He’s been warning a conference on the subject that the technology could lead to a vendor lock-in in a similar way to that which afflicts the console market.
“What we’ve seen so far in the games console industry has been directed as if users are scum — ‘this console has lots of fancy hardware so you […]
Linus announced on Wednesday that, following the upcoming GPL revision, his baby will be sticking on 2.0, describing some of the DRM provisions in the draft of v3.0 as “insane”.
Here it is at eWeek, Silicon.com, The Register, PcPro and CNet.
Redmond raised eyebrows after it offered - without prompting - access to the source code and documentation for its Windows Server in order to try and fend off the legal (and possibly-soon-to-be penal) assault from the EU over server protocols. Nobody except the media seemed particularly impressed by the move; an unnamed representative of the […]
ZDNet reported on Tuesday that Firefox now enjoys brand status comparable with the likes of Starbucks and Apple, and ahead of that of eBay (who?) and Sony (never heard of ‘em). The annual survey, conducted by a marketing industry website, has never previously had an open source project featured so highly in the rankings.
Part of […]
The bank revealed that it has been working on a large-scale CMS using the open source Zope application server, which recently had an upgrade, for about two years. A similar system was recently chosen by the local government of South African province eThekwini.
If you’re into the CMS scene, and expert in the field, Seth […]
ZDNet has a profile of FSF lawyer - and lynchpin of the GPL revision process - Eben Moglen, and eWeek got some thoughts from Richard Stallman on the new license.
If you fancy reading something more personal, Information Week got Stallman on the couch to talk about his childhood and its influence on the themes of […]
According to a survey conducted by Optaros, companies with turnover > $1billion reported average savings in the neighbourhood of $3.3 million as at result of open source software. The same survey found that around 87% of respondent companies use OSS, with Apache, Linux and various web browsers found to be the most popular.
Ars Technica and […]
Fans of the Scott Mills and Mark Chapman may have heard this. The duo filled up half an hour of their show last week by defacing their own entries on Wikipedia, according to The Register. The site admin’s didn’t see the funny side, locked the pages down and complained to their bosses at the Beeb. […]
John Mark Walker wrote an article, published on O’Reilly’s Onlamp about a week ago, querying the very existence of the “open source community” which has touched off a few interesting responses. The argument backing up the headline is actually more about ideology than community; that open source development is now driven by economic necessity and […]
…from Microsoft. Their legislature has passed a resolution asking for the federal government to reduce it’s reliance on Redmond products, which have a virtual monopoly in government offices.
Head teachers from around the country are to visit a school in East Anglia that managed to build a computer suite for just £1,000 through the prodigious use of open source software and Linux.
Okay, this is just wacky:
Here’s what happened. A young man identifying himself as Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, 5th Duke of Cleveland, visited Stillwater Area High School in Minnesota three times trying to enroll as a transfer student. He had a “spot on” English accent and insisted on being called “your grace.” Students at the school […]
The first draft of the GPL v3.0 was released on Monday, and the first couple of articles have appeared with the authors take on the new document.
Much of the comment has focused on the “aggressive stance” taken with respect to DRM, particularly after Eben Moglen, the FSF’s chief counsel, broke cover to describe DRM as […]
Supply Management has an article about the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s new certification scheme and it’s various offshoots. The piece is written for the relative novice (the ODPM is interested, it explains, “because [OSS] is free to download and is easier to integrate with other systems”) but, as it points out, this is […]
HP will soon be selling PCs with Mandriva Linux installed across South America, according to eWeek.
As part of the agreement, Mandriva was also named the “Preferred Linux Partner for Latin America” and Mandriva Linux 2006 has been optimized and certified for HP machines. The companies will work together on sales, support, and marketing in […]
From Silicon.com:
Chinese Linux products will be certified by a central lab that has signed up to the Linux Standards Base
The Free Standards Group, a non-profit group promoting Linux standards, said that a Chinese government agency has opened a lab that will use the Free Standards Group’s Linux Standards Base certification process.
Backing this up is the […]
CNet is reporting comments by Sir Robin Jacob, an appeals court judge specialising in IP law, critical of software patents and asking for “evidence” of their necessity. In the comments made at The Society for Computers and Law, m’lud was also critical of the US’s overbroad stance on patents…
“The United States takes the view that […]
French analysts XiTi have published a study on Firefox’s market share by geographical location. Worldwide, Europe and Australia lead with 20.11% and 18.60% respectively, with North America close behind on 15.88%.
Stats from within the EU show (perhaps not surprisingly) Finland leading the game with a massive 38% - something eFinland noticed - followed by […]
Should someone in your life need converting, here are 25 good reasons to ditch Windows and go Linux, courtesy of Belle Vue Linux.
AJAX (that’s Asynchronous Javascript and XML to you) is the buzzword of the beginning of 2006 (along with Web 2.0) with the likes of Google - Gmail, Google Maps and Google Suggest are all AJAX based - demonstrating what can be done with it. ClearNova, one of the startups to capitalise on this with the […]