Showing headlines posted by Herschel_Cohen

The days of selling software through the traditional commercial model are numbered, as open source is becoming the paradigm of choice, said Greg Stein, chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, at the EclipseCon 2006 conference on Wednesday.

Software is becoming is increasingly commoditised, Stein said during his keynote presentation, and more of it is available free and it is easy to get.

The Eclipse Foundation is expanding its core, developer's workbench into a broader platform that competes more directly with Microsoft Windows, at least within the enterprise.

I'm an art professor, and last semester I embarked on an exciting new adventure by erasing Mac OS X from nearly all of the Macintoshes in our digital media lab and installing Ubuntu in its place.

Today, Microsoft responded with the announcement at its Office Developers Conference of its own initiative: the Open XML Formats Developer Group. At launch, the new forum has 39 members, most notably including Apple, Intel and Toshiba. Despite the long list of founding members, however, it appears that the forum is purely informational in nature.

The CSIR Open Source Centre plans to open a satellite centre in Soweto in May this year to expose the untapped ICT skills and research potential in the township just south of Johannesburg.

Open Source Development Labs expects the group to foster closer ties with sometimes-disgruntled programmers.

[Only mentions Linux as a counter to Microsoft, but every Linux user loves a good Windows rant now and then.]

I thought this was going to be my chance. I really did. I, like many others, had followed the pre-introduction buzz about a new gizmo to be deployed by Microsoft with the codename "Origami."

[ED: A grouch posting, in a mixup I am incorrectly labeled as the poster. - HC]

Sony Online Entertainment is to replace some Oracle databases with software from EnterpriseDB in a vote of confidence for the open-source company.

This Cyber Cynic podcast with Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols looks at Dell's Linux distribution strategy. (eWEEK Podcast #40)

[ED: This author always has an interesting, provocative view point. Nonetheless, I am including this with some doubt, because once locating the file I could not get it to play. Let me know if it works or not for you. - HC]

Red Hat has announced their partnership with the Lotus Learning Systems Society to promote open source in education in schools. The Hyderabad based Lotus Learning Systems Society, an organisation established to provide world- class professional teacher development and establishing and operating educational institutions, will deploy Red Hat's open source programs in Lotus National Schools

[ED: Nice, but improvements in U.S. would be appreciated too. - HC]

Accessibility is an increasingly important issue for free and open source software (FOSS) developers and advocates. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has developed standards for ensuring that software is accessible to people with disabilities. Governments around the world often require that software procured for public use must meet or exceed accessibility standards. Disabled users and the FOSS community, however, still have a serious communication problem.

2006-03-13 - Summary of mozilla.org staff meeting

- Various discussions in mozilla.dev.general about openness

*1.0.8 and 1.7.13* ... *Firefox 1.5.0.2* ... *Firefox 1.5.0.3* ... *Firefox 2* ... etc

People doing the hard, many times dull stuff - anyone out there want to help?

You've probably heard the talk and seen the articles from Linux enthusiasts on how virtually any Linux distro can run rings around Windows. To help clarify things, Scott M. Morris, the editor of Novell's CoolSolutions website, has complied all the key reasons in one handy, bookmarkable article.

Yes PS3 is delayed, but did you know: "Kutaragi additionally confirmed that the gaming console will ship with an upgradable 60GB hard drive pre-installed with Linux ..."? Moreover, should the PS3 once again out sell the X-box, this will be a visible trashing of Windows by Linux.

[ED: Hey Bomber, shift your troops to defend the silly flank -(I wonder what that means, terrorists or extraneous chatter caught by your N.S.A. at work?) - HC]

Financially strapped Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) is targetting SAP customers planning to migrate off mainframe platforms with Linux-based servers.

[ED: Is there a more troubled vendor than SAP? Oh, it's a SAP site. Now I understand. - HC]

The article in The Economist, Open, but not as usual, contains misrepresentations that appear to be designed to disparage open source and promote closed source.

[ED: Front page news, straight from my favorite Grouch - HC]

This very small piece from the Library Journal cites a story in Linux Journal. Start there, but be sure to click the link in the second paragraph that speaks about a Google add on for searching library collections, or for the impatient go there directly: by Brian Kenney also in the Library Journal.

Why the best model for building out infrastructure may be the Interstate Highway System.

[ED: I really like Doc, he thinks very differently than most keyboard pounders, however, this is a bad analogy for several reasons. Despite the unrequited American love of the automoble the freeways in what we humans view as hard reality must give way to paying more of the true costs. That is, think toll roads and limiting access - features that are neither necessary nor desireable for the internet. Time for many to really to think differently. - HC]

In a landmark decision a Dutch court has ruled in favour of a Creative Commons licence in a case involving pictures published by MTV personality Adam Curry. The pictures were reproduced by a Dutch newspaper without Curry's permission.

[ED: This is just one of the reasons I dislike the proliferation of supposed variations of Open Source and Free licenses for software: it is just too easy to make a good faith error that hurts too many. - HC]

Splunk, Inc. has received plenty accolades lately, mostly as a result of its effort in making Splunk, its flagship product, available with an open source API. Splunk seeks to parse every log file within your IT infrastructure, and then correlates the data in a meaningful way. After it consumes tons of data, Splunk's Web interface makes it very easy to grok the root cause of most issues without having to manually peruse tons of separate log files.