Software Free

Why is this part titled "The Black Hand"? Well, because I started this series using a nations metaphor. Citizens of Windows who expatriate and immigrate to Linux will be "foreigners" in Linux.

I assure you, this situation is far, far graver than any of the rest of you seem to know. As much guesswork as it is figuring out who runs what, I'm going to take this recent Ars Technica article and give both Apple and Linux the benefit of the doubt. I'll hedge their numbers up to 4% desktop market share for Apple, and 2% for Linux. That leaves Windows at a mere 94%.

read more

There are lots of different ways you can build software and the typical ways in which FOSS development and proprietary development are done are quite dramatically different. In this article, I’m going to talk about what problems the typical FOSS method can face when open source products are integrated within enterprise environments.

read more

If you use open source software then you’ve probably heard about SourceForge before.  If you develop open source software then you’ve probably even used some of their infrastructure in the past.  Today they’ve made it even easier to login to SourceForge with OpenID.  SourgeForge.net isn’t acting as an OpenID Provider but rather is accepting OpenID logins; this is a good thing and reinforces the trend of sites like Ma.gnolia only accepting OpenID logins.

F1 motor racing is probably second only to the aerospace industry in the application of aerodynamic simulation and wind tunnel technology. It is a testament to the rapid advance of Linux in high performance computing that most teams in Formula 1 have been using Linux systems in their aerodynamic and engine workshops for a number of years.

In an interesting twist (interesting for Microsoft and their OOXML apologists), about a month ago, MAMPU, the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit, decided that they were going to go OpenOffice.org and go ODF, and dump Microsoft Office by year-end 2008. This made its round around news sites, and everyone was naturally talking about it.

Linux, which has been much maligned by Symbian and Microsoft as a non-starter in the handset operating system market, is set to see strong growth as issues with framework fragmentation and silicon requirements are alleviated.

read more

The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) on Friday approved the Open Document Format (ODF) as an official national South African standard. The adoption of ODF by South Africa opens the way for the businesses and government to adopt ODF more widely in their processes. ODF is already an international standard, approved by the International Standards Organisation, or ISO.

read more

For years now, Linux has been known primarily only to people in technology fields. While average home users may have heard of it, it is still surrounded in a cloud of mystery for the majority of people. When people think alternatives to the Windows operating system, they usually think of Apple's Mac OSX, but is it time to take a look at Linux?

Argentina's congress is actively considering a bill that would require all government offices to use open-source software. It's partly a cost-saving move, and partly a way to bring the Argentine government into compliance with its software licensing

In the past 3 years, I have had the opportunity to do hundreds of Linux system installs for new Linux Users. Up until recently, this has all been pure advocacy work.

The schools of the Canton of Geneva are going to switch 9000 computers from Windows to GNU/Linux in September according to this article which is in German. Here is the google translation: http://google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pro-linux.de%2Fnews%2F200...

Why is it that many corporations and small to medium businesses cannot or will not take a step back and look at the competitive advantage and cost savings Linux and Open Source software will give their business?

Efforts to increase the adoption of open-source software are being derailed by the efforts of a "loud minority" within the community who have made personal attacks on individuals who have expressed doubts about the software, according to one of the open-source movement's main advocates.

It's not just European government that's opting for open source. Today the NSA (the super-secret spy agency in the US) have announced they are joining in with OpenSolaris. Barton has an interview that explores this more. I think we'll see more and more government engagement as the adoption-led market takes hold.

Using Free software from open source communities makes perfect sense for governments, and not just for the obvious reasons of up-front savings on license fees.