OpenOffice.org is both an open-source, multi-platform and multilingual office suite project. It is the project through which Sun Microsystems opened the technology for its StarOffice Productivity Suite. Compatible in many ways with Microsoft Office, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. Now that OpenOffice has been localized by volunteers, speakers of 45 languages have an open-source office suite at their disposal.
Open source relies on the work of volunteers for all stages of its development, including localization. Because volunteers are harder to manage than people you pay, localization for these products does not follow the strict schedules that commercial tools need to meet. On the other hand, free labor means that open-source projects are often localized into languages that wouldn’t normally receive any attention from traditional software publishers. For example, Google relies on volunteers to localize its software into less commonly spoken languages like Kyrgyz or Twi.

Small-market Macedonia is taking a more structured approach to localization. Later this month two Macedonian groups will localize OpenOffice in a bit more than two days. If programmers in Skopje are like their brethren elsewhere in the world, this effort will be a boon for local pizza (and kjebapchinja) shops catering the marathon — and Macedonians will get their own version of OpenOffice.

On another front, this attention to and investment in OpenOffice strengthens the power of this alternative to familiar .doc and .xls files. Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Information Technology Division released a plan mandating the OASIS OpenDocument file format used in OpenOffice and Star Office for all state government documents by 2007. This initiative parallels similar efforts in China to limit the dependence on Microsoft server and Office software. The combination of localized OpenOffice, open document standards, and new product development from Macedonia, Argentina, Brazil, China, and other emerging powers in software could break the upgrade lockstep of the stalwart Office suite for large multinationals.