OpenOffice.org Design Competition Winners Announced December 13, 2006
Posted by Carthik in microsoft, news, office.trackback
The results for the OO.org template and clipart design competition are out!
The contest resulted in some superior and innovative work. “Some of the templates show just how advanced and flexible Openoffice.org’s OpenDocument format is as both a Word and Spreadsheet ODF processor. The winning templates and many others breaks a myth that Openoffice.org cannot do advanced editing functions like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. It is obvious that Openoffice.org has come of age and is more than just a free alternative to MS Office but is an extremely worthy competitor” said Russell Ossendryver
All submitted entries, including the winners are available from the OpenOffice.org documentation gallery page
Winners include a thesis kit, a perpetual calendar, clipart for teachers, and entire sets of clipart for business and home users.
The sponsor, WorldLabel had enabled OO.org to offer $5000 in prizes! Russell Ossendryver wrote in to tell me about the results. What is interesting is that he adds, later in the email:
I received C&D letter “without prejudice” from the power house lawyers of Microsoft Corporation telling me that
Worldlabel.com is misusing the Microsoft Office Trademark and it must be removed to resolve the matter. The Logo link was on a page with free resources linking to a page on MS Office with free resources and has been there for 7 years. I have been wanting to remove it in any case and did. It seems like the more I will do for FOSS the more my company will get attacked.
He then goes on to say that his resolve to champion Open Source solutions has not diminished one bit. Thank you for putting your money where your mouth is, Russell.
Can someone tell me why Microsoft, which is obviously such a huge market leader has to behave like a braindead school bully? I used to read Scobleizer, the blog by a now-former-MS-employee and used to enjoy some of his stories about advocacy. How do they think actions such as this one would help, in any way (little or big) to improve the image of the company or its products? Maybe I am spoiled by openness and freedom — I just don’t get it.
Ubuntu Blog 
(warning, slightly off topic, just picking in on this one quote)
“obviously such a huge market leader”
Perception is reality, I guess. But why do we persist in those unproven ones? I don’t want to be ignorant to the position and possible achievements of any private company in the industry, but I fail to take the above statement for granted.
When meeting Bruce Perens some years ago he pointed out that probably less then 15% off all the software made in the world ever gets sold. (A projection he did based on the percentage of software developers in the world that actually work for companies that sell software.) Given the fact that creating software is mainly a labor-intensive industry I think the projection largely holds. In my head the MARKET is the big sum of all turnover in this industry, any perceived market-leader would thus just be the most outspoken one from a definite minority 🙂
Anyway, changing this ‘obvious perception’ is IMHO not harder then what the ants did in the end of “A Bug’s Life”, I’ld say it just takes 85% of software developers to see what they can achieve by believing in their own power, talent, passion, innovation, responsibility. And how unfiltered access to open source helps them in that.
[…] Hace poco tuve que hacer una presentación, así que obviamente cogí el OO Impress para realizarla… Sin embargo el número de plantillas con el que viene acompañado es francamente ridículo, por desgracia, así que terminé añadiendo una de las que vienen con el MS PowerPoint a la presentación ya terminada, en los PC’s de la universidad. Así que no puede dejar de llamarme la atención que Open Office haya realizado un concurso de Cliparts y plantillas, y que se hayan anunciado hoy los ganadores. Habrá que bajarlos para echarles un vistazo, y ver si hay algo bueno para Impress Fuente: Ubuntu Blog. […]
doesn’t work on my edgy amd64
presentación ya terminada, en los PC’s de la universidad
atención que Open Office haya realizado un concurso de Cliparts y plantillas, y que se hayan anunciado hoy los ganadores.
Anyway, changing this ‘obvious perception’ is IMHO not harder then what the ants did in the end of “A Bug’s Life”, I’ld say it just takes 85% of software developers to see what they can achieve by believing in their own power, talent, passion, innovation, responsibility. And how unfiltered access to open source helps them in that.
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