Ellak.gr (http://www.dev.ellak.gr), an open-source Greek community supported by the Ebusiness-forum in cooperation with the Greek high circulation newspaper “TA NEA” has taken the initiative to distribute 150.000 CDs on 31/05/2003 containing English and Greek versions of Openoffice.org. The CD was accompanied with a 24 page booklet containing installation instructions and information about Openoffice.org.

The Greek version of OpenOffice.org which was distributed on this CD was based on the official Greek version of Openoffice 1.0.2 which was improved and built by InterZone (http://www.interzone.gr). It also incorporates Greek hyphenation from Interzone and Greek speller from the work of Papakostas et al (http://ispell.source.gr).

ELLAK (http://www.dev.ellak.gr) is an open-source Greek community supported by the Ebusiness-forum (http://www.ebusinessforum.gr) of the Greek Research & Education Network (http://www.grnet.gr/). ELLAK has currentlly over 350 registered active members (volunteers). Among other tasks ELLAK community is promoting the use of OOo in Greece and collaborates with companies (including Sun Microsystems Hellas) and volunteers to localise it and translate the documentation to Greek.

Furthermore, in Greece there is a strong and established GNU/Linux community in the form of a national Hellenic Linux User Group (HELLUG, http://www.hellug.gr/) which supports open-source software users. GNU/Linux community (CYLUG, http://www.cylug.org/) also exists in Cyprus.

Links (in Greek):

http://www.dev.ellak.gr/modules.php?op=modload&name=Ne ws&file=article&sid=57&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/neaweb/neafile.pf?entypo=A &my_fyllo=17651″