December 21st, 2006 Benjamin Horst
In addition to rethinking the cost of hardware and distribution of computing resources around the globe, the One Laptop Per Child project has made some major changes in GUI assumptions as well.
Mike Hearn writes a review of the OLPC graphical user interface:
“This UI is quite simply one of the deepest and most interesting redesigns of the desktop user interface ever produced.”
Mike has a list of at least 20 innovative ideas included in the OLPC, but to me one of the most interesting is, as he writes, “Network and presence is fully integrated into the core of the design.” This is a major departure from existing OS GUIs, which mostly derive their design from pre-network blueprints.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on OLPC GUI Review
December 6th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Yusseri writes a great piece on the Open Malaysia blog on his research into Microsoft’s efforts, directly and through proxies, to undermine ODF around the world.
“I looked around in the web and the available documentation that we had to provide data for my presso. I found lots of other OSS initiatives all over the place. What I also found was a fair amount of resistance against the initiatives. This resistance was led by one large multinational corporation and a few “alliances” — namely the BSA and the Initiative for Software Choice. There were no other single corporation that protested, campaigned, lobbied or made donations against the disparate initiatives.
There was only one: Microsoft.
All the others — IBM, Sun, Oracle, SAP, CA, Symantec, Adobe, Autodesk, etc. — either made supporting noises or kept quiet altogether.
I checked all over the world — America, Australia, South Africa, India, Korea, Japan, Germany, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, and more — and it was all the same.”
Read Yusseri’s article to see the details of “free” Microsoft software and “discounts” and “donations” (and the occasional veiled threat), all intended to block or stall the open source efforts.
It is dangerous how far this one rich company’s arms stretch around the world, and it is a terrible shame to see so much progress being held back by one stubborn and corrupt organization. Let’s hope the dam breaks soon, hundreds of places all leap to freedom at once, Microsoft cannot keep up with it all, and a free market based on open standards emerges to replace the repressed environment of today.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Open Malaysia Blog on Microsoft’s Attempts to Undermine ODF
November 29th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
One Laptop Per Child News is a blog that bills itself as “Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child’s computer, the OLPC Children’s Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte.”
It’s got plenty of great information on the state of the project, along with some fun stuff, too.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on One Laptop Per Child News Site
November 21st, 2006 Benjamin Horst
As the One Laptop per Child project continues to progress, they’ve recently uploaded a photo gallery of the first unit to leave the factory.
And ODF, the OpenDocument Format, plays an important role in the OLPC computers:
“An OpenDocument Viewer is important – it will allow kids to read electronic documents (such as educational books) in the OpenDocument format (ODF). This format is usable in AbiWord which is being adapted to work on the OLPC.
Obviously, since the whole point of the project is education, giving kids the tools they need to read electronic books in various formats is critical. The OpenDocument format (ODF) has properties that are especially valuable for OLPC electronic books, compared to HTML, PDF, or other formats.”
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source | Comments Off on One Laptop per Child Photos, ODF Support
November 17th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Appleseed Project, the coolest social networking site I’ve seen, has just released a major update to its open source code.
Appleseed servers can federate with each other, like an email server or Jabber IM server, so that you can run your own. Users on one can befriend and interact users on others. This works around the bottleneck existing sites run into, with 100 million users trying to work off one cluster. Scalability like that is hard, and site downtown affects every user. The email model is more robust, and it is a natural fit for open source social networking.
Download the code from Sourceforge, set up your own server, and help out!
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Appleseed Project is Back!
November 15th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Why not just work with ODF? Creating competing open formats for the same thing does not make sense!
Groklaw reports that China is developing an open document format of its own. The good news is that it should be relatively similar to, and compatible with, ODF. The bad news is that there isn’t any good reason to fracture the market behind alternative open standards.
The most important task right now is to marginalize Microsoft’s proposed new format before it gains traction. If open format supporters do not rally behind one standard, the chance of blocking MS’ formats is greatly diminished. And if an open format does not win, competition and technical innovation will continue to be severely curtailed, as they have been under the MS Office hegemony.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source | 1 Comment »
November 9th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
PC Advisor (UK) announces the first delivery of OLPC machines (One Laptop Per Child, aka the $100 Laptop) will be made in Brazil in the next week.
“The first 50 devices will go to researchers in various Brazilian institutions, who will familiarize themselves with the systems in order to develop regional applications, according to the source.”
Another 1,000 will be delivered in January for deployment in schools the next month.
And we’ll see how it ramps up from there. This is an exciting project that could fundamentally improve education in the countries participating.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on OLPC Deliveries Starting in Brazil
October 19th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Democracy Player released version 0.9.1 today. It’s an internet TV platform, a video-RSS feed aggregator, and it is great. Download the latest version now.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Democracy Player Reaches 0.9.1
October 17th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
NY Times reports on Libya committing to the One Laptop Per Child project:
“The government of Libya reached an agreement on Tuesday with One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit United States group developing an inexpensive, educational laptop computer, with the goal of supplying machines to all 1.2 million Libyan schoolchildren by June 2008…
To date, Mr. Negroponte, the brother of the United States intelligence director, John D. Negroponte, has reached tentative purchase agreements with Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria and Thailand, and has struck a manufacturing deal with Quanta Computer Inc., a Taiwanese computer maker.”
The deal with Libya should bring the total quantity up to the threshold required to begin manufacture.
What a fine example of the power of Linux and open source! And with this project, we should see a pivotal change in the global marketshare of Linux as well.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Libya Joins One Laptop Per Child Project
August 22nd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Computerworld reports on Massachusetts’ strategy to start its ODF implementation with a plugin for Microsoft Office.
From what I recall, the original plan was to move to ODF for document storage, and it did not specifically seek to change the applications used in the state. However, now there is an intention to start replacing Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org in a measured rollout. It’s not being phrased that way now, perhaps as a “concession” to opponents:
“During a meeting today with state officials and advocates for people with disabilities, Louis Gutierrez, CIO of Massachusetts’ IT Division (ITD), said the state will postpone a Jan. 1 deadline to roll out open-source office applications that can save files in the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Instead, the state will on a near-term basis adopt a plug-in strategy to fulfill its policy calling for executive-branch agencies to make use of ODF.”
However, it looks like using Microsoft Office with a plugin to create ODF files is just an intermediate step. If the state is creating ODFs anyway, they ought to go all the way to using a native suite that also cuts licensing costs by 100% over the current tool! And the hints are that they will:
“The emergence of plug-ins that can be used to save documents in ODF prompted Gutierrez to issue a request for information on the technology. Now ITD will be following through with testing of the ODF plug-ins in preparation for a phased rollout, expected to begin later this year, according to sources at yesterday’s meeting.
Winske said that Gutierrez told the group there would be no mass migration to open-source office applications until they are proven to be accessible. But Gutierrez reaffirmed ITD’s commitment to its ODF policy, in keeping with its goal of moving away from proprietary formats for the long-term preservation of documents, according to Winske.”
Once accessibility reaches the state’s expectations, a migration to OpenOffice.org seems to be the next step. Massachusetts taxpayers will be among those to benefit here! Congratulations!
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Massachusetts’ Plug-in Strategy for ODF