… the founder of the Wikipedia, and it’s pretty amusing:
But the e-mails that make him laugh out loud come from concerned newcomers who have just discovered they have total freedom to edit just about any Wikipedia entry at the click of a button. Oh my God, they write, you’ve got a major security flaw!
etc.
Forbes is keen on the BitKeeper story; here’s more, a profile of Larry McVoy. The Reg reproduced the earlier article from Forbes, much to the chargrin of some of their readers.
IBM, Sony and Toshiba have announced that they will publish full specifications for their new Cell chip, which powers the upcoming PS3 from Sony. The same technology will also power their new servers.
More about PS3 at GamesIndustry.biz and about the new servers at The Register and a longer article at MacWorld
“We prefer them to run rampant,” says Google’s Eric Shmidt of IT staff, as a way to encourage innovative thinking in large organisations. And OSS developers are some of the “best and brightest of new talent.”
From ContractoUK
Here is a paper on some of the lessons that might be learned from free software development and application, and the way these lessons could applied in other fields of human endeavour.
This is the abstract:
The FOSS model has brought several benefits to developers and users: Why could not the same happen in other economic areas? […]
NetCraft have released a Firefox version of the anti-phishing toolbar they developed for IE. It attempts to stave off attacks by comparing websites to a central database of known sites. If you recall, Firefox had some trouble earlier in the year with phishing scams due to the way in which long subdomains were displayed in […]
Just days after the unveiling of their new Linux–powered web–tablet, Nokia has announced that it will be allowing open source developers to use their patented technology.
From Computer Weekly
The move should help developers to extend Linux more widely to both mobile devices and mission-critical telecoms infrastructure solutions.
At the same time as it announced its Linux support, […]
FLOSSWorld is to recieve around 660,000 euros from the EU to fund its research into the global implications of FLOSS, according to Heise.de and Cordis News.
Two stories on software patents have cropped up this morning:
The Professional Contractors Group (PCG), an UK organisation representing the interests of freelancers has called the EU software patents directive “lethal” to their members trade. From ContractorUK:
The nation’s largest body representing independent freelancers urged the European Parliament to use the opportunity to create a sensible framework […]
… has been published as html or as pdf
“The price is right, but is the quality?”
Mircosoft Office has a rival. It’s called OpenOffice and it’s free to download. But is this cost-cutting alternative to Microsoft just a poor man’s Office? SA Mathieson compares the two.
Microsoft Office, better known through its component applications Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, is familiar to most Windows users. […]
Following on from our post about Freedom Toasters in SA, India’s government has announced plans to distribute CDs containing open source gems such as Firefox and OOo to its populace.
Still in .in, national newspaper The Hindu is calling for the adoption of OSS by national government, based on the model of Tamil Nadu’s provincial […]
The Finnish mobile phone manufacturer has stepped into the PDA / web-tablet market with the Linux / OSS powered Nokia 770 portable web browser. The announcement was made at the LinuxWorld summit over in New York, and at least one outlet (see below) saw it as a statement of alliance by the company with the […]
“A Setback For Linux” - at Forbes.com.
It looks like the pro-patent European Commission (the unelected one) has blinked first in the tussle with the European Parliament over EU software patents.
According to Reuters, the EC still wants the measures but the range of patentable software inventions may be cut as a palliative to the EP. There are also rumours of discontent amongst […]
Sustaining you in the Windows wasteland
“Trolltech gets funding boost”: fuels speculation that there may be money to be made with Linux
OSDL in programmer cull
FSF works on ‘fully free’ OpenOffice
Geophysical surveyors CGG uses IBM / Linux because it has a lower TCO. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, click here.
They may sound like a bizarre vestige of Americana (”Fed up with French toast and its pacifist connotations? Then buy our…” etc.) but Freedom Toasters are quite an interesting idea. These devices allow anyone to come along and burn (or toast, apparently) a CD full of OSS and have been distributed around SA by the […]
Not that you probably need telling, but SourceForge raced past the 100,000 open source projects mark a couple of days ago. If you’re interested to know who SourceForge credit for their success, take a look at Builder.com.
Sun and OS development community NetBeans have announced the release of an open source version of the Java development environment.
Details at CXOToday.
Just in case you get the erroneous impression that Sun has gone OSS loco, VNUNet has this:
Sun lashes out at open source J2SE
Sun Microsystems has expressed “serious doubts” about the usefulness of the latest […]