[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [seul-edu] MS Excel to OpenOffice.org conversion



Chris Puttick wrote:
Hi

Apologies for the cross-posting.

A teacher at one of the schools here has developed some Excel spreadsheets
for demonstrating various elements of maths. He's essentially programmed a
whole interface using macros and conditional formatting to make a highly
useable interactive whiteboard maths teaching solution. I'm desperately
trying to persuade him to open source it, but...

One of the hurdles is that he doesn't believe it can be made to work under
OOo with the same look and feel as he's painstakingly developed. I'm certain
it can but don't have the necessary skills to undertake the work. He's
arguing that the cost of his solution would be far less than the cost of the
MS licences and therefore it makes no odds if he sells it; therefore no OOo,
no free solution. Poor argument, I know, but if we can prove OOo can do the
work, I think he can be persuaded to GPL the remainder.

He's offered one module for me to prove it can be done.

Any takers?
Let him release it closed source. If it's really good a FLOSS version will probably appear and compete for market share. Problem solved?

- cameron