Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Paradoxically, the viral clause, the part of the GPL licensing framework that so many people objected to because it wasn't business friendly, made the license business friendly - in the future, a license that liberates business from the drug of DRM and the prison of software patents may turn out to have been equally prescient and business friendly...

There's a worldwide initiative to push out the de facto standard for the storage of word-processing documents, Microsoft Corp.'s ".doc" file format, and replace it with Open Document Format, a supposedly universal and open format. This kind of sniping will never end as long as Microsoft is Microsoft. Maybe it's time to seriously think of breaking up the company into smaller companies.

Ocean Blue Software is to release its advanced TV software suite on Toshiba's TC9040x 'Donau' series of processors. The new Linux-based software will allow for fast development of reduced component count consumer electronics products, such as set top boxes, integrated digital televisions, personal video recorders and combination hard disk/DVD recorder systems.

The Boy Genius Report has uncovered the sliding kin to the RAZR 2 family. It’s called the Motorola Z9, and seems to be destined for AT&T service. It will brandish Motorola’s relatively new Synergy Operating System, which is based on Linux.

It is well known to many parents that the only people in the house capable of programming the VCR are their children. The 30 girls sitting in the Harrington Learning Center at Quinsigamond Community College yesterday were far past VCRs, however. The group of 10- to 14-year-olds was busy installing and configuring the Linux operating system on computers they had finished building.

Matthew Aslett reports that VC funding to open source startups rose more than 33% in 2Q07 vs. 2Q06. Matthew estimates that a total of $2.05B has been invested in open source startups since 2000. For VC investments in OSS to track with the historical 57%, the $2.05B invested would have to be worth $30.7B. Wow. Is there any way that OSS vendors are worth that much today? My gut says it's closer to the $12.5B to $19.6B.

Under the name Sun ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office, Sun has released its import/export filter for the OpenDocument format (ODF), which the ISO has recognized as a standard, for versions 2000, XP, and 2003 of Microsoft's Office suite. The 30 MB installation package adds a document type to Word's file dialog so that users can access ODF files directly and use OpenDocument as a standard format.

This weekend I decided to take the plunge and install a Linux distro on my notebook PC. The reason I not done so already is because this particular notebook is well documented as being problematic under Linux, particularly the WiFi card as it is completely proprietary with no Linux drivers being available. The following is a guide as to how I got Ubuntu “Feisty Fawn” running with full functionality on a Compaq V3000 model notebook.

Know some of you saw this in last week's post, but I wanted to be clear that Dell does have plans to offer Linux to more consumers in additional locations outside the United States. More details to come later this summer. We will also offer Ubuntu to small business customers in the future. As soon as we have more details to share, I'll blog about both topics here.

For the last few months I've been on-and-off trying to write a Linux driver for my Logitech Harmony 880. Today, one of the people who have been following my efforts sent me a link to Paul Cutler's blog post offering a bounty for a Linux driver. Neat! Well - as I said in an email to him, I'll gladly give up the bounty in lieu of some pressure on Logitech. This is my official request for all of you interested in Linux, Harmonies, or open standards in general, to put pressure on Logitech to release communication specs for the Harmony class of remote controls.

As Amarok 2 will be quite a different beast compared to the 1.4 series, it will need a distinctive new first run theme. Since none of the developers are up to this task, we have teamed up with Magnatune.com and ccMixter.org to host a competition for the very best new jingle. The details can be found here.

Intel and Novell have each become corporate Patrons of KDE. Their exceptional financial commitment to the KDE e.V. helps the project with community events, infrastructure and developer meetings.

Performance optimization in Linux doesn't always mean what you might think. It's not just a matter of outright speed; sometimes it's about tuning the system to fit into a small memory footprint.

[The website serves a wrong character encoding, but the article itself is fine and quite interesting. - Sander]

Sean Daly had the opportunity to meet up in Brussles with George Greve, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe, on July 2nd, and naturally he wanted to ask him about GPLv3. He also got Greve's views on what's wrong with Open XML, some news about the complaint ECIS, the European Committee For Interoperable Systems, has lodged with the European Commission, this time in the area of office and internet interoperability, how the FSFE's Freedom Task Force has been working out, and much more.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access. Afraid of the potential stifling of information to you? Good. Then go to Save The Internet and see what you can do to fight. There are literally only days left for you to get your voice heard.

Now that the SourceForge.net community has selected the nominees, you can vote for the projects you think represent"the cream of the crop on SourceForge.net. Don't procrastinate; voting ends at 11:59 p.m. PDT on July 20.

The obvious question that any open source "business" needs to address is how to get people to pay for offerings. Being that the code is out there and customers can theoretically support themselves and/or never pay there needs to be a compelling reason for them to give you their money. Every open source company struggles to figure out what these "value triggers" are.

When Evans Data released its survey on Tuesday showing a sharp shift toward Linux (and away from Windows) among developers in North America, the Linux world went wild. Wistful penguin heads heralded the coming Open Source Age. There are several signs that the coming year could bring a sea-change among end users, making 2008 the year of the Linux desktop.

One of the unsung features of GPLv3 is its grant of compatibility to the Apache and Eclipse open source licenses. Apache or Eclipse licensed code can now be combined with GPL code without creating a violation of the GPL. That wasn't possible in the past, or at least, not sanctioned by the Free Software Foundation. GLPv3, wrote Brian Behlendorf, "is good news, from my perspective."

I just watched Mark Shuttleworth’s Keynote on aKademy. The discussion afterwards was mainly dominated by his suggestion to switch KDE’s development cycle to a 6 month release cycle. Here is a closer look at what Mark said - and what KDE did in the past.