February 21st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
A few old news articles that I’d nevertheless like to catalog here today:
InformationWeek writes, in mid-January, of Lenovo preinstalling Linux:
“Starting Jan. 14, the T61 and R16 Centrino ThinkPads will have the option of shipping with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, with OpenOffice.org included. A news item over at DesktopLinux.com revealed that the T61 will sport a Core 2 Duo T7205 2.0-GHz processor, 1 Gbyte of DDR2 RAM, an 80-Gbyte 5400 RPM hard drive — all for $949.” (Incidentally, choosing Linux will save a buyer $20 over Windows on the same hardware.)
Erwin Tenhumberg writes a status report on ODF that he titles “Dispelling Myths Around ODF.”
A very thorough article that debunks some of the FUD Microsoft has been spreading around ODF (though personally, I have not seen as much MS FUD as I expected–maybe their energy isn’t what it once was).
My favorite section is where Erwin lists some of the prominent applications that use ODF as their default, or one of their primary, formats. These include KOffice, OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, IBM Lotus Symphony, Corel WordPerfect, Apple TextEdit, Google Docs, and plenty more.
Posted in GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
February 20th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
WHDb writes “The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy–and Their Open Source Alternatives.”
Most of these programs are familiar old friends, like Ubuntu and OpenOffice, but the list includes some that are new to me, such as Archimedes CAD.
The list is mostly focused on open source programs to run on Windows, though most (yet, not all) of the key applications are cross-platform for Linux and Mac as well. (I maintain a list of my preferred FOSS programs for Mac OS X here.)
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on 50 Open Source Alternatives
February 19th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Groklaw interviewed Nicholas Reville about Miro and open online media. Miro, developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, is an open source video player, BitTorrent client and podcast subscription tool based on the Mozilla platform.
In Reville’s own words, “It’s free; it’s open source; it’s made by a nonprofit which is the organization that I work for. And the idea behind Miro is to give you a comprehensive TV-like experience on your computer. And we’re trying to do that not just because we want to have a great experience for our users, which we do, but also because we’ve built the software in a very open, very democratic, very accessible way. The goal is to open up video online, to not have the same kind of gatekeepers and restrictions that creators face in traditional broadcasting, to not have those as television moves online.”
Miro was downloaded over 2 million times in 2007, and aims for 5 million downloads in 2008.
Reville has an expansive view of the mission of Miro. Beyond its core purpose, Miro also hopes to lift up other open source projects along with its growth: “What we’re really hoping is that open source, various open source projects can find ways of supporting each other, can connect users to other tools and projects that are going to be useful for them and can really raise each other up together. And so our collaboration with Mozilla is certainly doing that for us, and maybe someday we’ll be able to do that for another project.”
What a beautiful, useful program, and a model of the best of open source in its development process and its final product!
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Groklaw Interviews Nicholas Reville About Miro
February 15th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
CNet has posted a video of their picks for the Top 5 Downloads of 2007.
I’ll destroy the drama of their countdown to say the number one spot is occupied by OpenOffice. Following that, the list contains several other of my favorite open source applications (in order):
- OpenOffice (office suite)
- Audacity (audio editor)
- Miro (internet video player)
- Pidgin (instant messenger)
It’s notoriously hard to estimate the current number of global OpenOffice users, but it is likely in the range of 100 million, with marketshare/usage share possibly as high as 20%.
After a very strong year in 2007, and recognition like CNET’s, I expect 2008 to be another record-breaking year for the suite.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on CNET’s #1 Download for 2007 is OpenOffice
February 14th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The Sunday Times Online (of Sri Lanka) announces Sri Lanka will join the OLPC project and distribute 2 million XOs to its school children.
To my knowledge, this is the biggest roll-out to date. Further, it is being organized as a collaboration between the Sri Lankan government, world institutions, and private entities. From the article:
“This is being launched by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a US based organisation in collaboration with the Education Department and several local and foreign financial, technological and academic institutions… Director OLPC Europe, Middle East and Asia Matt Keller, in an interview with The Sunday Times FT, said the World Bank has stepped in to fund a pilot project to introduce laptops as an educational tool in nine provinces in the island.”
Posted in Free Culture, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on Sri Lanka Joins OLPC
February 13th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Thankfully, the EU’s antitrust office functions much more effectively than does the US DOJ’s!
Groklaw reports on a new investigation the EU has begun into Microsoft’s tactics in promoting its MSOOXML file format, in EU Commission Investigating Microsoft’s MSOOXML Push. Beyond that, Groklaw has collected a large number of resources following the ODF vs MSOOXML contest:
“Now that it’s making headlines in the mainstream press that the EU Commission is investigating Microsoft’s behavior in trying to get MSOOXML accepted as an ISO “standard”, I want to simply remind the world that Groklaw has a permanent ODF/MSOOXML page, including a chronology, where all the events can be tracked, month by month, since the Massachusetts events began in January of 2005.”
Groklaw links to Andy Updegrove’s detailed article of a similar title, EU Initiates Investigation Against Microsoft OOXML Push. When companies try to corrupt and interfere with government bodies, as Microsoft did to Sweden during the initial MSOOXML standardization attempt last year, it’s clear the EU will come to their defense.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Groklaw: “EU Commission Investigating Microsoft’s MSOOXML Push”
February 12th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
IBM is a staunch defender of open standards in IT these days, and has been one of the big supports of ODF (OpenDocument Format), the XML-based specification that should do for “office” documents what HTML has done for the web: make it totally agnostic to the software you use to create and consume data. ODF could break up another monopoly and bring a new wave of innovation to the realm of desktop and net-based computing.
Ars Technica reports on IBM’s announcement that ODF is superior to Microsoft’s MSOOXML:
“As governments around the world begin to establish IT procurement policies that favor open standards, the stakes in the document format dispute are rising. The trend towards mandatory standards adoption in government IT has led some to speculate that government agencies and companies that work closely with the public sector will begin to turn away from Microsoft’s deeply entrenched office offerings, instead adopting alternatives like IBM’s Lotus Notes, Sun’s StarOffice, or OpenOffice.org which use the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Microsoft has been seeking ISO approval for its own OOXML format in order to ensure that its software remains competitive.”
The strategic and market reasons are clear why an open standard (ODF) is better for customers than a closed standard, even one that masquerades as open (MSOOXML). But the issue is greater than that. The open standard, in this case, is also the technologically more advanced of the two.
“Citing technical and intellectual property issues, a growing number of critics believe that Microsoft’s standards are flawed, restrictive, not adequately aligned with existing standards, or not conducive to broad third-party support. They argue that Microsoft should adopt ODF rather than fragmenting the office document space with its own alternative.”
After years of dragging their heels, Microsoft has slowly moved toward supporting standard HTML, so we should demand the same with ODF. It’s best for customers, and any business that wants to thrive should do right by its customers.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Ars Technica: IBM Calls MSOOXML Inferior
February 11th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Express Computer reports on “Open Source Rising” in India. Author Prashant Rao begins, “Things are looking good for the proponents of Open Source software on all fronts.”
India is a bellwether for FOSS adoption. While still a developing country, it has a very strong IT sector. Together, this is a perfect storm for the implementation of open source! Rao catalogs the growth of FOSS on servers, but then comes to the really interesting territory, end-user desktops. Of particular interest to me is the rapid adoption of OpenOffice within Indian IT enterprises:
“Coming to Open Source on the desktop, while desktop Linux remains kludgy, OpenOffice.org is doing just fine. Various estimates put it at anything between 10% and 20% of the market. I think that usage is higher. In India, at least, many large organizations have put the bulk of their users on OpenOffice restricting Microsoft Office to a handful of people who interact with the outside world.”
We see news about some of the high-profile corporate migrations to OpenOffice.org in India. Along with others around the world, we try to keep track of these on the Major OpenOffice.org Deployments page on the project wiki.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on “Open Source Rising” in India
February 8th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
There are at least two revolutionary new portable computers on the market, each of which has the potential to sell several million units, and because each ships with Linux and an open source software stack, together they may change the personal computing landscape more than we have seen in decades.
Groklaw provides a photo gallery comparing the XO and Asus Eee (and some other ordinary computers to give scale).
“One of the happy buyers of a One Laptop Per Child XO laptop is Groklaw member Jerry van Baren. He asked me if it would be useful to show a comparison between the screen sizes and keyboards of the XO and the Asus Eee PC. I thought that was a grand idea.”
The new form factor they share is ultra-portability, and along with it, their success can be attributed to their extremely affordable pricing (each machine is cheaper than Windows or Microsoft Office by itself). As predicted by the theory of The Innovator’s Dilemma, a traditional market is once again being upset by cheaper competition from below. These machines, and others that will follow, are providing a strong beachhead for open source on the normal end user’s personal computer. This trend is only going to accelerate from here.
Posted in GNU/Linux, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on OLPC XO and Asus Eee Pictorial Comparison
February 7th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The Mac OS X Aqua port of OpenOffice has been making rapid progress after the addition of several fulltime developers to the team. There’s still a long way to go, but with OOo 3.0 scheduled for this year, OS X will finally be an equally-supported platform. It makes sense to invest in the Mac now, as OS X’s US web usage share reached nearly 8% in December 2007, and continues to increase rapidly.
Download an Aqua OOo development snapshot here.
Posted in Mac, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Mac OpenOffice.org Update