available for free of charge, with the functions including word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), and presentation (Impress) etc. The system is available with the platforms such as Windows, Linux and Mac etc.
*2 OpenDocument Format (abbreviation, ODF)
The XML-based Office software file format. The format is issued as ISO/IEC international standard and JIS, as the standard file format of OpenOffice.org. It is also available with Microsoft Office as a standard.
*3 Japan OpenOffice.org Project
One of the projects handled by various language zones, under management of the OpenOffice.org community. The project includes activities such as translation of the context into Japanese, quality assurance (especially in releasing Japanese version), marketing and related document development.
http://ja.openoffice.org/
** Other names of corporations and products are either trademarks or registered trademarks of each corporation.
