Showing headlines posted by glynmoody

Microsoft has a problem: it wants to complain about what it considers Google's anti-competitive behaviour. Unfortunately, all the arguments Microsoft made when it was being targetted for anti-competitive behaviour - that it was simply "successful" and "innovative" - can be used by Google too. So Microsoft finds itself arguing against itself - and looking ridiculous.

We're used to being able to recycle old, underpowered Windows PCs by installing GNU/Linux on them. Imagine if you could do the same with old Windows Mobile phones. Now you can - demonstrating once again how open source changes every market that it enters.

In the last few weeks the tech world has had a flood of exciting stories: Buzz, Google's gigabit fibre network, Apple's iPad, Nexus One. But conspicuous by its absence in all this is Microsoft, which seems to have dropped out of the news completely. Perhaps this is the way its empire ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

Once again, the British Library is working closely with Microsoft to promote proprietary technologies instead of open ones - giving away open source code that requires Windows Server, SQL Server .NET Framework and SharePoint to work. Shouldn't publicly-funded libraries be helping to spread knowledge, not locking it down?

New figures from webmasterpro.de show surprisingly high market share for OpenOffice.org around the world - peaking at 22% in Poland and Germany. Has the rise of OpenOffice.org to become a true rival to Microsoft Office begun?

Facebook's release of HipHop as open source underlines the fact that along with Google, Facebook has become one of the most powerful demonstrations that free software now scales way beyond proprietary offerings. In fact, HipHop handles over 10 billion PHP-based pages views every day, on average - a number that is likely to grow significantly.

For the first time, we get to see what happens when a company that has built up an immense global business empire on the basis of its proprietary software takes over some of the most important open source projects around. Does it destroy them through mutual incomprehension? Or is it *changed* by them, moving towards their approaches? That's what we're going to find out over the next few years in the Great Oracle Experiment.

Everyone is noting that Apple's iPad is a closed system; but there's a dangerous knock-on consequence of giving people the ultimate system for *consuming* content: they don't really understand computers. That's bad, because it means that politicians will find it even easier to bring in legislation like ACTA that will harm free software. Here's what can be done about it - and why the iPad might still be good news for open source.

News that 75% of kernel hackers are now paid for their work has led some to suggest that they've sold out. That's not the case: here's why.

As Firefox gets closer and closer to that 50% market share around the world (it's already there in some countries), the question is: what next? The answer is Mozilla Drumbeat, an ambitious project to "make sure the internet is still open, participatory 100 years from now."

The attempt to introduce software patents into Europe failed a few years ago, but the danger remains. Moves to create a new, pan-European patent could allow them in by the backdoor. The fight to stop them has begun.

Most people have been asking whether the Google Nexus One is an iPhone-killer; but there's a phrase in the official Google blog that suggests it's something much bigger: the fusion of computer and mobile, with the Internet as the digital glue - a true "nexus" device. If Google can encourage other manufacturers to come out with more, lower-cost models, this could be the device that the billions of people currently with neither computer nor mobile phone could use to access the Internet. And all running on Linux.

Most people have tended to dismiss the OpenOffice.org project as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious contender. Microsoft seems to feel otherwise judging by a new job ad for a “Linux and Open Office Compete Lead". According to this, competing with both GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org is "one of the biggest issues that is top of mind" for no less a person than Steve Ballmer.

How do you apply the principles behind open source to open hardware? It's not easy, but early examples are beginning to emerge, including not one but *two* open source car projects. As ever, a big problem is finding the right kind of licence.

People seem underwhelmed by Chromium OS, but maybe Google has a bigger plan: how about producing a netbook running Chromium OS, and giving it away? The small hardware costs would be covered by advertising *in the Web apps*. Would you use one?

Last year Russia announced an ambitious plan to use free software for all its schools. Now, it seems, things aren't going so smoothly. Funds have been cut back, faulty discs containing free software were sent out - and Microsoft is offering special deals on Windows XP...

SAP's CTO has recently called for Java to be run by "an authentically open body". But that's a deeply hypocritical position to take for a company that has written what amounts to a love-letter to software patents, submitted as an amicus curiae brief to the European Patent Office. Software patents and "authentic" openness just don't mix: SAP needs to choose which side it is on.

The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) is an important document for the European public sector. Version 1 had strong support for open standards and royalty-free licences to patents. A leaked version 2 shows that open standards and open source are out, and "openness" of the vaguest kind is in, as are software patents. If this really is version 2, things are not looking good for public sector open source in the EU.

Are open source companies really open source? Sharing the code isn't enough: you need to have a vibrant community forming around the code. And that is unlikely to happen if the company insists on owning all the copyright, even for external contributions. Could the way forward be the creation of more foundations along the lines of Mozilla Foundation, Eclipse Foundation or Symbian Foundation?

Once, the Netcraft Web Server Survey was boring: Apache was always streaks ahead of the competition. Then Microsoft decided to fight back - and started winning significant market share. Now things are more complicated, with major Web servers from Google, qq.com and Russia. Apache is holding up...but Microsoft's IIS is on the way down again.