June 3rd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
ZaReason‘s weekly newsletter alerted me to two interesting articles on Ubuntu last week.
- “It’s Time to Retire ‘Ready for the Desktop‘” writes Jeremy LaCroix for Linux.com. (“The fact is, there are just as many people out there who have difficulty using Windows as there are who have trouble using Linux.”)
- Joey Stanford writes about his new Eee PC 900, on which ZaReason installed Ubuntu 8.04 for him. (“On the order form it says Xandros but I mentioned in a comment that it would soon be running Ubuntu. Within two minutes of placing the order they replied saying they can put a basic Ubuntu install on it, so I said “heck yeah!”. So, today when I opened it up, it booted Ubuntu out of the box. :-)”
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on Two Ubuntu Links from ZaReason
June 2nd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Kazunari Hirano mentions this week’s OpenOffice Migration of the Week: the Aizuwakamatsu City Government in Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, which is moving 850 computers from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org.
The city expects direct savings of 15 million yen over the next five years, and anticipates the benefits will spill over into the private sector, as citizens will also be able to adopt open source instead of expensive applications at home:
“The Mayor said that they can not only cut the cost but also accommodate the long-term preservation of their documents: “We often met problems with the latest office software to open and read our documents created in the past. But now we can use the international standard file format, ODF, so that we will be able to use and preserve our documents over many years.”
“It happened that our citizens had to buy the office software when they received documents from the city government.”
“ODF, which can be used from the free software, OpenOffice.org, will help reduce the burden on our citizens,” he said.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice Migration of the Week: Aizuwakamatsu City, Japan
May 30th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The BBC reports “Colombia Signs Up for XO Laptop.”
Initially, 65,000 children in the Caldas region will receive XO laptops, while the project will be expanded to other regions later.
BBC writes, “In a statement announcing the deal, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said the organisation was starting to get “good traction” from countries keen to sign up and buy the distinctive green and white XO laptops in large numbers.
“Currently each machine costs $188 and OLPC has sold about 600,000 of them.”
Posted in Free Culture, OLPC, Open Source | 1 Comment »
May 29th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Lots of open source and open standards tech people, including me, have long anticipated this, but now a mainstream financial site, Motley Fool, is predicting “The Fall of Microsoft Office.”
Microsoft has publicly announced it will support ODF in its Office suite. If implemented honestly (a big question for Microsoft), this throws open the doors to competition in a way MSO has never had to deal with before.
“I can’t say that Google or Sun or anybody else just won a bigger share of the office software market, and if they did, it won’t help their revenue or profits directly anyway. But it’s clear as day that Microsoft just took a serious hit, and the impact may take a long time to make itself felt but it will come.
“The company’s biggest revenue generator may be a shadow of its former self in a few years. I just hope that Microsoft has some alternative business prospects on tap — and no, tackling Google’s search hulk head-on doesn’t count.”
Microsoft’s Office is going to lose marketshare, and Motley Fool sees this as having a big impact on Microsoft’s core profitability.
From the perspective of open source users, it means Microsoft will have less money to spend on attacking us, which is a good thing.
From the perspective of all computer users, especially small businesses, it means costs will decline as the $400 price for Microsoft Office is no longer a required expense–using the free OpenOffice.org instead will be an easy alternative.
With OpenOffice 3.0 coming this fall, it’s time to expect another big jump in its user share. Let’s watch!
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Motley Fool: “The Fall of Microsoft Office”
May 28th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
In what he calls the The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment, Content Consumer created a series of normal computer tasks and asked his girlfriend to perform them on Ubuntu with no guidance from him. Her ability (and occasional inability) to complete the tasks, plus her relative frustration or comfort with them, gives a rough guide of what users may experience when using Ubuntu for the first time. Matching my expectations, she was able to accomplish most of the tasks without overlarge difficulty.
The post, as of this writing, has accumulated 3,543 diggs and 577 comments. Clearly, it has resonated. And the discussion it’s generated is also informative. End user testing is an important tool to continue to improve the usability of Ubuntu, other FOSS programs, and indeed, any software, so we should always encourage more of it.
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May 21st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
North-by-South, the open source nearshore development firm I’ve been following, has just closed a funding round with Launch Capital.
In other NxS news, they interviewed Marcos Mazoni about FOSS’ continuing expansion in Brazilian government agencies, showing once again how Brazil is becoming an open source superpower.
Mazoni discusses the different method used to select an open source program from the analytical method used when purchasing a commercial, off-the-shelf program: “To choose the product I’m going to put in my network, I’m going to see which one more fits my needs and I’ll also find myself as an active element in the construction of the product, returning these changes to the community as well. So, we focus on more than just technological metrics, sometimes it isn’t about which product does more. This difference — of creating things together, sharing and non-competition is the big change that comes with the free software philosophy.”
Government agencies in Brazil have moved from developing many of their core technologies exclusively in-house, to cooperating across disparate groups of government, private sector, and individual collaborators. This lets their projects progress faster and introduce innovative new features that otherwise might never have been invented.
“We also started to introduce the thought that cooperation is the best thing in the free software world. It’s not the matter of the technology itself, but the co-operation, working together beyond the boundaries of my organization, and that I don’t need to have the brand of my organization on every product. I have to have a good product that works, that has a permanent life cycle. This is the logic that free software shows us as a great organizational innovation.”
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on North-by-South Captures Funding
May 16th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Benjamin Mako Hill writes a post called “Laptop Liberation” on the importance of Free Software as the platform for the OLPC project.
Mako writes, “I gave a talk at Penguicon called Laptop Liberation where I talked about why I thought that OLPC’s use of a free software operating system and embrace of free software principles was essential for the initiative’s success and its own goals of education reform and empowerment. I’ve been saying similar things for some time.”
He points out the similarities between the OLPC’s educational philosophy of Constructionism and the way the Free Software world itself functions–they’re largely identical:
“Constructionism and free software, implemented and taught in a classroom, offer a profound potential for exploration, creation, and learning. If you don’t like something, change it. If something doesn’t work right, fix it. Free software and constructionism put learners in charge of their educational environment in the most explicit and important way possible. They create a culture of empowerment. Creation, collaboration, and critical engagement becomes the norm.”
Keeping control over one’s technology means keeping control over one’s destiny. This is the promise of open source/free software, and of the OLPC project.
“We can help foster a world where technology is under the control of its users, and where learning is under the terms of its students — a world where every laptop owner has freedom through control over the technology they use to communicate, collaborate, create, and learn.”
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on Mako on the OLPC and Free Software
May 14th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The University of Southern Mindanao in the Philippines has chosen to adopt a completely open source platform, according to the International Open Source Network:
“In an official letter from Dr. Virgilio G. Oliva, University of Southern Mindanao (USM) president, to the International Open Source Network (IOSN) ASEAN+3, it was formally announced that USM-Kabacan will spearhead the migration of its computer systems from proprietary to free/open source software (F/OSS) at the first quarter of 2008 through its Information and Communications Technology Center (USM-ICTC) as part of its continuing F/OSS advocacy in line with the IOSN ASEAN+3 agenda.”
The migration will be supported with significant communication to the university’s users, so they’ll know what they are getting into (and why it benefits them all in the longterm).
“Foremost in its ICT roll-out planning for 2008, USM-Kabacan will conduct series of lectures, seminars, workshops and trainings for its personnel in anticipation of workflow changes and to ensure smooth transition to a forthcoming predominantly F/OSS-driven workplace.”
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Philippines’ University of Southern Mindanao Goes FOSS
May 13th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
While OLPC’s XO laptops have been appearing around the world, it wasn’t a part of the original plan for them to be used in developed countries. However, the XO’s child-centric design and constructivist learning paradigm are certainly well-suited to students here, as anywhere.
It’s exciting to see the OLPC XO being adopted in Birmingham, Alabama schools.
“The Birmingham City Council in March approved spending almost $3.5 million to buy 15,000 laptops for schoolchildren and to upgrade technology at city schools. The computer program is being piloted at Glen Iris [Elementary School], which has almost 800 students but received about 1,000 laptops, Principal Mike Wilson said.”
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on OLPC in the USA
May 7th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Linux Journal’s annual user survey has arrived in the form of Linux Journal’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2008.
More than 5,900 readers completed the survey this January and February to voice their opinions on open source tools, programs and services.
Some of my favorite programs had very strong showings: Ubuntu was the favorite primary Linux distribution for 37.4% of respondents, Firefox the preferred browser for 86%, and OpenOffice the favorite office program of 85.1%.
Many of my other favorites appeared, such as GIMP, Eclipse, WordPress, Drupal, Frozen Bubble, the Nokia N800, OLPC XO, and more.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Linux Journal’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2008