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I am bit swamped these days, and you must have noticed it by now. These things happen: lots of work items, lots of backlog, and lots of exhaustion as well. Since I don’t want to leave this blog « unattended » for even 2 or three weeks, I am posting today some links I find interesting to visit. Enjoy! I’ll be back soon, by the way…

• Microsoft releases Windows Azure. But what is it really? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. It seems it’s a server platform tailored for cloud computing environment. And what is cloud computing? I’m still figuring it out… Seriously, Cloud Computing is the up and coming state-of-the-art in IT. The idea is to use and benefit from data, applications, and networks that are hosted not on your desktop, and not on a server near you. In fact, data and applications are always available but out there, on the Network, in the cloud. Of course, it sounds simple, but it’s very, very complex. It’s a true shift of paradigm, a copernician revolution asking as many questions that it answers, from data portability and users’ rights to virtualized environment and application frameworks. And that’s where players such as Amazon, Joyent and Google are striving. And of course, Microsoft wants to be the dominant player there. So it released a nifty platform that is both a server for running distributed applications and hosting data, and a Microsoft’s Live set of Services. That’s where it’s not clear. They say everything works on Azure, but it seems you better want to use their stuff first. Just like the others, it will work, but… better.

• Do you remember the nice subway map picturing the trends of web sites and online services? Well, that map was for 2007. But there’s the new one I completely missed. Enjoy…

• There you go. Firefox 3 with the newest javascript engine, and all of a sudden, it actually becomes a fast browser on the Mac! Try Minefield, it’s a surprisingly stable development version of Firefox 3 with a different javascript engine.

• Food for thought: I share with them the conviction that large corporation are dwarfing most governments these days. I am no pessimist though: those very same governments could very well come back if they were willing to. But most of them seem to be ideologically blinded, and that’s a pity. Meanwhile, feel free to adhere. It comes from Europe, and it’s free…

• Pondering Boycott Novell must be a funny thing to do. But what’s the problem? The news web site is accused by some to be a troll machine, while some others worship it. My view on this is simple: I’m a reader of this web site, and whenever I was involved in some specific situations or was having some solid information on them, I was able to read accurate reports on these. That’s the about the most honest answer I can make. Roy is a good guy, he’s actually taking out the meat and lay it on the table. Should he be doing it in a different fashion, with more style and less passion? Perhaps. Meanwhile, I have more fun reading his prose than the one Mr Byfield regales us with along with his paternalistic advices on why we, the community of freetards & beardies, should learn from big businesses.

• People are getting busy preparing the OooCon 2008 in Beijing; for our Asian community, the location makes it an obvious point of focus. But this illustrates how OpenOffice.org has become an international community of choice. Good luck with the conference! And see you next year, OOoCon.

• News without a link: OpenOffice.org 2.4.2, the last maintenance release of the 2.x branch, is about to be uploaded. If you don’t want to use the 3.0 (some organization needs time before fully qualifying new versions of office suite), that one is for you. Stay tuned.

• News without a link continued: the ISO 26300 (aka ODF 1.0) gets an errata, and you’re welcome to comment on it for the next 15 days. No big news, here again, it’s all about maintenance…

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Louis Suarez-Potts uploaded the speech he gave on the OOo 3 Launch Party both in English and in French. Mine was given in French for obvious reasons. I thought some of my francophone readers would be interested in it as well. Enjoy!

Bonsoir, et merci à tous d’être là. Je veux tout d’abord adresser mes plus profonds remerciements à la Région Ile de France, à son Président et à son souci apporté à l’innovation technologique durable et responsable. Je veux en particulier remercier Jean-Baptiste Roger dont l’aide et le soutien nous a été précieux. Silicon Sentier, et notamment Paul Richardet, qui a été à nos côtés, ce centre qui bouge, qui fait bouger, qui crée et soutient tous ceux qui entreprennent, découvrent, et font du monde numérique français ce qu’il est.

Plus personnellement, les gens que j’aurais à citer sont nombreux, alors je me cantonnerai à ceux-là: mes parents et Melissa qui sont aussi présents ce soir dans la salle. Ce sont eux qui sont présents dans les bons moments comme dans les moins bons. Il me faut également y rajouter mes collègues d’Ars Aperta, Jerome Dumonteil, Jean-Marie Gouarné et Yvon Rastetter qui sont encore aujourd’hui assez fous pour me supporter.

De façon plus essentielle, je voudrais aujourd’hui remercier toute la communauté OpenOffice.org qui s’investit jour après jour dans notre projet. Louis disait tout à l’heure que nous ne sommes séparés ni par des montagnes, ni par des océans, mais par la seule limite de notre ambition. C’est vrai. Pourtant, notre communauté est présente sur toute la planète, et elle est prête à des sacrifices important pour contribuer au plus grand projet Libre. OpenOffice.org est présent dans le monde entier, et à cette heure-ci, en Birmanie, au Laos, en Chine et dans toute l’Asie, les équipes de localisation et de distribution sont à pied d’oeuvre pour mettre à disposition de tous OpenOffice.org3.0 dans leur langue native; au Brésil, en Afrique, les ingénieurs travaillent déjà pour tenir les meilleurs délais. Et dans la torpeur de la nuit du Gange, notre communauté rêve déjà avec la satisfaction d’avoir contribué à un logiciel libre, instrument de libération, d’émancipation équitable et durable.

Le projet Francophone n’est pas en reste. Je tiens à remercier Sophie Gautier pour sa contribution capitale à OpenOffice.org. Certains le savent, Sophie n’est plus responsable du projet francophone. Mais elle ne nous quitte pas, elle va désormais contribuer au projet différemment, mais de façon tout aussi importante, et je veux le souligner. Merci, Sophie. Je veux d’ailleurs accueillir ici, Jean-Baptiste Faure, l’un des deux nouveaux responsables du projet francophone. Félicitations, Jean-baptiste, et bonne chance.

Cette tribune, ce soir, n’est pas complète. Elle n’est pas complète car il manque une personne qui nous a soutenu depuis le début, nous et bien d’autres projets, et qui se doit de participer à cet événement ce soir. J’aimerais la remercier. J’appelle Eric Mahé à venir nous rejoindre à la tribune.

OpenOffice.org n’est pas juste un projet extraordinaire, porteur d’espoir pour le monde; en inspirant par la puissance de son exemple plutôt que par l’exemple de sa puissance, ce projet a créé la meilleure suite logicielle au monde. Meilleure, parce qu’elle est Libre, c’est à dire libre pour tous, et porteuse de liberté, par sa qualité et par son usage de formats ouverts et standards. Je pense bien sûr au format OpenDocument et au PDF. Bien sûr, certains veulent utiliser ce label de formats ouverts à leurs propres fins. C’est leur droit s’ils le souhaitent, ce sera leur chance s’ils y contribuent avec nous; l’invitation reste toujours d’actualité. Mais me direz-vous, qu’a-t’ on mis dans cette version 3.0 pour en dire autant de bien? La liste des nouveautés serait trop longue: je ne retiendrais que quelques points majeurs.

Une nouvelle architecture améliorant les performances et plaçant les extensions au coeur des usages d’OpenOffice.org, la capacité d’importer des documents PDF, de gérer et d’éditer des pages de wiki et de blogs directement depuis OpenOffice.org, la distribution commune avec le projet Mozilla du client mail Thunderbird et du calendrier Lightning; j’ai gardé le meilleur pour la fin: OpenOffice.org est désormais 100% native sur le Mac. OpenOffice.org 3.0 est disponible au téléchargement. Merci à tous, et bonne soirée!

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Now it’s been days, and more than a week I haven’t blogged. The reason is simple: I was swamped. But I ended up exhausted and happy.

We’ve been releasing the 3.0. Yes, we did it, and we also threw a major party at the headquarters of the Region Île de France. Pictures are available here, at least for the sets I’ve seen. It was brilliant, beautiful, and achieved the rare and deeply useful task of being both sophisticated and convivial. As a result, more than 400 people flocked in the gates of the room, a good 50 of them having standing on the sidewalks half an hour before.  The Region’s President, who couldn’t make it at the last moment, sent his deputy who delivered a great speech. Then Louis Suarez-Potts gave a wonderful and thought provoking speech about Free Software, OpenOffice.org, and the world as it goes, emphasizing the need for freedom bound with fraternity as a way out of the current global crisis. I then had to speak, thanking many in the community, and describing the intense activity of native-language and localization teams busy releasing the 3.0 in their own language. I forgot many, managed to quote four countries (Laos, Burma, Brazil and South Africa) and one river (the Ganges river) but didn’t forgot the French community. I also announced the main new features for the 3.0: I was surprized people hadn’t heard about most of them.

The party went on well, and while we were drinking wine and eating some very nice meals the OpenOffice.org web site was down. Actually, it’s still more or less down and some emergecy workarounds have been designed in order to whistand the huge workload stemming from the massive download requests on the servers. Meanwhile, the migration of the development infrastructure to Subversion has been completed.

So aside the web site crash and the credit crunch, what’s left to say? The end of 2008 and 2009 will be a time for major growth for OpenOffice.org . Download numbers are up exponentially, and the press is very positive about us. Heck, I even got interview in the digital version of Liberation, the largest French newspaper. Articles and reviews are provided below. I would like to conclude today’s post by thanking everyone who contributed to this release and everyone who downloaded, is downloading and will download OpenOffice.org 3.0 . My apologies for the crash and glitches!

• The ComputerWorld report
•  ZDNet Education
• Dana Blankenhorn’s take
• A perfect opportunity for OpenOffice.org?
• I couldn’t resist, this is a bit old but it may have gone unnoticed: More stunning clues about the SC 34’s integrity and transparency.

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More information and registration link here. To answer to the question many around are asking: No, OpenOffice.org 3.0 has not been released yet. Target date is now 13th or 14th of October, and there will be a RC 4 coming in on Monday. In the meantime, I hope to see many of you on the 13th !

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