Seagull Research Team 2006

- A project team studying Japanese users' requests on OpenOffice.org -

http://ooo-research.good-day.net/

A project Seagull Research Team 2006 run by Good-day [1] addresses the enhancement of functionality and usability in the open-source productive office suite, OpenOffice.org. With the budget acquired by the IPA [2], the project targets primarily at the Japanese market. The project starts in September, 2006 and ends in February, 2007, covering collecting requests, prioritizing them, discussing requirements, consulting developers in person, writing specifications.

Although implementation is beyond the scope, members of the project, as a contributor outside of the project, are contributing to the OpenOffice.org community for realizing the request.

[1] Good-day, Inc., Osaka, Japan

http://www.good-day.co.jp/en/

[2] Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA), an independent

administrative agency

http://www.ipa.go.jp/index-e.html

Project Title

Friendly name: Seagull Research Team 2006
Actual name in the contract: Creation of development specification
proposals regarding OpenOffice.org for Japanese users

Background

An open-source productive office suite, OpenOffice.org, has been developed as a successor of StarOffice, an office suite product widely expanded over Europe in 1990s. With the more than two decade history of StarOffice followed by OpenOffice.org, OpenOffice.org has become sufficient for the Western market. In contrast, with the half decade history of OpenOffice.org supporting Asian languages, OpenOffice.org has now become almost adequate for the Asian market. For the proliferation of OpenOffice.org over the Japanese market, OpenOffice.org should grow quickly.

To make OpenOffice.org sufficient for Asian market speedily and efficiently, the primary developers of OpenOffice.org need aggressive contribution of native Asian people. However, there were some voluntary contributors in the Japanese OpenOffice.org community, but no professional contributors around the community. Obviously, contribution as a business has been demanded for years.

The IPA started to tackle the situation and published a public bid calling for companies and other organizations to conduct a research of Japanese users' requests on OpenOffice.org, mainly aiming at the future adoption of OpenOffice.org in the public sector. Good-day bid for the research and was adopted by the IPA.

Goals

Clarifying the latest requirements on OpenOffice.org in the Japanese market and bringing them with proposals to the OpenOffice.org community.

Scope

Start date: September 1, 2006

End date: February 28, 2007

Target: Japanese office suite market

Activities: Research, no development

Final Deliverables

- A report of the research

- Technical specifications [3]

[3] These specifications describe basic requirements and differ from specifications for implementation.

Tasks

1) Collecting requests

- Refers to the Japanese OpenOffice.org Q&A web site, classifies articles, and picks up requests.

- Visits existing OpenOffice.org users from enterprise to town office and listens to their voice.

Deliverables: requests, bugs to be filed

2) Prioritization

- Prioritizes the requests from the perspective of Japanese users.

Deliverables: highly prioritized requests

3) Discussing requirements

- Starts discussion on the highly prioritized requests in the community's mailing list to come up with technical requirements.

- Discusses with other Asian communities to coordinate individual requirements.

- Consults the primary developers to devise practical solutions. Deliverables: rough requirements

4) Consulting developers in person

- Visits the responsible persons to discuss the possibility of implementation.

- Visits the primary developers to discuss the rough requirements in detail.

Deliverables: consensus for implementation, detailed requirements

5) Writing specifications

- Writes basic specifications for possible implementation.

Deliverables: basic specifications

Team Members

4 people

Assumptions

- There will be no license problem with the works by the project.

Contact Information

Project home page: http://ooo-research.good-day.net/

E-Mail: ooo-research@good-day.co.jp