ubuntu-ngo team mailing list archive

[Alan Bell <alan.bell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Mark,

What I am looking for is things that we can fix, package or build to
make Ubuntu great for charitable organisations, either on the desktop or
on the server. Stuff that would be ignored if nobody did anything about
it. Improving OpenOffice.org interoperability will just happen whether
or not anyone pays any attention to the needs of NGOs, there is no point
focussing NGO specific effort there, even though it is important and
NGOs would benefit from it. I think there could be some scope in
addressing the accounting requirements of charities when working with
funding organisations and doners. This seems to be a particularly
non-business-like requirement. There could be something unique that
international charities need, like multi-lingual support, which Ubuntu
is pretty hot on already.

Alan.

Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
> Alan Bell <alan.bell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>   
>> These are interesting points, I don't think he is wrong about any of
>> them, however better office integration with proprietary alternatives
>> and managing multiple computers are fairly normal pain points for the
>> generic Acme Widgets type business.
>>     
>
> Agreed, they are. The collaboration aspect is probably most important
> for user adoption, though.  If someone at our NGO is collaborating with,
> say, USAID to put together a presentation, the application used *cannot*
> be a factor.  If we're using OOo and the other person is using MS
> Office, someone is going to get frustrated with, say, the way the
> appearance changes every time the document is passed back and forth.
>
>   
>> The office suite improvements are really an upstream issue and there are
>> events like the ODF plugfest which is going on right now
>> http://www.odfworkshop.nl/ but they are things that benefit everyone
>> equally, not specially the charitable sector.
>>     
>
> Oo! This is good.  However, Microsoft's support for ODF appears to be
> the same as that for RTF.  Exporting is nice, but it will never approach
> the same level of capability as the native format.
>
> Or am I wrong?  If there is a file format that everyone agrees will be
> their primary target, then we can begin to hope for interop.
>
>   
>> Would it be possible to go back to him and ask if there are issues he
>> has specifically because of the type of organisation it is, that are
>> not being asked for by the rest of the community.
>>     
>
> I doubt the issues are NGO specific.  But, as an NGO, we do have to work
> closely with our funders (e.g. USAID) in collaborative projects, sharing
> documents back and forth.
>
> This was pointed out to me because IntraHealth previously had a more
> heterogeneous environment (before my time) of Macs and PCs.  There was
> frustration even with collaboration on these two platforms between our
> NGO and our funders.
>
> When collaborators run into trouble, one will ask the other to try X,
> but they're both using different software, so while X may be the way to
> do things in MS Office on Windows, it is called something else or placed
> differently in the Office suite on OS X or Ubuntu.
>
> These sorts of irritations are experienced by anyone who has to
> collaborate with others outside (or even inside) the organization.  If
> these irritations continue to pop up, soon it be clear that life would
> just be a lot easier (not to mention more efficient and lest costly in
> terms of time wasted) if the Desktop was Windows and the offices suite
> was from Microsoft.
>
> Now, a big part of that is training.  As long as our users know more
> about the software they're using than their collaborators know about the
> software they might be using, we're good.  But, in fact, they have to
> understand both the software that they've used as well as the software
> of their collaborators for this to be a non-issue.  Good luck getting
> that to happen.
>
> Unless you can be assured that the CEO and CIO of the NGO are 100%
> dedicated to “standards” based computing, they're likely to just give in
> and adopt the de facto standard, which ends up being Windows and Office.
>
> This is simply because the executive is going to be more focused on
> getting the job done the quickest way possible.  (And cost for using
> Microsoft products is pretty low for NGOs, so the cost argument doesn't
> go very far.)
>
> If *I* were the CEO, we'd be all sorts of idealistic about the
> software.  But, then, that's probably one of the reasons I'm not the
> CEO. ;)
>
>