> > I think it would be good if the proposed committers who have not yet done > so, could post a quick note to the list, to introduce yourself and your > interest in this project. Think of this as an opportunity to introduce > yourself to your future collaborators on Apache OpenOffice. >
Ian Lynch, cut my coding teeth on Algol W (IBM 370). BBC BASIC, 6502, 6809 and ARM Assembler. Now I don't have time to hack, I run a UK government accredited Awarding Organisation and I'm trying to build a global service business that can support FOSS and liberally licensed content for education. We have 6 people working in the company based in the UK and we have active projects in Malaysia, Kenya, USA, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Spain and Netherlands all at various stages. Something in South America in relation to OOo specifically seems imminent. I have been a member of the OOo marketing community since the early days leading education for a time and I was a co-founder of the Open Document Fellowship. I'm quite interested in developing businesses that can support FOSS development and obviate the need for closed software licenses. I think the most important aspect of all this is ISO26300 because it and its developments enable a rich range of FOSS implementations in the document space. I'm sure this will migrate to the cloud so current OOo/LO implementations are going to have to change. In terms of certification, we are product neutral. Most of our customers get their IT user certificates using MS products. There was not sufficient demand early on for an exclusive "we only deal with FOSS products" stance and getting to users of proprietary licensed software at least gives them the opportunity to see that there are alternatives. We use a Lamp stack and Drupal for our core business, Libre Office on Ubuntu. We only use Windows and IE for testing the web site - lots of schools still on IE6 unfortunately a real pain ;-) My main constraint is time as I am constantly needing to find ways of keeping everyone here employed while we develop the business. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications (The Schools ITQ) www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales.
