According to news out of Sweden [in Swedish only] some Swedish municipalities vote to go with Linux instead of Windows as their computer desktop environment. According to the article “Jönköping, Hallsberg, Luleå and Filipstad are the latest examples of municipalities and government organizations that have chosen to go with Linux-solutions as their IT-platform to build services around”. In the article an IT Manager for a municipality says that they save money on licensing fees, but the decision was also based on the importance of creating open, flexible and secure solutions which is important when they are to start offering electronic services 24 hours a day.
Apparently Novell is open-sourcing Suse Professional. Go Novell!
Now there’s an open source beer. This all is based on the traditional view of open source software:
“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”
Update: The beer is licensed under a Creative Commons license. John Dvorak has some choice words for this licensing:
Will someone explain to me the benefits of a trendy system developed by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford? Dubbed Creative Commons, this system is some sort of secondary copyright license that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous “fair use” provisos of existing copyright law. This is one of the dumbest initiatives ever put forth by the tech community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes.
I guess many of us thought that SCO’s lawsuit against IBM was pretty much baseless, and it seems that an SCO consultant told them so before they even filed the suit. CNet writes:
The e-mail, which was sent to SCO Group CEO Darl McBride by a senior vice president at the company, forwards on an e-mail from a SCO engineer. In the Aug. 13, 2002, e-mail, engineer Michael Davidson said “At the end, we had found absolutely nothing ie (sic) no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever.”
So SCO investigates before they sue IBM and the persond doing the investigation finds that they have found nothing that warrants the suit - that’s interesting. The court-process is dragging on but seems to me that as time goes on SCO is losing little by little.
NVu 1.0 has been released. It’s not as good or capable as Dreamweaver but it’s pretty darn good for the price (free!).
Ever wondered how all these open source software projects can actually make money for someone, or how you could make a living from an open source project? This article gives some guidance:
In this easy-to-follow guide, we’re going to examine the commercial opportunities for open source software. We’ll investigate the different ways of generating revenue from open source software and how to reduce development costs by using open source software in your development life cycle and how to select open source software technologies for building that next knockout product. On top of this we will also investigate how to gain access to national and international markets through using the open source marketing methodology.
Indymedia.org:
Mass-produced computers can KILL Microsoft and free the world’s computer users. They’ll be too cheap to accommodate MS Windows — MS’s bread and butter. Computers will go the way of TVs and VCRs — cheap offshore (non-USA) production. They’ll be cheap, simple, general-purpose (FREE SOFTWARE), all-electronic (no disk drive) — in other words, real electronic computers, finally.
I have never been the biggest Microsoft supporter, as you probably know, but I’ve also never understood this urge to “kill” Microsoft off. Why would we want them to go away? Sure some of their marketing practices are less than desirable but I don’t get why them not being around anymore would be a good thing. They do make some good software and for better and worse they in many ways make the world go around.
So to the matter of simple, cheap, solid-state computers - that seems like a good idea! Something that can perform basic computer processes (word processing, internet, etc.) for $200 or less and be durable at the same time seems like a good thing. If such things existed we’d probably have a couple around the house. They would have to support wifi and some basic multimedia functions. Perhaps they could be in the form of some type of tablet so you wouldn’t have to use a keyboard. Then they could be placed in a lot more places around the house, or be carried around.
A new survey lists people’s perception of the advantages of open-source software:
Our survey offered respondents a choice of five advantages for open source.
* Lower total cost of ownership
* Reduced dependence on software vendors
* Easier to customize
* Higher level of security
* Do not see a significant advantage
Which was the most important advantage according to the survey, do you think? Hint - it wasn’t lower cost. Around 45% of those who took the survey said the most important advantage of open-source software was reduced dependence on software vendors.
The last bite on CherryOS:
I decided that C-OS is not worth the hassle, not now or in the future. C-OS went to work without brushing its teeth or taking a shower, it was not ready.
Other current open source projects are progressing to the desired product; Qemu will soon support OS X and lead the way. Or maybe I am wrong and someone else will make a fast lead.
I love my Mac and would never switch back, sure I use my PC for work but that is just a bad habit that I am trying to get rid of. A friend of mine asked me why I am still creating software for Windows and that question is not getting out of my head. Oh yeah, I know – everyone out there who has their certain opinion about me will have their great comment hour right now. Its ok I expect that anyway.
After all that controversy it seems to me that they should just have admitted to what they did (if all the accusations were true). Now, by saying that it was “not ready” who would trust anything they do in the future?
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