May 1 2009

Employee (Almost) Chronicles Sun’s Top Ten Failures

Business and Open Source pundit Matt Asay picked up on a recent attempt by Sun’s Dan Baigent to chronicle the ten largest failures that took the tech giant from a 0 billion peak valuation to the recent buyout by Oracle for a mere .4 billion. Unfortunately, Dan only made it to number three on his list before Sun pulled the plug. How long will it take corporate overlords until they finally realize that broad level censorship and trying to control the message are far more harmful than just becoming part of the discourse? “I find that I tend to learn much more from my failures than from my successes. I’d be grateful for the chance to learn from Sun’s, too. Sun, please let Baigent continue his countdown. It allows Sun to constructively chronicle its own failings, rather than allowing others to do so in less generous terms.”

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Apr 29 2009

Is Apache Or GPL Better For Open-Source Business?

mjasay writes “While the GPL powers as much as 77% of all SourceForge projects, Eric Raymond argues that the GPL is ‘a confession of fear and weakness’ that ‘slows down open-source adoption’ because of the fear and uncertainty the GPL provokes. Raymond’s argument seems to be that if openness is the winning strategy, an argument Michael Tiemann advocates, wouldn’t it make sense to use the most open license? Geir Magnusson of the Apache Software Foundation suggests that there are few ‘pure’ GPL-only open-source projects, as GPL-prone developers have to ‘modify it in some way to get around the enforcement of Freedom(SM) in GPL so people can use the project.’ But the real benefit of Apache-style licensing may not be for developers at all, and rather accrue to businesses hoping to drive adoption of their products: Apache licensing may encourage broader, deeper adoption than the GPL. The old GPL vs. BSD/Apache debate may not be about developer preferences so much as new business realities.”

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Apr 28 2009

Oracle Buy Renews Call To Spin Off OpenOffice.org

ericatcw writes “Some OpenOffice.org insiders say Oracle’s purchase of Sun is reinvigorating the long-stymied push to spin off the open-source project into a 100% independent foundation. Freeing itself from Sun’s (and soon to be Oracle’s) orbit will attract more developers and more vendor support, two perennial problems due to Sun’s tight grip on the project, say supporters, who wonder which foundation model might work best: Mozilla, Apache or Linux. Others prefer to take their chances under Larry Ellison, saying Oracle’s take-no-prisoners salesforce and grudge against Microsoft could benefit OpenOffice.org. Version 3.0 of the Microsoft Office competitor has garnered 50 million downloads in the last six months.”

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Apr 28 2009

Crowd-Source Translation Software For Free Content?

yahyamf writes “I have a lot of free educational content in the form of audio lectures and text, which I’d like to translate into as many languages as possible. I would also want to transcribe the audio and create audiobooks from the text. There are already several volunteers willing to contribute, but I need some web based software to manage all the work. Facebook is already doing something like this, but it is only for their content. I’ve also looked at Damned Lies, which is part of the Gnome project, but it doesn’t seem to handle audio. Are there any other open source translation projects out there that I can customize and build upon?”

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Apr 28 2009

Apple Is Sued After Pressuring Open-source ITunes Project

The operator of a technology discussion forum has sued Apple, claiming that the company used US copyright law to curb legitimate discussion of its iTunes software.

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Apr 27 2009

Military Enlists Open Source Community

jmwci1 writes “The US Defense Department is enlisting an open source approach to software development — an about-face for such a historically top-down organization. In recent weeks, the military has launched a collaborative platform called Forge.mil for its developers to share software, systems components and network services. The agency also signed an agreement with the Open Source Software Institute to allow 50 internally developed workforce management applications to be licensed to other government agencies, universities and companies.”

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Apr 24 2009

Senate Bill Calls For Open Source Electronic Health Records

An anonymous reader optimistically writes that new legislation has been introduced in the Senate that would call for a nationwide adoption of electronic health records built on open source. The bill does not seek to supplant proprietary alternatives, but instead to either augment or offer a cost effective alternative. “‘We need advancements in health information technology across the board to improve the quality of care Americans receive,’ said Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care. ‘To make this happen, we need universal access to affordable and interoperable health information technology – from small, rural health clinics to large, urban hospitals.'”

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Apr 22 2009

Firefox 3.0.9 targets 12 security vulnerabilities

Web browser’s third update this year fixes 12 vulnerabilities–four rated critical–and comes as its open-source developers ready the fourth beta.

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Apr 22 2009

F-Secure Suggests Ditching Adobe Reader For Free PDF Viewers

hweimer writes “Yesterday at RSA security conference, F-Secure’s chief research officer recommended dropping Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files because of the huge amount of targeted attacks against it. Instead, he pointed to PDFreaders.org, a website maintaining a list of free and open source PDF viewers.”

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Apr 22 2009

"Good Enough" Computers Are the Future

An anonymous reader writes “Over on the PC World blog, Keir Thomas engages in some speculative thinking. Pretending to be writing from the year 2025, he describes a world of ‘Good Enough computing,’ wherein ultra-cheap PCs and notebooks (created to help end-users weather the ‘Great Recession’ of the early 21st century) are coupled to open source operating systems. This is possible because even the cheapest chips have all the power most people need nowadays. In what is effectively the present situation with netbooks writ large, he sees a future where Microsoft is priced out of the entire desktop operating system market and can’t compete. It’s a fun read that raises some interesting points.”

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