On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Lee Einer wrote:

>   As an aside, now that you mention it, I do plan
>   to start publishing things in OpenOffice format
>   with the intent of forcing people to install it,
>   but that was not the purpose in this case.
>
> Your description of your plan was not limited to publishing a limited
> group of documents to a specific group of recipients- it was a general
> statement of intent to start publishing things in OpenOffice format
> for the purpose of forcing people to install it, and that proposition
> as stated does sound (to me, anyway) a lot like a Microsoft strategy.
> I don't think that I was wrong to say so.

You are right, and I should have been more clear. My
statement had no scope specification, which was
dumb. I only ever meant "one thing that I intend
to do on some occasions", but it is easier to
interpret my statement as a generalization. I assure
you that none of those occasions will be with PLUG
documents whose intent is maximum dispersal. As you
noted, it would be counterproductive.

OTOH, we should consider the value of using OpenOffice
generally. Professional looking documents are helpful
to the public perception of an organization, and I
think OpenOffice is the most portable solution at the
moment. If the only hurdle is getting OpenOffice
running on your machine, I'll help you install Mandrake
8.1 (and I'm sure we can find someone to help if you'd
prefer a different distro). I can come out to GCC at
5:30 on Tuesday if you'd like to do it before the
meeting. I will loan you a hard drive if you want to
test drive it before you commit.