November 20th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
The Ubuntu Developer Summit in Mountainview, California, concluded recently. Ubuntu developers the world over converged to discuss their projects, collaborate and plan for future growth.
Linux.com provides a summary report of the event. Video interviews with Mark Shuttleworth, Jono Bacon, and others are included in the article, along with discussions of Jokosher, Gnome and KDE in Ubuntu, and Telepathy, a framework providing unified access to IRC, instant messaging, VoIP, and video chat.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on Ubuntu Developer Summit Report
November 18th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
The city of Northglenn, Colorado, migrated its municipal computer systems to OpenOffice.org, Linux thin terminals, and other open source applications. In some instances, budget line items of $350,000 were reduced to $100,000, allowing savings to be used in migrating to state-of-the-art systems for the city.
Anthony Fortenberry explains that it’s about more than saving money. Modernization and service improvement are other significant reasons to choose open source: “By using extensible, low-cost open source software, local governments can move toward e-government and other advanced services much more quickly than under current conditions.”
The interview contains many details about the benefits Northglenn received from its investment in open source infrastructure. There’s a lot for others to learn from this example.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 4 Comments »
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 14th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
In Linux Journal‘s Editors’ Choice 2006, OpenOffice took home the Office Suite, Spreadsheet, and Presentation Software awards.
Here’s their analysis:
“OpenOffice.org delivers just the right combination of openness, power and similarity to Microsoft Office that it provides the features and familiarity people want in an office suite without the drawbacks of proprietary document format or proprietary code. It may not always import Microsoft Office files perfectly, but it does so without the crashes that sometimes plague suites like EIOffice when importing large, complex Microsoft Office files. Overall, OpenOffice.org has a way to go before it reaches its potential, but it still provides the best combination of features and compatibility, along with the distinct advantage of being an open-source project.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OOo Takes Several Linux Journal Editors’ Choice Awards
November 10th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
A formal Novell statement indicates their continued commitment to ODF, despite the recent agreement with Microsoft. In fact, the purpose of the agreement seems to be future compatibility for OOo with whatever new formats MS sets for upcoming versions of its office programs.
In Novell’s own words, “The agreement does not change our existing commitment to enhance OpenOffice.org, assist customers with deployment and support of OpenOffice.org on Windows® and Linux®, and encourage customers to standardize on OpenDocument Format (ODF). The agreement is designed to ensure that customers using OpenOffice.org will continue to be able to read and write documents using future Microsoft Office file formats, as they do with the existing closed and proprietary file formats employed by Microsoft Office today. OpenOffice.org Novell Edition will continue to use ODF by default.”
Sounds promising. Indeed, it would be a technical and political step backward to abandon ODF for proprietary formats at this point (which some have feared Novell might do), and it would be a strategic mistake to do so. Novell has been a champion of ODF and OpenOffice, and they are not backing down now, so close to victory.
Posted in ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Novell Reaffirms Commitment to ODF
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
November 8th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Free Software Magazine tests ODF transfer between OpenOffice.org, KOffice, and AbiWord.
“Numerous office suites and word processors support the OpenDocument format (ODF). ODF is an open standard for saving and exchanging office documents. The standard has been developed to provide an open alternative to proprietary, for example Microsoft Office, document formats.”
There are some problems, but they are most likely due to the newness of ODF support in these applications. As support matures, these problems should be wiped away.
Posted in ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Free Software Magazine tests ODF
November 7th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
This is an oldie but a goodie. InfoWorld writes State government CIOs vote for open source.
According to the article, CIOs are moving their agencies toward heavy open source use. In the Tipping Point sense, I would say they are at the early majority stage, and appear to be growing fast.
The article’s data is not highly granular; for one thing, it does not distinguish between server and desktop use. But enough open source migrations have occurred in the world that we can identify a typical process, which is that server and web infrastructure migrates first (often led by Apache), followed by select desktop applications like Firefox and OpenOffice.org, and then eventually desktop OS replacement by Linux.
To see US governments following the footsteps of places like Brazil, Europe and developing countries means that the phenomenon is truly worldwide. Governments will break down the barricades, and then the private sector will rush through to reap the benefits too.
Posted in Open Source | Comments Off on “State government CIOs vote for open source”
November 3rd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Once again, ThoughtFix has interesting news about the evolution of the Nokia 770. He’s found information (and a photo) of the next generation Nokia 770! (Which will be named the 870 or 880, apparently.) No news on when it will be released, but the hardware information was all submitted to the FCC for approval.
And to add more punch, FreeCiv has been ported to Maemo. Pure awesome.
Posted in Maemo, Open Source | Comments Off on Next Generation Nokia 770