10.13.08
OpenOffice.org Down by Demand, Use This Mirror Instead (Updated)
As many people might aware by now, the official site is down due to heavy demand. The high volume of requests was probably intended to overwhelm mirrors, as opposed to the domain which serves as a pointer to them. Anyway, it’s rather unfortunate as The Register reports.
Eager beavers keen to get their hands on the long-awaited arrival of version 3.0 of OpenOffice.org are currently unable to download the free, open source-flavoured suite of office apps because demand has broken the website.
You can get it directly from the mirrors though. Here is one such mirror:
![[archive]](http://www.mirrorservice.org/nams/icons/br/squishdir.gif){kind=icon}
![[browse]](http://www.mirrorservice.org/nams/icons/br/peek.gif){kind=icon}
![[binary]](http://www.mirrorservice.org/nams/icons/br/binary.gif){kind=icon}
![[browse]](http://www.mirrorservice.orghttp://www.mirrorservice.org/nams/icons/br/peek.gif){kind=icon}
There is also an extensive review for those who are interested.
After a lengthy development cycle, we have a shiny new version of OpenOffice.org to play around with. But has it been worth the wait? Neil Bothwick rolls up his sleeves and picks apart OOo 3.0’s new features, finding out whether it deserves a major version number bump and finally sorts out the performance woes…
After the well-received release of Firefox 3, it’s time for another major update in the FOSS world - and this time it’s OpenOffice.org. OOo 3.0 has arrived and there are three key questions to be answered here: what new features does it introduce, it is any faster and is it worth of the full version number jump?
Happy downloading. █
From the Campaign for Document Freedom
Update: here is a better short overview/review.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Needs Sunlight said,
October 13, 2008 at 1:18 pm
The linuxormat.co.uk review is rather weak. Maybe they’re not used to doing reviews.
Tectonic has a very detailed overview:
http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2587
Maybe swap that one for the co.uk one.
There are some really nice new features, especially some of the split screen / multi-page options. A long awaited native OS X port is big news.
Roy Schestowitz said,
October 13, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I’ve just added it, but I’ll probably do a more detailed post later.
zoobab said,
October 13, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Patented OOXML shit in there?
Slashdot User said,
October 13, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Looks like your shill pal is back to gaming Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=994143&cid=25363873
I’ll say it again: With friends like these…
Needs Sunlight said,
October 14, 2008 at 2:59 am
@zoobab: No office package to-date, not even MS Office, uses OOXML. OOXML is not even published yet, though publishing was supposed to be a pre-requisite.
OOo can read MS Office 2007 Format files, what that format is called, who knows.
More importantly, OOo can now work with ODF 1.2.
Roy Schestowitz said,
October 14, 2008 at 3:11 am
For all I know and based on what I hear, Office 2009 will diverge further away from this scarecrow called “OOXML”. To Microsoft, this whole OOXML thing enables to break compatibility with a lot of rival software which managed to reverse-engineer the binaries quite decently. They get to: 1) break compatibility; 2) call those ad-hoc formats “an open standard.” It’s truly an abomination.