October 3rd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Thanks to the weekly ZaReason newsletter, I found two articles pointing out how free software can help in times of economic distress.
For Linux Journal, Glyn Moody writes “Openness is the Solution to the (Double) Subprime Crisis.” He draws parallels between subprime mortgages and subprime software, and their effects on the market.
“Patents are the last refuge of proprietary software companies, which are increasingly unable to compete on a level playing field with free software. Only by introducing artificial barriers in the form of nominal patents on mathematical algorithms – software – can they hope to hobble the otherwise superior open source offerings.
“They are superior because they create real value – they have to, otherwise people will not use the code. Proprietary software, by virtue of the lock-in it imposes on users, can exact a kind of software rent through mandatory upgrades, whether or not there is any value in it for the customer (just think of the Vista fiasco).”
For DaniWeb, Ron Miller writes “What Does the Economic Crisis Mean for the Tech Sector?”
“You would think that current economic climate would bode well for open source products. When your budget is lean, free begins to look pretty good. Cloud vendors and the growing virtualization market should do well too. With less money available, it makes a lot of sense to let the vendor deal with infrastructure and to reduce investments in your own data center.”
Nevertheless, there has not yet been evidence of companies moving more quickly in this direction due to economic circumstances. For individuals, students and small businesses, however, it may be a different story.
Posted in Open Source | Comments Off on Free Software vs Economic Distress
September 29th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Red Hat released its Linux systems management toolset, Spacewalk, as open source several months ago.
It’s designed for managing installed software applications across a network from within the firewall:
“Spacewalk manages software content updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux distributions such as Fedora, CentOS, and Scientific Linux, within your firewall. You can stage software content through different environments, managing the deployment of updates to systems and allowing you to view at which update level any given system is at across your deployment. A clean central web interface allows viewing of systems and their software update status, and initiating update actions.”
I’d like to see it expanded to manage open source applications across platforms, to make it easy to get FOSS onto Windows clients as well (like Project Smith in some ways).
Spacewalk development is hosted in Trac at fedorahosted.org.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on Spacewalk: Open Source Systems Management
September 26th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Ubuntu’s implementing another clever idea in the form of its Ubuntu Wanted Project.
The idea is to build a web collaboration space for users to submit ideas for improvements and new features that developers could then implement for Ubuntu:
“What do we need to get innovative stuff implemented?
- A great idea
- The manpower
- The infrastructure and toolset
(1) is now more or less successfully covered by Ubuntu Brainstorm. Concerning (3), some good infrastructures exists around here, such as Launchpad, and development toolsets are good but not yet optimal IMO (I’ll keep that for later). (2) is much more tricky.”
There’s been a discussion at OpenOffice.org of the need for something similar, as lots of people have good ideas for extensions, and lots of developers capable of making extensions are looking for popular user demands to satisfy. Maybe it’s time to build an “OpenOffice.org Brainstorm” site!
Posted in Extensions, Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on The Ubuntu Wanted Project
September 25th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Seneca College in Toronto, Canada has announced its intention to get involved in OpenOffice development through the Education Project.
Seneca employee Fardad has launched an entire blog on Seneca’s OOo experiment:
“I had the pleasure of meeting Eric Bachard. He is the leader of the Education Project in OOo. He also has been doing core development for Mac OS X for more than 4 years. He also did mentoring for Google Summer of Code twice and he is a professor of Applied Physics at UTBM France.”
It’s great to see the Education Project continue to prosper (and reach out to a new continent), as this is an important vector for future OOo adoption.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice in Education: Seneca College
September 24th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
I’ve mentioned VirtualBox before when it first became open source. Now a major new release and some minor upgrades have brought its version to VirtualBox 2.0.2.
A review by the n*x*adm blog covers some of the excitement of using VirtualBox on Ubuntu to run those last few needed Windows programs after migrating to Linux.
“This is the new Virtualbox release that inaugurates a brand new user interface based on QT 4, which makes it look and feel great, just like a KDE 4 application…
“It’s isolated from viruses and malware of any kind, I can backup the virtual machine as easy as copying files, and it’s free software under the GPL.”
Personally, I run it on my Mac to have access to Ubuntu without needing to reboot.
Enjoy!
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | 1 Comment »
September 23rd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
A new non-profit organization has grown out of the OLPC project, by the name of Sugar Labs.
Sugar Labs’ mission statement: “Sugar provides a simple yet powerful means of engaging young children in the world of learning that is opened up by computing and the Internet. Sugar promotes sharing, collaborative learning, and reflection. Through Sugar’s clarity of design, children and their teachers use computation on their own terms; they are free to reshape, reinvent, and reapply both software and content into powerful learning activities. Sugar is a community project; it is based on GNU/Linux, a free and open-source operating system.”
Groklaw interviews Sugar Labs’ founder Walter Bender about the project.
Bender says, “I think that Sugar, while still a relatively new project, has already shown great impact and even greater potential for learners. There is a growing community of Sugar users, developers, and supporters. New activites are being written on a regular basis. There have been aggressive efforts by the community to document Sugar and translate it into local languages (there was just a sprint to translate Sugar into Aymará). And as I mentioned, dialog with teachers is growing, especially in Latin America. So while there may be some loss of support for OLPC within the FOSS community, the support for Sugar seems to be growing. (I should point out that there is a dedicated team of developers at OLPC who believe deeply in the importance of FOSS to learning.)”
Great interview and a great project!
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on Groklaw Interviews Sugar Labs
September 19th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Ever since I first learned of GRASS GIS many years ago, I’ve been interested in open source GIS, partly as a way to achieve liberation from the Windows platform where most commercial GIS apps are mired, and partly because of the extra innovation and broader use of GIS that open source could engender.
Enter the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, created a few years ago, and dedicated to supporting and promoting open source GIS applications, data and systems.
With an active community, informative website, and legal and organizational structure, OSGeo.org’s mission statement reads:
“The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit. OSGeo also serves as an outreach and advocacy organization for the open source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration.”
Posted in Drupal, Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Open Source Geospatial Foundation
September 17th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Kazunari Hirano points out that OpenOffice.org 3.0 is officially delivered with support for 69 languages, while 7 more languages are available thanks to the work of community members from linux.cz, bringing the total to 76 languages.
That makes OpenOffice the most multi-lingual office suite available (I count 38 for our competitor), a fitting but not surprising achievement for an open source project with contributors from every continent and users in every country of the world.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org 3.0 in 76 Languages
September 16th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Codeweavers has announced CrossOver Chromium, a port of the open source Google Chromium browser to Mac OS X and Linux:
“Google has announced plans to support native Mac and Linux versions of Chromium, but they have yet to be released. CrossOver Chromium, however, runs the Windows version of Chromium natively on both Mac and Linux.”
Codeweavers doesn’t recommend using this as a primary browser, but has created it as “a proof of concept, for fun, and to showcase what Wine can do” (which is quite a lot)! Give it a try and get a feel for what Google Chrome is all about, without having to use that awful operating system under it.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Mac, Open Source | Comments Off on CrossOver Chromium
September 15th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
A few weeks ago Lifehacker posted a screenshot tour of OpenOffice.org 3.0 RC1: “Let’s take a look at the notable features so you can decide if it’s worth taking another look at OpenOffice.org as an alternative to Microsoft Office.”
It’s especially important for the OpenOffice project to receive attention from publications like Lifehacker, that are not specifically targeted at open source geeks. The major problem for OOo to overcome now is to cross the chasm from early adopters to early mainstream users, and this is always a challenge for software programs of all kinds, open source or proprietary.
Lifehacker fits the category of a smart audience that wants new tools to simplify their lives, but who are not necessarily aware of the latest open source releases. A perfect media outlet to spread word of OOo to new users.
Lifehacker mentions the major new features, Mac support, greater focus on extensions, etc, and seems positive on the program. And, with over 62,000 views of the article, it’s definitely getting the word out!
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Lifehacker on OpenOffice 3.0