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NewsVac: News from around the Web
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Why open source developers can be more productive, and other tales from a Google open house
3 hours, 55 minutes ago
Yesterday Google celebrated the opening of a larger Cambridge, Massachusetts office, which takes up a substantial part of a building right next to the Kendall/MIT subway stop in the higher-than-high tech area of East Cambridge. I got a look at their new Friend Connect service (covered in a related Radar blog) and heard some fascinating comments that the staff kindly let me reproduce here. -
Frequent open source miles
5 hours, 55 minutes ago
Matt Asay’s piece on “open source free- riders” got my goat this morning because we’re on opposite sides of the market. -
Trouble in paradise?
20 hours, 25 minutes ago
Maybe it’s a coincidence but this week has seen evidence of tension between commercial open source vendors and elements of the open source user community. Matt Asay stirred up something of a hornet’s nest with his post questioning how open source vendors can find ways of encouraging users to contribute either code of cash in return for free software. -
Open source awards open for nominations
22 hours, 25 minutes ago
Nominations are open for the third annual Sourceforge.net Community Choice Awards, with winners to be announced at OSCON 2008 in July. Nominations are accepted for all open source projects, not just SourceForge.net-based projects, and the categories include the intriguing "Most likely to get users sued." -
Android : A sneak peek at the future of online gaming...
1 day, 1 hour ago
How an upcoming android game called City Slikkers is going to revolutionize the way we game.It is one among the top 50 of android developers challenge -
The Consequences of Being an Open Source Company
1 day, 2 hours ago
No Matt, my brain definitely wasn't idle.. I've been thinking about these problems for the better part of the last decade. And it seems like I`m not the only one who wants this discussion. -
HP, EDS, and Open Source
1 day, 3 hours ago
HP seems to have a liking for big deals - remember when they spent $25 billion for Compaq? Now they're laying out almost $14 billion to acquire global services company EDS. When elephants go dancing together, the rest of us need to be cautious. -
Cash, code, or free-riding in open source communities?
1 day, 3 hours ago
Last night Marriott was kind enough to upgrade me to a junior suite. I say "kind enough" but perhaps it was my due: I stay in Marriott-branded hotels over 75 nights each year. While I never pay for this level of room, Marriott occasionally rewards my loyalty with an expensive room type. -
Alfresco's Latest ECM: Prying Open a Sector?
1 day, 20 hours ago
Latest enterprise release brings open source content management lines into wider competition. "We are building the product to customer requirements, particularly in what they need for developing knowledge worker applications, compliance applications or corporate intranets and internet Web sites," Newton told InternetNews.com. "However, this brings us into competitive and winning situations with Filenet, OpenText and EMC on the document management side, Vignette and Interwoven on the WCM (Web Content Management)side, and increasingly Microsoft SharePoint on both." -
Could investor short-termism undermine open source?
1 day, 23 hours ago
When we write about investors on this blog we are normally referring to angel and VC investors and the funding they provide to open source start-ups. There is a small, but growing, list of VCs that clearly understand the open source development and distribution models and the long-term profit potential of open source software vendors. -
The market's irrational expectations of open source
2 days, 3 hours ago
I've commented on Oliver Alexy's research on open source's effects on stock prices before, but was gratified to see it featured in today's Wall Street Journal. -
Life Without Open Source?
2 days, 15 hours ago
Let's face it, open source software runs the Internet. Without it we wouldn't have basic services like DNS, or even the web server that's sending you this page. This isn't a new phenomenon. People have been writing and distributing OSS software since the Internet was born. I'm always amused when people characterize it as a new-fangled thing. That does a complete disservice to the hard work of folks all over the world, and the phenomenal software they have written. -
Becta takes Microsoft complaint to EC
2 days, 19 hours ago
Becta, the organisation that advises the UK government on educational IT, has escalated its complaint over the interoperability of Microsoft's products to the European Commission. -
Open source survey: many questions remain
2 days, 20 hours ago
Used in the right context, statistics can often illuminate and point the way. On the other hand, these days, given the degree of spin around, they are more often used to confuse and blur an issue. -
Wind River joins open source high-availability group
3 days ago
Wind River Systems has joined the OpenSAF Foundation, which aims to standardize high-availability (HA), open-source middleware for Linux-based carrier-grade systems. Wind River will contribute to the OpenSAF project, joining founding members Emerson Network Power (ENP), Ericsson, HP, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Sun Microsystems. - More News
Linux.com : Open Source
Querying a database using open source voice control software
Though the tools for voice control and dictation in the open source world lag far behind those in the commercial arena, I decided to see how far I could get in querying a database by voice and having the computer respond verbally. Using a number of open source tools, I'm happy to report success.
Laura Thomson on coding, the workplace, and FOSS
Ever since Laura Thomson wrote her first program in the fourth grade, coding has been a major part of her life. Over the years, she has been a lecturer in computer science at RMIT University in Australia, a principal at OmnTI, a consulting company that designs Internet systems, a trainer of other programmers, the co-writer of PHP and MySQL Web Development and MySQL Tutorial, and a frequent speaker at free and open source conferences. She is currently a senior software engineer at the Mozilla Corporation, where her recent work includes the API for the Add-ons Manager on Firefox 3. With this background, Thomson has strong views on coding, its future, and its place in business, especially where free and open source software (FOSS) is concerned, which she shared with Linux.com at the recent Open Web Vancouver conference.
Meet Karl Paetzel, HP marketing manager for Linux and open source (video)
Karl Paetzel is quoted frequently about Hewlett-Packard's ever-increasing Linux and open source efforts, which now include open source licensing detection and governance tools. Here's a chance to see and hear him a little more "up close and personal" than in a traditional text interview.
Meet Inna Kuznetsova, IBM's Linux Strategy Director (video)
I always ask people who market (as opposed to develop) GNU/Linux and open source products or services what Linux distribution they use on their own computers. More often than not, the answer is along the lines of, "I'm a marketing person so I use Windows. The techies use Linux." Inna, on the other hand, uses not one, not two, but three different Linux distributions on her home computers. When she tells an IBM client Linux is the way to go, she obviously means it, and this surely makes a difference -- even if it's only a subtle one -- in her work.
Open source diva Danese Cooper (video)
We first met Danese Cooper when she was working for Sun, where she was a major internal open source advocate and often Sun's major spokesperson to the rest of the world about open source. She's currently doing something similar at Intel, besides serving on the Open Source Initiative board and generally being a popular speaker at GNU/Linux and open source conferences. She's also quoted now and then about open source, often on licensing matters.
KnowledgeTree co-founders explain their commercial open source business strategy (video)
KnowledgeTree produces document management software that is available either under GPLv3 or, for commercial use, under a proprietary license that restricts code redistribution. In this video, KnowledgeTree co-founders John Thorne and Daniel Chalef explain why they decided to go open source, the differences between their open source and proprietary versions, and why supporting a "community version" helps both the company and KnowledgeTree's many users.
Social networking for sports sits on an open platform
Sportsvite.com, a kind of MySpace for ballers, exists because Steve Parker and a few friends wanted to find a better way to organize softball leagues and other casual sports teams in their New York neighborhoods. Parker, who lists badminton as a favorite sport on his Sportsvite.com profile, says he has always been an advocate of using open source, and thought it would be a great idea to build an Internet service that would make it easier for people to team up for amateur sports.
Kuali develops open source financial and ERP applications for universities
Financial and ERP applications are arguably the last bastion of proprietary software giants, but the Kuali Foundation wants to eliminate those remaining barriers to open source enterprise systems, at least in the educational realm. Kuali is a nonprofit collection of colleges, universities, commercial companies, and consultants who hope to "bring the proven functionality of legacy applications to the ease and universality of online services." Kuali's first project, Kuali Financial Systems, is already working on its 3.0 release, scheduled for the end of this year.
Open source applications Keep You Safe
Personal data safety is big business lately. There are a variety of ways to protect your identity or keep your personal information from the prying eyes of dishonest people, but Eric Wolbrom has what he believes is a unique service. Keep You Safe makes it possible for subscribers to store all their personal data securely in a virtual online "safe deposit box," and share the key with someone they trust. When Wolbrom, a self-described "security geek," finally had the chance to launch Keep You Safe, he knew that building it on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) was the best way to keep his customers' data secure.
SugarCRM CEO John Roberts tells us how his company developed (video)
SugarCRM Inc. was one of the first application-specific open source companies. It has gone from three employees to over 160 between 2004 and 2008. SugarCRM has taken some heat over its dual-licensing system. Roberts explains why this licensing scheme is a financial necessity for the company, and offers some excellent advice for people who want to start their own open source-based companies.
Open source testing tools target varied tasks
Testing is an important function of the software development process, no matter how big or small the development project. But not every company or developer has access to professional testing tools, which can run into hundreds and even thousands of dollars. The good news is that they don't need them, thanks to the tons of freely available open source software testing tools.
Open Media Now launched to boost digital freedom
Already known for its development of a free Flash player, the Gnash project is now the nucleus of a much larger effort. Called the Open Media Now Foundation (OMNF), the group's goal is to encourage the development "of an open media infrastructure," according its home page. Registered as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization in the United States, the new organization is actively seeking corporate members, although it accepts donations from individuals as well.
In memoriam: free software projects of 2007
Recently I looked in on the project Web site for a small application I use, only to find the wiki completely filled with spam. The project itself was clearly in disrepair, and the code abandoned for six months or more. I wondered: how many other apps that I use have halted development without my realizing it? I decided to look back at the projects I've written about over the past year to see which ones are no longer with us.
Software patents underlie a novel open source business model (video)
"Software patents are evil." Ask almost any free or open source software advocate, and they'll tell you that software patents kill creativity and keep computer science from advancing as rapidly as it would if everyone shared their basic work with everyone else, unencumbered by patents or other restrictions. But computer science professor Fred Popowich of Simon Fraser University says this is not necessarily true. So does attorney Larry Rosen, who spent many years as legal counsel for the Open Source Initiative starting (literally) before it had a name.
Humanitarian projects and open source: Working together to revitalize computer sciences
Ralph Morelli, professor of computer science at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., has a double motive in spearheading the Humanitarian FOSS Project (HFOSS). The project's mission of providing free software development to help solve real-world social issues is a noble reason to rally the participation of college students who will spend their summers learning how to be part of the open source development community. But this NSF-funded project also hopes to show that humanitarian software development projects are a great way to revitalize undergraduate computing education.
Initiative helps farmers in rural India using OSS
"India is like a long snake. While its head is moving into the twenty-first century, the tail is still in the sixteenth. And there are people all over its body." Those lines by computer guru Ed Yourdon sum up the inspiration behind Jagriti e-Sewa ("Jagriti" means "awakening" in Punjabi and "Sewa" means "service"), a non-governmental organization (NGO) that uses open source technologies to bring much-needed knowledge and advice to farmers in the Indian state of Punjab.
Consultant hopes open source apps will "snap together" someday
DPCI, a technology consulting firm based in New York City, specializes in providing custom content management solutions. DPCI uses open source software and recommends it to clients who need powerful, flexible content management solutions, but face budget challenges in a belt-tightening economy. President and founder Joe Bachana says he discovered the merits of building a business on open source first through personal experience.
VoIP app WengoPhone forced to find new sponsor
In the closing days of 2007, open source voice-over-IP (VoIP) project WengoPhone found itself without a sponsor. The project's creator and underwriter, Wengo, announced it was halting its support after more than three years of development. Fortunately, longtime contributor MBDSYS offered to take over maintainership of the project, and has begun the transition, setting out a roadmap and reinvigorating the developer base.
FOSS helps Krugle help developers search for code
In three years, Krugle, the company behind the code search engine of the same name, has gone from an idea to a company that's starting to produce revenue. CEO Steve Larsen, a veteran of half a dozen startups, attributes this brief time to market as being due largely to free and open source software (FOSS). According to Larsen, FOSS has shaped most aspects of the company, including its hiring practices and relations with business partners and users.
MindTouch learns the open source walk
How do two former Microsoft employees end up heading an open source company? In the case of Aaron Fulkerson and Steve Bjorg of MindTouch, the decision was based on the wish for independence and to work more closely with customers, according to Fulkerson. The two partners suffered some initial criticism because of their past employment, but have largely survived it by learning how to interact with the free software community.
