[NCUC-DISCUSS] NCUC Survey Results Analysis - Part I

[Timothe Litt]

On 24-Apr-15 23:35, Norbert Klein wrote:
> "ICANN needs to invest in a higher quality or easier to use
> proprietary work space than we have now."
>
> And in this context also the use of Proprietary *OR* Open Source
> software should be considered. Not everybody has all he newest
> expensive Proprietary Software, to read files that come with for
> example the .docx and similar extensions.

I support (and participate in the development of) open source
solutions.  And of course documents need to be available to all members.

However, note that M$ does provide free viewers for all versions of
office documents - see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/891090. 
This includes both stand-alone viewers and compatibility packs for older
versions of Office.  Further, .docx is an ECMA (376) and now ISO
(ISO/IEC 29500-4 standard.  And *.docx can be both read and written by
OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and others*.  This is one area in which M$ has
moved from its proprietary (word .DOC, excel .xls, etc) solutions toward
more open solutions.    So there are non-proprietary, open-source and
free (as in beer) solutions for accessing these files.  M$ still
deviates from the standards from time to time, so compatibility isn't
perfect, but over time the FOSS solutions adapt.  I'm no apologist for
M$, but credit where it's due.

Personally, I've switched to Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail and
OpenOffice for most documents... compatibility withs M$ docs isn't
perfect, but it's quite good.  I18n support is good.  Standard
distributions of OpenOffice are windows, linux & OS/X.  There are also
stable ports to Android and Windows portable.  And Solaris (though I
think the Solaris ports are a major version behind).

With respect to a workspace/wiki, there are a number of choices.  I use
TWiki (www.twiki.org); it's open source, fairly easy to setup and has a
small learning curve for simple tasks.  It has a WYSIWYG editor.  It can
be customized for complex tasks and has a broad user base.  Changes are
tracked and can be reverted.  Drawback is that if you want to do complex
formatting, you probably need to learn its markup language.  A fork,
foswiki (www.foswiki.org), has more features and developers, but release
timing has been erratic.  Both have I18n support.  Full disclosure: I
have contributed to both.

Another FOSS alternative is MediaWiki, which is what underlies
Wikipedia.  It requires more setup.  It's familiar to many because of
Wikipedia, but as far as I know has no WYSIWYG editor.  There are others.

All on-line services - and especially Wikis - require maintenance and
management.  They are not free to operate; they will be assaulted by
wiki-spam, vandals and probes for security issues.  It takes time and
energy to stay up-to-date with patches, updates, and whatever
customizations you're lured into making.  There will be user question &
bugs.  And don't forget backups - because if your security provisions
don't fail, hardware will :-)

So while these can be a valuable resource, they are not projects to be
taken-on lightly.  Ugly as the ICANN Wiki is, it's maintained by someone
else... 

All tools have a learning curve for both users and operators.  I urge a
careful evaluation of the advantages, disadvantages, costs - and
long-term commitment to support - before going off on your own.  Again,
it's not a commitment to be make lightly.


Timothe Litt
ACM Distinguished Engineer
--------------------------
This communication may not represent the ACM or my employer's views,
if any, on the matters discussed. 


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