Two companies - JasperSoft and Pentaho - have recently announced open source business intelligence (BI) tools. Silicon.com asks if they have what it takes to crack the market.
Dana Blakenhorn at ZDNet evidently thinks so, describing the potential - apropos of the vastly decreased costs of BI that will stem from open source software - […]
Internet Explorer is the root of all Microsoft’s problems, and the only reason for its existence is the paranoiac corporate culture at the company. That according to an interesting and widely-blogged column from the pen of John Dvorak over at PC Mag:
All of Microsoft’s Internet-era public-relations and legal problems (in some way or another) stem […]
The Young Foundation has published a list of world-changing social innovations in which Linux, and other open source projects, appears at no.8. The list is part of a report aimed at starting a debate on social, as opposed to technological innovations:
Written by a team led by Geoff Mulgan, Social Silicon Valleys compares the vast investments […]
Should you wish for an excuse to play with Lego again, we may have just found it for you. The company is said to be “days away” from announcing that it is to open the source code - no word on which license yet - for its MindStorm NXT robots.
*Update - there’s some more details […]
From Sys-con:
ESR Technology , an innovative engineering and risk management consultancy has reduced its own exposure to risk by migrating to Open Source software.
As a venture capital funded spin-off from AEA plc (formerly the Atomic Energy Authority), ESR Technology wanted to free themselves from the financial and business risks associated with vendor lock-in.Their solution was […]
The Free Standards Group, a consortia of Linux distributors, announced an agreement that could see a standard set of components included in desktop distributions, and thereby help Linux to take on the homogeneity of Windows.
“One of the big things that’s difficult is consistency, and that’s Window’s biggest strength,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the […]
The media remains abuzz this week with speculation about Oracle’s Linux intentions.
CNet brought together the opinions of various Oracle watchers who suggested that CEO Ellison’s comments should be viewed as part of the company’s strategy, and could be read variously as a threat or flirtation with the likes of Red Hat and Novell.
Channel Insider and […]
Computer World has an interview with Louis Gutierrez, introduced thus…
Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez said last week that he doesn’t envision “a full-scale, completed implementation” of the state’s controversial Open Document Format policy by its January 2007 deadline. But in his first in-depth interview since Feb. 6, when he became CIO and director of the state’s […]
Oracle has set the rumour mill going again with hints that it may further embrace the products of the open source community by moving into the Linux market. In an interview with the Financial Times, CEO Larry Ellison, not known for his love of the open source community, professed his company’s love of Linux and […]
A report released this week by anti-virus software company McAfee has blamed the increased prevalence of rootkits on the open source community. Rootkits, which exploit security vulnerabilities to allow third parties covert access to a computer system, exist for several operating systems but are a particular problem for Windows users.
According to Stuart McClure, senior vice […]
Microsoft has launched a new website, called Port 25, with which it hopes to foster dialogue between the open source community and itself. The website, officially announced by Bill Hilf at LinuxWorld in Boston and expanded upon in an interview with Search Windows IT, will share some of the findings of the company’s Open […]
Nicholas Negroponte, head of the One (lime-green) Laptop Per Child project, called last week for Linux to be slimmed down for use on the project’s devices.
[Linux] suffers the same code bloat as Windows, [Negroponte] said Tuesday.
“People aren’t thinking about small, fast, thin systems,” said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit […]
Yesterday’s Guardian contained a supplement on the state of ICT in our schools as part of a joint project with BECTA. It’s contents can now be found on the paper’s website, introduced thus:
This supplement pulls together six surveys carried out over the past two years on keys areas of ICT in schools. It’s an attempt […]
Microsoft are hardly known for their direct interest in the Open Document Format - efforts to justify their continuing policy of ignoring ODF in their Office software have been nothing short of comical - so it might come as a surprise to some that they’ve suddenly become interested enough to claim a seat on one […]
With Vista’s delay adding to claims from the likes of Novell and Red Hat that this is the year Linux is going to break through, a senior analyst from the leading IT analysts the Meta Group has suggested that everyone should take a serious look at open source or web-based alternatives to Microsoft’s next generation […]
The inaugral LinuxWorld Australia is being held this week, with speakers including Peter Quinn, former CIO of Massachussets who was harassed out of his job by Microsoft. The Sydney Morning Herald marked the occasion with a summation of the state of open source in the country’s public sector…
Also at the conference were representatives of three […]
Following a re-evaluation of their IT strategy, Bristol City Council have decided to consolidate their office software - currently a mixture of Microsoft Office, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect - around a single software suite. The “obvious choice” of Microsoft Office was rejected in favour of Sun’s StarOffice on the grounds of cost, licensing and standards […]
Two different American healthcare providers have found two different reasons to switch to open source from proprietary solutions.
Catholic Healthcare West, from the golden state of California, were after consolidation, consistency and efficiency. Their move started with a drive for open standards to avoid reliance on a single vendor, which eventually led to an interest […]
James Youngman writes to tell us more about one of the UKUUG’s lesser known activities…
The UKUUG works hard in its members’ interests, organising conferences, workshops, discounts on useful products, free technical events, and other services, for example email aliases.
However, the UKUUG does other vital work which, while it is more pedestrian than its other activities, […]