Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Gartner declared open-source software the biggest disruptor the software industry has ever seen and postulated it will eventually result in cheaper software and new business models. Open-source products accounted for a 13 percent share of the $92.7 billion software market in 2006, but should account for 27 percent of the market in 2011 when revenue is expected to be $169.2 billion, according to Gartner research.

Justas Ingelevičius wrote in about an Autodesk international user group poll about non-Windows ports. Specifically, users want Autodesk Revit (engineering design software) to run on Mac OS X and GNU/Linux.

Many other countries are turning to Linux and open-source for their school-house computer needs, and now there's a conference for those who want to bring it to schools in the U.S.

Offered only €30 from Acer for a refund on Microsoft products bundled with his notebook, a man took the company to court. According to this web site, not only did Antoine Gutzwiller get a full refund on a list of the software bundled his machine, but got €500 extra for what the court dubbed Abusive Resistance. Initially, Acer had offered only €30 if the man returned elements of the install at his own expense.

There are a vast number of fantastic open source projects out there, though for every one that is widely adopted, there are many that remain cloaked in relative obscurity. How can the open source development model best be leveraged to take advantage of community feedback, ideas, and testing, and ultimately gather code contributions? If you are just thinking about open sourcing a new project, what steps can you take to ensure a vibrant community? If you already have an open source project, how can you make your community more active? The community can make any project stronger, but they are not built automatically.

This small city on Florida's Gulf Coast runs one of the most cost-effective municipal IT departments around. I last wrote about Largo's Linux-based client-server network in 2002. A lot has changed for Largo's computer-using city employees since then, and even more changes are in the works.

For all but three of the past17 years, Microsoft has been involved in antitrust litigation with government agencies. That's enough to wear anyone down. But as the Judge at Europe's Court of Appeals delivered his judgement on Monday, I did notice some ennui - not from dogged old hacks, but from a new generation of pundits.

There are unlikely to be any new applications developed solely for Unix after 2009, George Weiss, a Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, told attendees at Gartner's annual Open Source Summit here Sept. 20. "I expect that, around 2009, we will have seen the last application developed specifically for Unix, after which no applications will be developed just for that operating system, though updates to existing applications will continue for some time to come," Weiss said in an address titled "Planning a Third-Generation Linux Enterprise."

The Open Source Technology Center (OSTC) at Intel has launched a Web site, LessWatts.org, to help Linux users maximize power savings. The site hosts several open source projects, and shares tips and tricks to help optimize power consumption on hardware from portable devices running on batteries to large data centers.

Things have been going pretty well for open source and open standards recently. First, there was theimplosion of the SCO case, in the wake of which even SCOaccepts that it may not be around much longer. Then we had therejection of Microsoft's request for a fast-track approval of its OOXML rival to ODF. Finally, the European Court of First Instance hasrefused Microsoft's request for an annulment of the terms imposed by the European Commission. All are notable victories that many regarded as unlikely a few years ago. But elsewhere, other open movements are still in the early stages of the struggle against forces pushing closed, proprietary standards.

Open source is truly the best way to unlock the value of information technology, Michael Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative, said at the annual Gartner Open Source Summit here Sept. 20. "Open source can give you a common operating platform for real, and if you use Linux as a leveler, the individual ships will all right themselves rather than colliding into one another," he said, pointing to the fact that even Microsoft submitted two of its licenses to the OSI for approval, although as a company it remains ambivalent toward open source.

Nowadays, many machines are running with 2-4 gigabytes of RAM, and their owners are discovering a problem: When they run 32-bit GNU/Linux distributions, their extra RAM is not being used. Fortunately, correcting the problem is only a matter of installing or building a kernel with a few specific parameters enabled or disabled.

When I began my career as an assistant architect 12 years ago, I used AutoCAD R12, 3D Studio, CorelDraw 6.0, and Photoshop 4.0 for architectural drawing and 3-D modeling. Today, many architects still use their later versions, but those bulky packages provide many functions an architect will never use. Luckily, there are several open source alternatives that are well-suited for architects -- QCad in place of AutoCAD, Blender instead of 3DMax, Inkscape in place of CorelDraw, and the GIMP as a substitute for Photoshop.

Moonsoon Multimedia has used embedded Linux to build a consumer DVR (digital video recorder) with remote multimedia file serving capabilities. The Hava -- recently implicated in a GPL violation court case -- aims to let the user access live and recorded TV content from broadband-connected locations.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed a lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia on behalf of two BusyBox developers. The suit alleges that Monsoon' s new product Hava, and its firmware, distribute code borrowed from BusyBox, a collection of UNIX utilities for embedded systems, but aren't making the source code available, as is required under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Daniel B. Ravicher, SFLC legal director, says, "This is the first time that either myself or anyone else that I know of in the United States has actually had to go to court to force compliance with the GPL."

IBM's recently announced embrace of the OpenOffice.org productivity suite project has already borne fruit, with the beta release of IBM's free Lotus Symphony. Does the new word processor, spreadsheet and presentation trio have what it takes to put the Lotus brand back on the office application map?

GNOME 2.20 was released yesterday. Even though I use GNOME regularly, I normally don't get excited over new releases, because most seem to offer little more substance than previous versions, with most of the work being done under the hood. This time, though, GNOME has a solid list of new features and upgrades. It's worth taking a look at even if you aren't a fan of this desktop environment.

Lulatech, a software development consortium, are in the process of accepting applications for an internship and training programme. Students will receive training and practical experience in a variety of IT-related fields. All software used in the course will be open source.

No matter whether you are working on an article, an academic paper, or a novel, research is a crucial part of the writing process. And as with any research, you need a place to save your notes, ideas, relevant links, and text snippets. While there are tools like Basket Note Pads and the Zotero Firefox extension, wouldn't it be nice if you could store and manage your stuff directly from within OpenOffice.org? This is not only doable, but also easy to implement using just a Base database and a macro.

Linux users in the United Kingdom could face a greater threat from Microsoft than previously thought, but experts agree that British open source users are in far less danger than US users from Microsoft's claim that open source software infringes its patents.