<p dir="ltr">Wearing my FOSS hat as the Council Chair of FOSSFA[1], I wholeheartedly support the suggestion to be libre in our choice of tools. <br>
I believe there are many other FOSS members on this list that would be willing to help in anyway required.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Regards<br>
1. <a href="http://fossfa.net">http://fossfa.net</a><br>
sent from Google nexus 4<br>
kindly excuse brevity and typos.</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 25 Apr 2015 12:33, "Timothe Litt" <<a href="mailto:litt@acm.org">litt@acm.org</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>
On 24-Apr-15 23:35, Norbert Klein wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
"ICANN needs to invest in a higher quality or easier to use
proprietary work space than we have now."<br>
<br>
And in this context also the use of Proprietary <b>OR</b> 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.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I support (and participate in the development of) open source
solutions. And of course documents need to be available to all
members.<br>
<br>
However, note that M$ does provide free viewers for all versions of
office documents - see
<a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/891090" target="_blank">https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/891090</a>. 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 <b>.docx can be both read and written by
OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and others</b>. 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$, but credit where it's
due.<br>
<br>
Personally, I've switched to Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail and
OpenOffice for most documents... compatibility withs M$ 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).<br>
<br>
With respect to a workspace/wiki, there are a number of choices. I
use TWiki (<a href="http://www.twiki.org" target="_blank">www.twiki.org</a>); 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 (<a href="http://www.foswiki.org" target="_blank">www.foswiki.org</a>), has more
features and developers, but release timing has been erratic. Both
have I18n support. Full disclosure: I have contributed to both.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 :-)<br>
<br>
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... <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre cols="72">Timothe Litt
ACM Distinguished Engineer
--------------------------
This communication may not represent the ACM or my employer's views,
if any, on the matters discussed.
</pre>
<br>
</div>
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