April 4th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The Inquirer reviews the Nokia N800 in Nokia’s cheap UMPC alternative is future-proof, giving it nine out of ten “beers” for a very positive result.
“With [the N800], the expensive UMPC vendor camp and the PDA vendors both have something to worry about. At the same time, road warriors needing web browsing and e-mail on the go can finally consider leaving notebooks at home, only using them as desktop replacements.”
Lots of good photos in this review, and it demonstrates an understanding of the real importance of the Maemo’s open source nature (which is why they call it “future-proof”).
The Maemo platform is in a very strong position for the web tablet market, probably analogous to what DOS achieved in the early days of the PC market. And web tablets, or something similar, will probably replace the expensive and awkward UMPC category entirely.
Further, open source has proved (witness Apache), that once it starts strongly in a new market niche, it is nearly impossible to dislodge it. I expect the future product category of web tablets to be another area where open source completely dominates, like web servers, because of the strong position it is already carving out for itself now with the Maemo and N800.
Posted in Maemo, Open Source | Comments Off on Inquirer Reviews the Nokia N800
April 2nd, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The site “Macintosh Biblioblog” publishes NeoOffice a Great, Free Microsoft Office Replacement.
The review is very positive and helps to get the word out. (That’s a pun–it’s a bible study blog!) Now is a great time to switch to NeoOffice:
“We’re putting in a computer lab of all iMacs at our church and so have been exploring Open Source solutions for our application needs. And with NeoOffice having a new version this week, I’ve downloaded it, installed it, and played with it. And I think I may never buy Microsoft Word again.”
Posted in Mac, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Macintosh Biblioblog Recommends NeoOffice
March 28th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
NeoOffice 2.1 was released yesterday.
This derivative of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X has some nice features not available in the OpenOffice.org X11 variant, including a native Aqua interface, the ability to read and write Microsoft’s new “docx” file format, and to run Excel macros.
(Amazingly, Microsoft Office on Mac will not be able to read its own new docx file formats until the second half of this year or later, and it will not ever be able to run macros, as that feature has been dropped from the Mac version.)
NeoOffice can be downloaded from the project site. Please make a donation to the developers, they are doing terrific work here!
Posted in Mac, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on NeoOffice 2.1 Released
March 28th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Express Computer (of India) publishes a detailed investigation of the growing importance of FOSS in Indian computing, titled “OSS Diversifies as it Gains Acceptance.”
“A lot of organisations are using Open Source solutions even though they may not be running an end to end OSS solution stack. The OSS landscape in India is changing rapidly because of the demands that customers are placing on vendors to offer a business advantage, value for money and reduce the risk associated with making long-term technology investments.”
In some ways, adoption is happening the reverse of the process in the US and Europe. End user applications may be switching to FOSS first: “In India, enterprise productivity tools such as OpenOffice have become quite popular. However, to a large extent, enterprises haven’t adopted open source applications at the back-end.”
The article mentions the major factors behind Linux’s rapid adoption as cost, interoperability, stability, security, innovation and choice.
One of my key interests is open source on the desktop. And the article touches on that subject too:
“In India the adoption of the Linux on the desktop is at a nascent stage. Mass adoption on the desktop is still a dream. Pradhan says, “This is a key area of interest for Red Hat today, since we have visibly moved beyond the platform and are now making ourselves felt in applications developed around Linux.”
The Linux operating system is already making inroads in Indian enterprises with huge deployments such as LIC with 2,000 desktops. 6,000 schools in Uttar Pradesh have adopted Linux in their curriculum.”
With Red Hat doubling in size in India each year, I expect to see a lot more migrations to Linux and OpenOffice throughout the country’s educational and broader IT sectors.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on India’s FOSS Market Gaining Momentum
March 26th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Ari Jaaksi, head of Nokia’s open source software operations, has posted a “high-level roadmap” of the next year or two of Maemo platform development.
The roadmap contains a lot of interesting features for all N800 users. Software improvements to OS2007 will be coming in several waves, and then it appears that new hardware might be planned for next year, to include WiMax support. On top of that are plans to strengthen involvement in open source community projects, and to encourage even greater participation by developers on applications for, and improvements to, Maemo itself.
The post is very encouraging, and the huge number of comments responding to it indicate how robust this community has already become. Maemo is great!
Posted in Maemo, Open Source | Comments Off on Maemo Roadmap
March 23rd, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The OpenOffice.org Newsletter Blog reports on an interesting Japanese company’s switch to OpenOffice: K.K. Ashisuto migrated its 650 employees recently.
The founder, Bill Totten, announced this decision on his corporate blog:
“Of course we continued some Microsoft license agreements that we judged to be absolutely indispensable for responding to the needs of our customers, but on a company-wide basis, OpenOffice is now our office software standard. As a rule, our employees now use only freely-available open-source software for creating documents, spread-sheets, and presentation materials.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Japan’s Leading Software Distributor switches to OOo
March 19th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Cool news from Venezuela this morning: Rolando Blanco announces on his blog that a Venezuelan government agency migrated 850 desktops and 16 servers to Ubuntu.
Blanco’s post includes a number of snapshots of the new desktops in action. They look great!
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on Venezuela Ubuntu Deployment
March 16th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Anyone familiar enough with using Microsoft Windows and Office knows that moving years of data and habits to a new platform is not easy.
That difficulty–created through decades of strategic decisions at Microsoft–is exactly why it is so important to migrate away. Microsoft’s strategy is to make it ever harder to work on any other platform, and to keep increasing their revenues by squeezing those who remain locked in to Microsoft’s products. They seem to be redoubling their efforts at monopoly control right now, in particular by tying their desktop monopoly products to new server products coming out, but right now is also a chance to escape.
An opportunity exists to switch to Open Source (whether it’s just Firefox and OpenOffice on existing Windows boxes for now, or whether it’s an OS migration to Linux) because of faltering sales of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, providing a rare chance for individuals and organizations to make a shift and get off the expensive treadmill of Microsoft’s stream of costly updates.
Sam Hiser provides a high level guide to “leaving Windows and Office.”
At the very heart of this opportunity is ODF, the OpenDocument Format, which does for typical office documents what HTML did for the web: standardizes it and gives every person and every program equal access to the real value, the data stored within.
Adopting ODF is the key to escaping Microsoft’s dungeon, and breaking down that barrier then opens up an unprecedented range of flexibility in a competitive marketplace. Hiser discusses several ways to accomplish this in his post, and has collected thoughtful comments from notable industry veterans in response (and in affirmation of his points).
Posted in GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Sam Hiser on Migrating Away from Windows and MS Office
March 14th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Up on the Ubuntu Fridge is a post about the French Parliament getting ready to adopt Ubuntu:
“The French Parliament looks to be the next big Ubuntu switcher according to reports. Recently the Parliament produced an official government report that recommended the use of free software over proprietary software. The switch to free software is expected to provide a substantial savings to the tax-payers according to the government study.
Following this recommendation two companies, Linagora and Unilog, have been selected to provide the members of the Parliament as well as their assistants new computers containing free software. This will amount to 1,154 new computers running Ubuntu prior to the start of the next session which occurs in June 2007.”
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | 1 Comment »
March 12th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
IBM’s adoption of open source as it has transformed into a services company is a model for others in the industry. Recently, IBM has created a new Open Source Portal to present its activities to the world in one easy-to-find location.
Posted in Open Source | Comments Off on IBM’s Open Source Portal