- Canonical Bringing Ubuntu to Android Feb 22, 2012
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Datamation - Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu, Linux is launching a new effort that will bring mobile phones and desktops together in a very different type of experience. The new "Ubuntu for Android" effort isn't about running Ubuntu Linux on an Android phone, it's about enabling a new type of converged device.
"Ubuntu for Android is a converged single device that gives a full Android smartphone experience as well as an Ubuntu desktop experience, when docked with a keyboard and monitor," Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical, told InternetNews.com. "We're working with handset manufacturers and mobile network operators to bring this to market."
- Open source software: What is holding back adoption by government? Feb 14, 2012
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TechRepublic - Despite the potential benefits of using open source software, use of it by the government is slow to increase.
Back in 2010 the UK government pledged that open source would be given equal consideration as proprietary software when choosing new technology.
And while this sounds like a forward thinking policy, almost identical aspirations were first expressed in a government policy document back in 2002, and have cropped up repeatedly since. Meanwhile adoption of open source by government remains slow.
So what went wrong? Liam Maxwell, the government’s director of ICT futures, admits there is still “not enough” open source being used within government- and that there is still a long road ahead before open source will truly be on a level footing with proprietary software in government.
The government is waking up to open source – it’s just that significant barriers remain: “Open source software is not three guys in a shed anymore. There are a lot of misconceptions about open source but open source is the future model for delivering IT,” said Maxwell at the recent Intellect Regent Annual Conference in London.
- U.K. Government Launches Second Open Standards Consultation Feb 13, 2012
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WSJ - The U.K. government’s adoption and support of the use of open standards in its IT infrastructure seems to be proceeding in ways that are open to varying interpretation. To begin with it seemed so straightforward.
In March of last year the government put forward an ICT strategy with an unequivocal commitment to open standards. An initial consultation process on how best to ensure this concluded with a decision to carry on talking.
So a second survey of opinions was launched last week, as TechWeek Europe reports:
- Time to dispel open source myths, says Liam Maxwell Feb 13, 2012
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The Guardian - Open source and open standards are the direction for UK government IT, the civil servant leading the government's technology change agenda has said, reports The Register.
Liam Maxwell, Cabinet Office director of ICT futures, said that open source has grown up and it's time to dispel lingering misconceptions about this technology and development process.
Maxwell told the Intellect 2012 conference in London: "Open source software is not three guys in a shed anymore. There are a lot of misconceptions about open source but open source is the future model for delivering IT."
He was speaking the day before the Cabinet Office opens a three-month period of consultation on open standards to be used in the government's G-Cloud initiative.
- Open Source Initiative affiliates announced at FOSDEM Feb 07, 2012
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The H Open - Open Source Initiative (OSI) board member Simon Phipps has announced a group of affiliate organisations who will be providing advice to the OSI as it reforms itself from a self appointed board-based organisation eventually to a member-based organisation. The affiliates, announced during Phipps' presentation at FOSDEM in Brussels, are the Apache Software Foundation, Creative Commons, Drupal, the Eclipse Foundation, FreeBSD, Joomla (via Open Source Matters), KDE, the Linux Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, Plone, Sahana and Wikiotics. The OSI is also undertaking an anonymous survey to gauge what a future personal membership of the OSI should mean in practice.
Delegates of the affiliates will be coming together first to finalise an affiliate agreement for the OSI; from then, the OSI board will seek and consider advice from those affiliates. Phipps explained that this process will allow the OSI to move into a transitory phase which could see the organisation operating on new bylaws by as soon as 2013, but in all likelihood, 2014.
- NH Encourages Use of Open Source Feb 07, 2012
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New Hampshire has enacted a law to encourage the use of open source software and open standards:For all software acquisitions, each state agency, in consultation with the department of information technology, shall:(a) Consider whether proprietary or open source software offers the most cost effective software solution for the agency, based on consideration of all associated acquisition, support, maintenance, and training costs;(b) Except as provided in subparagraphs (d) and (e), acquire software products primarily on a value-for-money basis, based on consideration of the cost factors as described in subparagraph (a);(c) Provide a brief analysis of the purchase decision, including consideration of the cost factors in subparagraph (a), to the chief information officer;(d) Avoid the acquisition of products that do not comply with open standards for interoperability or data storage; and(e) Avoid the acquisition of products that are known to make unauthorized transfers of information to, or permit unauthorized control of or modification of a state agency’s computer.
- Open source software should be used to secure public sector systems, IT bosses are told Feb 03, 2012
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The Inquirer -Open Source Software should not be dismissed as a means of securing public sector systems, government IT bosses were told at a conference on Wednesday.
Speaking at the government ICT conference in London, Ian Levy, technical director at the Communication Electronics Security Group (CESG) said local authorities need to realise the organisation supports the deployment of non-proprietary software for security purposes.
He highlighted Bristol City Council as an example of one authority that had gone ahead with this approach, despite having originally believed it was prohibited from buying open source.
"They thought they had to use Novell or Microsoft and the CESG would not have supported its use of open source," Levy said on Tuesday.
- The open source behind gov.uk revealed Feb 02, 2012
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The H Open - While the UK government's plans for wider adoption of open source have been uneven in their application, the new beta version of the gov.uk web site should give proprietary software vendors and contractors pause for thought, as it is almost entirely built on or with open source
- IBM calls time on Symphony OpenOffice fork Jan 31, 2012
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The Register - IBM's putting its weight behind an Oracle-backed OpenOffice push rather than follow Google, Red Hat and others on an independent effort.
The latest version of IBM's Symphony collaboration suite, version 3.0.1, will likely be the last based on the computing and services giant's fork of the OpenOffice code base.
IBM is instead putting its "energy" into the Apache OpenOffice project, having contributed the Symphony code base to the Apache Software Foundation.
Ed Brill, director of messaging and collaboration for Lotus software, has blogged here: "We expect to distribute an 'IBM edition' of Apache OpenOffice in the future."
The decision sees IBM lining up against Google, Ubuntu-shop Canonical Red Hat, Novell and others who've thrown their hats in with The Document Foundation.
- Android Does Not Need Antivirus; Google Official Lashes Out at Vendors Jan 30, 2012
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Device Magazine - Google’s open source software team has come out in the open, criticizing firms selling antivirus software for Android and other mobile devices. The company has claimed that Android, iOS, and RIM Blackberry operating systems do not need antivirus software.
Chris DiBona, Google’s open-source Program Manager, while reacting to a press report attacking the inherent vulnerability of open-source software as used by both Android and Apple’s iOS, has clarified that in case you read a report from a vendor that tries to sell you something based on protecting Android, RIM or iOS from viruses that vendor could even be a scammer or a charlatan.
Calling upon such vendors selling virus protection for Android, RIM or IOS, he said they need to be ashamed of themselves.
- Microsoft's magic bullet for Azure: Red Hat Linux Jan 30, 2012
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The Register - If Microsoft loves money, and it does, then making Linux publicly available on its proprietary Azure cloud can't come soon enough.
Last June Microsoft ran a build of Linux on its Windows Azure compute fabric in the labs of the Server and Tools division, which is responsible for its cloud.
What flavour of Linux? Red Hat, sources close to the company now tell The Reg.
That's a critical pick given North Carolina's favourite brand of Linux continues to reign as the market's number-one distro and is a preferred choice for Windows shops when going Linux.
- 10 Things to Look Forward to in LibreOffice 3.5 Jan 24, 2012
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PCW - Hard on the heels of the release of the bug-fixing LibreOffice 3.4.5 last Monday, the Document Foundation on Friday published a release candidate version of LibreOffice 3.5, which will be the next major version of the office productivity software.
- Extremadura to move all of its 40,000 desktops to open source Jan 24, 2012
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Joinup - The administration of Spain’s autonomous region of Extremadura is moving to a complete open source desktop, replacing the current proprietary desktop platform, confirms the region's CIO, Teodomiro Cayetano López. The IT department started a project to install the Debian distribution on all 40,000 desktop PCs. "The project is really advanced and we hope to start the deployment the next spring, finishing it in December."
The project makes it Europe's second largest open source desktop migration, between the French Gendarmerie (90,000 desktops) and the German city of Munich (14,000 desktops).
- Linux is getting too big Jan 18, 2012
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FudZilla - Linus Torvalds is getting a little worried about the size of the Linux kernel source code.
In the last three years or so the source code size has grown by 50-percent and the latest version is more than 15 million lines long. Linux started with 10,000 lines of code, and version 1.0.0 grew to 176,250 lines by March 1994. Less than ten years ago Linux 2.4 had about 2.4 million lines of code.
- "An Open-Source World"? Where's The Open Source? Jan 12, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - If we are to believe the early signs, 2012 may well be the year that British schools finally start to address the continuing shame that is ICT teaching. As I and many others have noted, the current approach essentially consists of sitting people in front of Microsoft Word and Excel and making them learn a couple of commands on the menus. It seems that the message has finally got through to the powers-that-be:
Imagine the dramatic change which could be possible in just a few years, once we remove the roadblock of the existing ICT curriculum. Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11 year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch. By 16, they could have an understanding of formal logic previously covered only in University courses and be writing their own Apps for smartphones.
(Or they might just sit down and write a new operating system kernel as someone else did a few years ago.)
Those words - amazingly - were pronounced earlier today by the UK Education Secretary Michael Gove as part of a long-awaited speech about the future of ICT teaching in the UK.
- AT&T, Oracle Bet On Open Source Clouds Jan 12, 2012
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Seeking Alpha - Which has more value in the cloud, open source code or an open API?
Rackspace (RAX) is betting on open source code with its CloudStack project. Amazon (AMZN) has long bet on open Application Program Interfaces (APIs) with its Amazon Web Services. Analyst Matt Asay says it's the API that matters.
Oracle (ORCL) and AT&T (T) now say it's the source code that matters.
Oracle this week placed a big bet on open source by naming Cloudera its supplier of big data software for its Oracle Cloud Appliance.
- NASA Launches Agency-wide Open Source Initiative Jan 06, 2012
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fedscoop - NASA has launched a new website, located at code.nasa.gov, aimed at centralizing the agency’s open source software efforts and creating a collaborative environment to discuss issues related to its use.
The site, currently in “alpha” phase, will be developed over a three-stage process and include a directory of development projects, points of contacts, online discussion forums and help “guide internal and external groups in open development, release, and contribution.”
- Of Open Source and the European Commission Jan 05, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - At the end of last year I reported on the worrying signs of vacillation from the UK government over its support for truly open standards. At least it's relatively straightforward to keep tabs on what's happening in Blighty; Europe is another matter - I find the labyrinthine bureaucracy and its digital shadow pretty hard to navigate. So I was pleased to come across the following page, entitled "Strategy for internal use of OSS at the EC".
For a start, it has this useful summary of the Commission's gradual adoption of open source solutions:
- Misplaced priorities hampering UK government uptake of open source Jan 04, 2012
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opensource.com - According to a computing.co.uk article entitled Open Source: The government's commitment so far, most of the IT technology used in the UK government is still proprietary and comes from single vendors.
Open source adoption by government agencies in the UK is progressing, but is still being hindered by a focus on "free as in gratis." Decisions based on cost-of-acquisition alone ignore the other real and more important values offered by open source, which are derived from "free as in freedom."
- Security 'misunderstandings' remain open source barrier Jan 03, 2012
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UKauthorITy - Cultural barriers and misunderstanding of security risks remain the biggest blocks to the public sector's wider implementation of open source, the civil servant tasked with boosting open source has told UKAuthority.com.
Robin Pape, chief information officer for the Home Office and the senior responsibility officer within government for open source and open standards, said open source software is still not being given appropriate consideration when government bodies evaluate software options.
"The primary reason open source isn't considered is cultural - government customers and its leading suppliers have largely been happy to procure proprietary commercial software and have not been aware of, or had experience with, open source alternatives". Pape said in an email interview with UKauthorITy.com. "This is changing, and we can encourage this change by recognising that an "intelligent customer" function requires both a technical and commercial understanding of open computing, as well as a difference in how the market is engaged."
Another significant reason is misunderstanding of how the government IT security process applies to open source, he said. "We have worked to clarify the security risks around open source, and the good news is that on balance open source is no more or less secure closed than closed source software. This means that open source software cannot be excluded from an options analysis for security reasons alone."
- Apple wins US Android patent ruling against HTC Dec 22, 2011
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ZDNet -Apple has won a narrow victory over HTC in one of the companies' patent battles, with the US International Trade Commission ordering HTC to stop infringing on an Apple patent in its Android smartphones.
The ITC ruling (PDF), announced on Monday after multiple delays, stated that HTC must from 19 April, 2012 stop US imports of devices that infringe on two claims in the '647 patent. This patent covers the functionality where a smartphone user can tap on a link in, for example, an email to initiate a phone call or open a web page.
HTC has claimed the ITC ruling as a victory for itself, as Apple had originally tried to assert 10 patents against HTC, with multiple claims of infringement in many of these patents. In the event, the ITC only upheld two of the four claims Apple was citing in just one of those 10 patents.
- Apache forges ahead with OpenOffice.org suite Dec 22, 2011
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InfoWorld - Developer release planned; open source organization asserts trademark protection.
In its new role as steward of the OpenOffice.org open source office suite, the Apache Software Foundation expects to offer an Apache-branded version of the package for developers in 2012. Apache also is carefully guarding its trademarks.
Apache on Tuesday is releasing a statement about its OpenOffice efforts, entitled "Open Letter to the Open Document Format Ecosystem," which notes the planned 3.4 release, tentatively slated for early 2012. Apache has just about completed with code clearance stage of the effort, said Don Harbison of the Apache OpenOffice project management committee in an interview.
- Microsoft will beat Linux clouds at their own game - with open source Dec 19, 2011
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The Register - Open... and Shut Amazon may dominate public cloud computing, but not amongst the Microsoft groupies. Microsoft has managed to be an end-to-end cradle-to-grave supplier within the data centre, and is attempting to extend this motherly embrace to the cloud with its Azure platform.
Cracks have recently begun to show in this strategy, however, as Microsoft increasingly turns to open-source technologies like Hadoop to spice up Azure.
Is this a stopgap strategy or a sign of a more open Microsoft cloud?
The signs point to the latter, as Microsoft reaches beyond the Redmond talent pool to make Azure more appealing to the broader developer population. Microsoft's devoted customers, after all, haven't been the fastest moving on cloud adoption.
- Hewlett-Packard embraces its webOS operating system again Dec 12, 2011
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The Australian - HEWLETT-PACKARD is making its webOS mobile operating system available to the open source community and will again consider making tablets based on the platform.
HP will take another shot at making webOS tablets, most likely in 2013, Meg Whitman, the chief executive of the world's number one computer maker, said in an interview with technology blog TechCrunch.
HP said it would continue to work on and support webOS, but the software platform will become open source, meaning that developers anywhere can tinker with it as they wish and it will be available for anyone to use free of charge.
"WebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable," Whitman said in a statement.
"By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices."
- Open Source Total Cost of Ownership 2.0 Dec 08, 2011
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - Back in 2006, I wrote a piece for LXer called "A Brief History of Microsoft FUD". This ran through successive attempts by Microsoft to dismiss GNU/Linux in various ways. One of the better-known was a series of "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO) studies. By an amazing coincidence, these all showed that Microsoft Windows was cheaper than that supposedly cheap GNU/Linux.
Fortunately, people soon cottoned on to the fact that these studies, paid for by Microsoft, were pretty worthless (here, for example, is a great debunking of the kind of FUD that was being put out in 2005.) However, one knock-on consequence of that episode is that TCO studies rather fell from favour.
So it's interesting to see this new report prepared for the Cabinet Office with the title "Total Cost of Ownership of Open Source Software", which has been released under the liberal Open Government Licence for public sector information. Here's the background:
- DWP Confirms 1,000 Open Source Desktops Pilot Dec 05, 2011
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eWeek Europe - Microsoft beware: a major UK government department is to trial open source desktops
The Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that it is to pilot a scheme where it will trial 1,000 open source desktops.
News of the scheme was revealed by Mike Truran, customer delivery director at DWP, speaking at the Datacenter Dynamics Convergence conference. “If the pilot works we will take it forward,” Truran reportedly said.
- Suse looking to re-open Linux conversation Dec 05, 2011
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TechDay -Nearly eight months on from its purchase by global software company The Attachmate Group, Linux distributors Suse are beginning to implement changes to the way their business is run, including re-opening lines of communication with resellers and end users.
Although hugely respected in the world of developers, Linux hasn’t yet made the impact on businesses it deserves, according to Hamish Miles, Suse’s newly-appointed regional sales director for ANZ."We need to change the conversation into a business conversation,” Miles says."We need to try to avoid the IT department in the conversation, and talk to the finance guys.”
- Google’s open source boss defends Android security isssues Dec 02, 2011
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TechWatch - Google hits out at security industry, which replies citing lack of app review process.
As yet more research uncovers further security threats in Android devices, Google’s Chris DiBona has accused security firms and anti-virus vendors of being nothing more than “charlatans and scammers” who create scare stories in order to sell their software.
Angry at what he sees as an attack on open source software in general, DiBona posted a rant on Google+ about why open source has little to worry about from viruses.
This has led to a number of reports that suggest that Google’s approach to the Android malware problem is nothing more than burying their head in the sand, something which worries the security community greatly.
- Free, distributed search with YaCy 1.0 Dec 01, 2011
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Karsten on Free Software - Today we published a press release about a distributed Free Software search engine: YaCy 1.0. At FSFE, we don’t usually do press releases about new software. But this time, it’s about a broader point: The rise of distributed systems.
There are more and more Free Software projects that replace centrally run services with distributed ones. For example, identi.ca (running on status.net) offers a Free Software alternative to Twitter; diaspora and many others provide a free, distributed alternative to Facebook; and so forth.
Now YaCy fills a significant gap: A free, distributed search engine.
- Open source: Is the government doing enough? Nov 29, 2011
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Computing - The promotion of open source and open standards is a key tenet of the government's ICT strategy, but did the publication of the Open Source Procurement Toolkit earlier this month and recent government initiatives provide the boost needed to increase understanding and procurement of open source within the public sector?
Open source is currently in use across several government departments, with Drupal powering the Cabinet Office website and some DirectGov services, Transport for London's Oystercard using an open source infrastructure, and the Department of Health using open source to work with EU partners.
In addition, some departments are creating their own open source technologies, such as the Department for the Climate Change, which has created FoxOpen. However, most of the technology used by government remains proprietary, with the Department for Work and Pensions, for example, still using comprehensive proprietary products from single vendors such as IBM.
The government's open source policy was established in 2004, but CIO for the Home Office and the senior responsibility officer for open source and open standards, Robin Pape, acknowledged in conversation with Computing that there had been limited progress towards a truly level playing field for open source. "This meant that opportunities for better value solutions were being missed," he said.
- Does Free Software cost jobs? Nov 28, 2011
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ComputerWorld - Last year I generated quite a response when I suggested that the major expense of school ICT, namely the human resources required to keep it all going would be cut and cut again. The model of school ICT that had come to pass required huge amounts of skilled technical support.
Well everything has changed. Schools have stopped spending and the firms that sold to them are making big redundancies as illustrated by the cuts imposed recently by RM plc. My college has frozen all posts and within ICT the only post to be unfrozen is a web developer post. All of our ‘mission critical’ apps are available through the web (which is how I survive using only my Chromebook) so it seems obvious to me that the conventional model of Domains and their technical armies will naturally wither away.
I am feeling a little uneasy. As part of an Open Source company my mantra to education was ‘reduce overheads, reduce support, save money, do more for less’...well the message got through ... right alongside the recession. Trouble is we did not create a single long term job during this crusade. The company I was with has no-one now employed in any aspect of education.
All the developments in education are web-based and mostly leveraging globally available free stuff much of which indeed owes its existence to free, open source software. Virtually none of it represents a single British job.
- Ubuntu popularity falls as Linux Mint flourishes Nov 25, 2011
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The Inquirer - Ubuntu is losing popularity according to Distrowatch, with Linux Mint growing at a tremendous pace.
The Distrowatch Linux Distribution popularity tracker was updated earlier today showing Canonical's Ubuntu slipping to fourth place, with Linux Mint increasing its lead at the top. For many years Ubuntu had topped the Distrowatch popularity list, but in the past year it has slipped to second place and now is ranked fourth.
Ubuntu's drop to fourth place sees Red Hat's Fedora move up to second place and OpenSUSE take third. Not only has Linux Mint retained its position at the top of the Distrowatch charts, according to the web site its popularity has increased by over 66 per cent in the last month.
- Has open source outgrown the Apache Way? Nov 24, 2011
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ITWorld - Organizations like the Apache Software Foundation, the Linux Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation have long been a part of the open source and free software ecosystem. But some in the FLOSS community are beginning to wonder if these venerable organizations need to change in order to keep up with the changing demands of FLOSS.
- Googler: Android antivirus software is scareware from 'charlatans' Nov 21, 2011
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CNet - Chris DiBona - Google's open-source software leader has lashed out at companies selling antivirus software for mobile devices including Google's Android operating system, calling them "charlatans and scammers."
Chris DiBona, Google's open-source programs manager, unleashed his tirade after seeing a press report about "inherent" insecurity of open-source software, which is used not just in Android but also Apple's iOS. He argued that Android, iOS, and Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS don't need antivirus software.
"Virus companies are playing on your fears to try to sell you BS protection software for Android, RIM, and, iOS," DiBona said on Google+. "They are charlatans and scammers. If you work for a company selling virus protection for Android, RIM or iOS, you should be ashamed of yourself."
- Joomla! Named Top Open Source Content Management System Nov 16, 2011
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MarketWatch - Joomla, one of the world's most popular open source content management systems (CMS) used for everything from websites to blogs to Intranets, today announced Joomla has won the Packt Publishing award for the top open source CMS. Now in its sixth year, many consider the Packt Open Source Award as a top honor for an open source project. Joomla won the award based on a combination of public voting and input by a panel of judges consisting of open source luminaries.
- German Court Rules That Free Software Can Be Modified as Users Wish Nov 14, 2011
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PCW - A major challenge to the principles of free software was thrown out of a German district court on Tuesday.
German DSL router vendor AVM had attempted to stop Cybits, which produces children's Web-filtering software, from modifying any part of the firmware used in its routers, including a key piece of Linux-based free software.
Both companies use the Linux kernel, which is licensed under the General Public License (GPL). In order for the Cybits filtering program to work, it needs to alter certain parts of this kernel (removing some updates that were added by AVM). AVM claimed that changing the kernel infringed AVM's copyright.
However, in its ruling the court apparently sided with Cybits, saying that users of embedded devices with pre-installed free software have the legal freedom to make, install, run and distribute modifications to this free software.
- CESG asserts security of open source software Nov 09, 2011
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The Guardian - It is wrong to believe that open source software is implicity insecure, according to the government's main official on the subject.
Qamar Yunus of CESG, the National Technical Authority for Information Assurance, made the assertion in outlining the guidance the organisation has produced on the subject at the EHI Live event in Birmingham.
"There was a myth being circulated around the SIs, saying you can't use open source software in government as it's not secure," Yunus told the conference, referring to the systems integrators that account for large amounts of government ICT spending.
To counter this, the Cabinet Office asked CESG, which works within GCHQ, to produce guidance on the subject. The result is already available to users of the Government Secure intranet, and will be published on the Cabinet Office website in the next couple of weeks.
"That document clearly states there is no difference between open source and proprietary software. That's one myth busted," Yunus said.
- Open-source Proponents Blast Proprietary Software in Dutch Schools Nov 08, 2011
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PCW - Dutch education authorities have decided to throw out their government's open standards policy and instead lock in to Microsoft proprietary software for years to come, according to open-source advocates.
Marja Bijsterveldt, the Netherlands' secretary of education, said that she was unwilling to force open standards on educational institutions, sparking an outcry from open-source advocates who say that Dutch students using free software or devices without Silverlight-support will find themselves locked out of schools' online systems.
The open standards policy was approved by the Dutch Parliament in 2007, but has not been fully implemented. Now, free software advocates are starting a new battle to make the use of open standards mandatory for all publicly funded institutions.
- Cabinet Office publishes open source procurement toolkit Nov 03, 2011
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The Guardian - Department hopes to dispel myths around open source with new online toolkit.
The Cabinet Office has published an open source procurement toolkit for the public sector on its website.
It said the purpose is to ensure that there is a level playing field for open source and proprietary software and that some of the myths associated with open source are dispelled.
The toolkit includes six documents: All About Open Source – including FAQs; ICT Advice Note - Procurement of Open Source; Procurement Policy Note on Open Source; OSS Options; CESG Guidance on Open Source (this site will only open for users who have previously registered with a .gsi.gov.uk email address); and Total Cost of Ownership.
The options document contains details of different IT functions such as servers, databases, application development, networks and business applications.
- Apple open sources its ALAC lossless audio codec Nov 01, 2011
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The H Open - Apple has announced the release of its ALAC lossless audio codec as open source. The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) is used to compress the size of digital audio files without losing any of the original information, making a decoded ALAC stream "bit-for-bit identical to the original uncompressed audio file".
Similar to other lossless codecs like FLAC, files are typically reduced to approximately 50 per cent of their original size. File formats such as MP3 and AAC are considered to be "lossy", in that converting to them results in the loss of some fidelity while providing much better compression.
- Open Source Software: The Silent Threat at the Heart of the Cyber Security Crisis Nov 01, 2011
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Huffington Post - Today, the government launches its cyber security conference following the 'disturbing' number of attacks suffered by government systems. It's good that they recognise there is a serious problem here - though I suspect it's because they know the average voter might suddenly start to care about tech issues following the recent revelations. As soon as the papers get wind of stories about 'hacking', people are bound to ignore the bland reality in favour of an imaginary thriller movie, possibly starring William Hague in a full-length leather trench coat.
Indeed, according to the ICO annual track, protecting personal information ranks as the joint-first public social concern, equal to crime prevention. This is something which is extremely important to a lot of people, and the government are aware that they need to do more.
However, for all that this signals a step in the right direction, the conference - and discussions about online security in general - need to recognise a deep-seated issue in the way we do business and store information online. I'm referring to the popularity of open source software, currently favoured by a range of e-commerce business and governmental services thanks to low associated costs and apparent convenience.
- Is Microsoft Firefox's last, great hope? Oct 28, 2011
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ComputerWorld - Mozilla has faced considerable criticism for its decision to release a customized version of Firefox in which the default search engine and home page is Microsoft's Bing. But if Mozilla is going to survive, that's exactly what it needs to do, because with declining market share and a potential rift with Google, Microsoft may be Mozilla's last, best hope.
The version of Firefox, called Firefox with Bing is based on Firefox 7.1. Neither Microsoft nor Mozillas is commenting on the financial terms of the deal, but you can be sure that Microsoft is paying Mozilla a pretty penny.
The non-profit Mozilla Foundation receives almost all of its revenue from contracts with search providers --- 98% of all of its revenue in 2010 came that way, according to Computerworld. And most of that money comes from Google. Computerworld says that in 2008, 88% of search provider revenue for Mozilla came from Google.
- Mozilla, Microsoft debut Bing-ed Firefox Oct 27, 2011
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ComputerWorld - Just weeks before Mozilla's lucrative contract with Google comes up for renewal, the open-source developer launched a customized version of Firefox that uses rival Microsoft's Bing search engine.
Microsoft also touted the new Firefox, saying that it had teamed with Mozilla because users "told us to make it even easier to use Bing in Firefox."
- Business gives open source thumbs-up Oct 24, 2011
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ITWeb - Around 50% of surveyed companies claim that vendor-supported open source software provides either the same or better features and benefits than proprietary software.
This is the key finding in this year's ITWeb open source survey, administered in conjunction with Linux Warehouse, which attracted more business management respondents than last year's survey.
The majority of respondents voted overwhelmingly that open source is either the same or better than proprietary in terms of features, speed performance, ease of use, tools and utilities, documentation, technical support, cost of ownership, scalability and ease of change
- The Future of OpenOffice.org: How Not to Write a Press Release Oct 19, 2011
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The Standards Blog - Andy Updegrove - Since 2005, I see that I have written over 227 blog entries about ODF (I say more than, because the very earliest got lost in an earlier platform migration). Throughout the greatest part of this six year period, OpenOffice was the poster child ODF implementation - the one with the most users, the most press attention, the most corporate support - tens of millions of dollars of it, from Sun Microsystems. Of course, there were other impressive implementations, both open source and proprietary alike. OpenOffice, though, was always the default ODF implementation referenced by the press.
But the long-stalled acquisition of Sun by Oracle brought uncertainty, and ultimately abandonment. Along the way, the much neglected community of OpenOffice contributors felt the strain, finally forking as a result. This gave the new project - LibreOffice, hosted by The Document Foundation, a new non-profit created for that purpose - an early head start in regaining lost ground. The Document Foundation and LibreOffice today enjoy the enthusiastic support of a growing community that has already released it's own updated version of the original OpenOffice code. And then, at long last, the legacy code base, too, gained a new lease on life, when last June Oracle offered, and the Apache Foundation accepted, ownership of the code and the OpenOffice trademark, into the Apache Incubator.
With the Apache Foundation providing a new home, the question in many peoples' minds was whether the bruised and abused remnant of the OpenOffice project would be able to get back on its feet, dust itself off, and regain its prior importance in the marketplace. And also, what would this mean for LibreOffice?
Last week, the Apache Foundation issued a press release meant to address these questions. How successful was it? Well, let's just say that when it comes to public relations, the Apache Foundation is a very good open source developer. A fair summary of the press release is that it's a hodge podge of statements, some opaque, others unnecessary, and some hopelessly confused. In other words, just when OpenOffice could use a clear, concise statement of what has been accomplished since June and what the project hopes to accomplish next, we get something with little information, much confusion, and no indication of what to expect when.
For those that wish to form their own conclusions, the press release is reproduced in full at the end of this blog entry. For those that don't, here's my summary of what the Apache Foundation has to say about the state and future of OpenOffice:
- The Apache Software Foundation Statement on Apache OpenOffice.org Oct 18, 2011
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PRNewswire - FOREST HILL, Md., Oct. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- On 1 June 2011, Oracle Corporation submitted the OpenOffice.org code base to The Apache Software Foundation. That submission was accepted, and the project is now being developed as a podling in the Apache Incubator under the ASF's meritocratic process informally dubbed "The Apache Way".
OpenOffice.org is now officially part of the Apache family.
The project is known as Apache OpenOffice.org (incubating).
Over its 12-year history, the ASF has welcomed contributions from individuals and organizations alike, but, as a policy, does not solicit code donations. The OpenOffice.org code base was not pursued by the ASF prior to its acceptance into the Apache Incubator.
The Apache OpenOffice.org Podling Project Management Committee (PPMC) and Committer list are nearly 10 times greater than those of other projects in the Apache Incubator, demonstrating the tremendous interest in this project.
As with many highly-visible products, there has been speculation and conjecture about the future of OpenOffice.org at Apache. More recently, destructive statements have been published by both members of the greater FOSS community and former contributors to the original OpenOffice.org product, suggesting that the project has failed during the 18 weeks since its acceptance into the Apache Incubator.
Whilst the ASF operates in the open –our code and project mailing lists are publicly accessible– ASF governance permits for projects to make information and code freely available when the project deems them ready to be released. Apache OpenOffice.org is not at risk.
As an end-user-facing product, OpenOffice.org is unique in comparison to the other nearly 170 products currently being developed, incubated, and shepherded at the ASF. Considered to be "ingredient brands", countless competing Web server, Cloud computing, data handling, and other solutions behind the products serving millions of users worldwide are, unbeknown to most, "Powered by Apache".
And we're OK with that.
- Office Suites: LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org? Oct 18, 2011
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - The office suite has occupied a very strange position in the world of open source. As a key software tool used by practically everyone on a daily basis, it was vital for free software to be able to offer one. And yet what came to be the leading office suite - OpenOffice.org - was widely recognised as deeply unsatisfactory. Its early versions were barely usable, and even in its later incarnations it was hard to get enthusiastic about it.
That was largely a function of the way that it had come into being, starting as the closed-source application StarOffice, and then being open-sourced by Sun, which had bought the product, largely in an attempt to irritate Microsoft. Licensing issues meant that OpenOffice.org never really became a true community project. As a result, there was no real passion behind its development, and it showed.
Things were made even worse when Oracle bought Sun. It soon became clear that the former cared even less than the latter about making OpenOffice.org a vibrant and successful open source project, and the announcement of The Document Foundation and the new LibreOffice - effectively a fork - was probably inevitable at this point. Here's its stated mission:
- LibreOffice plans ports to iOS, Android, cloud Oct 18, 2011
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The Register - The Document Foundation, which is developing the LibreOffice software suite, has demonstrated the business software working entirely in the browser for cloud applications, and has announced that it will also port it to Android and iOS.
Both the cloud version and the iOS and Android ports are unlikely to see the light of day before 2012 or possibly 2013, but the announcements seem intended to emphasize how far ahead LibreOffice developers are working.
The French government has also thrown its support behind the LibreOffice project, specifying the software for all its future Windows systems, and transitioning 500,000 existing Windows users from OpenOffice. In a single step this increases the Windows installed base of LibreOffice by five per cent, and that figure looks likely to grow after the Paris Metropolitan council district announced it would give away 800,000 USB drives containing the code. ®
- Apache insists OpenOffice is alive, well, and flush Oct 17, 2011
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The Register - The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has sought to downplay fears over the future of OpenOffice, following a rather dramatic statement from original members of the team, begging for donations.
Shane Curcuru, one of the mentors on the Apache OpenOffice podling, told The Register that the ASF was continuing development of the OpenOffice code after receiving both the software and full international trademarking rights from Oracle. In addition, the number of contributors is rising, and the code is still receiving additions from Oracle employees on an unofficial basis.
“The OpenOffice podling is doing fine. We have plenty of commiters and project management committee members working on OpenOffice and have voted on new committee members,” he said.
- Bristol City Council - Statement - open source Oct 14, 2011
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Bristol City Council - Bristol City Council Leader Barbara Janke said: "Bristol is leading the way on promoting open source solutions and supporting our strong creative media and digital sector. We held a very productive meeting with the Cabinet Office yesterday, and they were able to reassure us that there are no security or accreditation issues that should hold us back from pushing ahead with our open source agenda.
"This is very good news and was warmly welcomed by the IT companies present. Our aim is to do all we can to see a higher proportion of money from our IT procurement ending up in the local economy and supporting the city's innovative software companies.
"We have now been given the green light by the Cabinet Office to push ahead with this open source agenda and they have promised to work closely with us on this issue over the next few months, and more widely in our efforts to support our thriving creative and digital sector as we develop the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone."
View the minutes from the meeting on the Bristol Futures website.
- Has IBM kicked OpenOffice.org to the curb? Oct 14, 2011
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ITWorld - Those are the words of Stefan Taxhet, CEO of Team OpenOffice.org e.V., the German non-profit responsible for managing the fundraising for the Apache OpenOffice.org project. Taxhet made this statement in a press release Tuesday that announced new fundraising efforts for the project, which is apparently in need of a cash infusion.
Team OpenOffice.org's impassioned press release seemed to finger Oracle's donation of OpenOffice.org to the Apache Project and the subsequent cutting off of funding as the culprit behind their current financial woes. Curiously, the same statement also heralded the release from Oracle as a great liberating event for the project, which currently is under incubator status within the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).
But here's where I am confused: where exactly is IBM in all of this?
- Hard-up OpenOffice whips out begging-cap website Oct 12, 2011
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The Register - Hamburg-based open-source project OpenOffice will embark upon a major fundraising campaign this week to defend itself against a looming shutdown.
On Wednesday a new website will be launched with many donation options, spokesperson Andreas Jäger told The Register: "The organisation will also look for a major investor, but one that fits the product."
After the split with their main sponsor, Oracle, in June, the brains behind OpenOffice decided they wanted to continue as an association. A sudden death of OpenOffice would be disastrous, the organisation says. Their software is used worldwide, not only by private individuals, but also by many administrations and small and medium-sized businesses; the package is downloaded 1.5 million times a week.
- Bristol Council gets open source go-ahead after CESG discussions Oct 10, 2011
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Computer Weekly - Bristol City Council has been cleared to build an IT infrastructure using open source software after a visit from CESG, the cyber security arm of the UK intelligence services.
Complaints about CESG's obstruction of open source software were branded "folk-law" at a meeting the security body held in Bristol yesterday with council leader Barbara Jenke and others including Bristol IT chiefs Paul Arrigoni and Gavin Beckett, and executives from the Cabinet Office.
The security body, an arm of GCHQ, denied its Code of Connection (CoCo) and guidance on information assurance prevented public bodies using open source software.
- UK public administration's use of open source growing in importance Oct 06, 2011
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OSOR - Open source is a topic rising in importance for public administrations in the United Kingdom. Very recent examples of public administrations turning to this type of software include city and county councils, hospitals and government departments, and politicians increasingly recognise its importance.
Last March, the cabinet unveiled its new ICT strategy, in which the use of this type of software is one of the ten key themes. To tackle the failing of big and complex IT projects, and to increase sharing and reuse of IT and data, the cabinet says that it wants to 'create a level playing field for open source software'. A second theme is to 'impose compulsory open standards, starting with interoperability and security'.
Among the most recent reports of public administrations implementing open source solutions is the Oxfordshire County Council, moving its web site to Drupal, an open source system for managing web sites. The H-Online, an IT news site focussing on open source last week reported that several hospitals are considering the use of an electronic patient record based on open source components. A third example is the department of transport, that earlier this month signed a contract to start hosting some of its web applications on open source.
- As LibreOffice Turns One, a Peek Ahead at What's to Come Oct 06, 2011
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PCW - It was just about a year ago that I was writing about the launch of LibreOffice, and now here we are today, marking the free productivity software suite's first year.
A lot has happened along the way since the fork was first launched out of concern over Oracle's plans for the OpenOffice.org suite, which it inherited when it acquired Sun early last year. Not only is LibreOffice now the office suite of choice on pretty much all the leading Linux distributions, but millions of Windows and Mac users have embraced it as well. In fact, there are now an estimated 25 million people worldwide using the software, according to the Document Foundation, including close to 10 million Windows users.
The software has effectively replaced OpenOffice.org as the leading open source Microsoft Office alternative for personal and enterprise use, in other words, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
- Number of open source applications on government desktops doubles in Malta Oct 06, 2011
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eGov - The number of open source applications installed by default on desktop PCs of public administrations in Malta has increased by 47 percent, between December 2009 and May 2011, says Michel Bugeja, enterprise architect at Malta's Information Technology Agency (MITA). "The biggest increase is on tools to handle PDFs, for creating diagrams, for mind mapping and for project management."
The agency maintains a list of applications, both open source and proprietary, that it evaluates for use by governments. The most recent open source applications it added are Open Office (office productivity suite) Dia (diagram drawing) Gimp (image editing) and Openproj (project management).
- LibreOffice Is One Oct 04, 2011
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ComputerWorldUK - Simon Phipps - Once framed as an impetuous fork, LibreOffice has become the standard-bearer for the former OpenOffice community.
Once in the mists of time, I was the head of open source at Sun Microsystems. One of my chief delights in that role was the OpenOffice.org project. I attended the Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Monterey, California in 2000 where the project was created out of a product Sun had acquired the previous year, StarOffice. I watched as it grew in polish and capability. I also helped as it submitted its ideas to the OASIS standards group for an "Open Office Document Format", a project that evolved into ODF and changed the world of enterprise document handling.
- Happy Birthday LibreOffice! Sep 30, 2011
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Moved by Feedom Powered by Standards-Charles-H. Schulz - It’s been one year, and I still can’t believe time has gone so fast. I would like to thank everybody who has been making the LibreOffice Project what it is today, and what it will become in the years to come. To the first founders and to the newcomers these days, to the former OpenOffice.org community and to the LibreOffice community; to the users who put their confidence in us; to our families, friends and colleagues who supported us: thank you for a wonderful year on your side. We are now one year old and we owe it to you. If anything’s been proven in these incredible 365 days, it’s that community works. I’m not referring to community “management”, I’m talking about people standing up for what they believe is the right thing to do, and getting it done. It’s about software freedom and perhaps about freedom in general too. It’s about realizing that no one will step up and set you free if not yourself. One of the greatest Americans of all times, Benjamin Franklin, used to say that freedom is not something that’s given to you, it is something you take. The LibreOffice Project is fundamentally about that and not about anyone’s corporate roadmap.
- Openness: An Open Question Sep 29, 2011
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - Last week I went along to OpenForum Europe, where I had been invited to give a short talk as part of a panel on “Tackling “Societal Challenges” through Openness”. Despite my attendance, the conference had some impressive speakers, including the European Commission's Neelie Kroes and Google's Hal Varian.
Unfortunately, I missed both of these because I was still travelling then, but fortunately, the ever-efficient European Commission machine has put Kroes' speech online.
This began with some comments about standards:
- Bristol Council's open source plan thwarted by security clearance problems Sep 29, 2011
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Computer Weekly - Bristol City Council's open source push has suffered another series of set-backs that point a finger of blame at CESG, the cyber security arm of government intelligence unit GCHQ.
Leaders at the local authority claim that the need for CESG security certification of e-mail systems effectively means the council has no choice but to buy Microsoft.
Senior Cabinet Office IT leaders have been asked to help as Bristol's faltering open source strategy, still showing little progress after a year, highlighted problems besetting the coalition government's own open source policy.
- Linux group mulls anti-Microsoft campaign Sep 28, 2011
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ZDNet - Plans to enable a secure boot on Windows 8 machines have drawn the ire of Linux Australia's membership after Microsoft revealed plans recently that would require all alternative operating systems (including earlier versions of Windows) to carry Microsoft security keys to be compatible with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and its secure-booting procedures.
This would make it impossible to install alternative operating systems like Linux, or even older versions of Windows, if the OEM doesn't bundle the secure keys with new OS releases and the hardware vendor doesn't enable the secure-boot feature to be switched off.
- MySQL founder savages Oracle’s move to 'open core' Sep 22, 2011
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The Register - One of the key founders of the MySQL project, Ulf Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, has savaged Oracle’s decision to start selling commercially exclusive extensions to MySQL.
In an extensive blog post, Monty said that the so-called "open core" model – where open source code is sold alongside proprietary add-ons – was not the original intention of MySQL and that the setup devalues the open source project. The full open source nature of the project was what made MySQL so popular, he explains, and Sun’s earlier attempts to move to an open core model were squashed.
- Is Android really free software? Sep 20, 2011
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The Guardian - Google's smartphone code is often described as 'open' or 'free' – but when examined by the Free Software Foundation, it starts to look like something different.
To what extent does Android respect the freedom of its users? For a computer user that values freedom, that is the most important question to ask about any software system.
In the free/libre software movement, we develop software that respects users' freedom, so we and you can escape from software that doesn't. By contrast, the idea of "open source" focuses on how to develop code; it is a different current of thought whose principal value is code quality rather than freedom.Thus, the concern here is not whether Android is "open", but whether it allows users to be free.
- Open source skunkworks at EHI Live 2011 Sep 16, 2011
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EHI Acute - EHealth Insider is bringing a new feature to EHI Live 2011: a healthcare skunkworks that will give visitors the chance to ask questions about how open source software can be used to solve healthcare problems.
The skunkworks is being run in conjunction with Malcolm Newbury, an open source consultant and co-chair of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise UK.
Vendors who have signed up to support the feature will demonstrate their own solutions and identify, build and showcase solutions to the challenges that EHI readers throw at them.
- Government Wants Open Standards To Be Royalty-Free Sep 15, 2011
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eWeek - Francis Maude has confirmed that it will adopt royalty-free standards, to deliver a level playing field for open source
Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, has clarified the government’s policy on seeking open standards when procuring IT equipment, following confusion over whether “open standards” means Royalty-Free (RF) or Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND).
Technologies available under RF conditions, can be used freely, while those under FRAND terms require users to pay a “reasonable” royalty. The HTTP protocol is free, for instance, while technologies for 3G communications are FRAND.
The distinction is important, because it is difficult for the open source community to implement technologies available under FRAND; the FRAND terms require a licence to be paid, while the open source licence requires source code to be distributed freely.
- Android, Microsoft Could Spark Smartphone Fragmentation Sep 13, 2011
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eWeek - Google Android and Microsoft's lawsuit efforts could poke manufacturers to embrace mobile operating systems like webOS, fragmenting the industry further.
In the course of promoting Windows Phone, Microsoft executives have seized on Android’s supposed fragmentation issues, arguing that Google’s platform is in serious danger of splitting itself across too many versions on too many different devices.
Google CEO Larry Page has embarked on a quest to refocus his company on its core properties, a strategy that could rein in Android’s fragmentary impulses. Nonetheless, Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility, combined with Microsoft’s attempts to squeeze Android manufacturers into “royalty agreements,” could end up fragmenting the smartphone industry in startling and unexpected ways.
- UK.gov works on YET ANOTHER open-source push Sep 08, 2011
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The Register - TransferSummit Yet another government definition for the term "open standards" is incoming because the Home Office isn't satisfied with the current wording of its so-called Action Plan.
The department's IT wonk Tariq Rashid confirmed at an open source forum in Oxford yesterday that the government had been "lobbying against" the current definition for open standards, and added that a new version was set to be published by the end of 2011.
At the TransferSummit event he spoke about how a policy to encourage open source, open standards and re-use of software across central and local government had been mulled over since 2004 without any real action kicking in. And that's despite several redrafts.
An optimistic Rashid, arguably just like his predecessors, is convinced that that attitude is finally changing.
"There seems to be a different feel and there's a lot of interest from politicians," he said.
- Cabinet Office shuns open-source in IT-tracking deal Aug 23, 2011
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The Register - The Cabinet Office and its IT underlings have exhaustively championed the need for more OSS across government since the ConDem Coalition was cobbled together in May 2010. Nonetheless Francis Maude's department has just snubbed open source players by awarding a contract to a proprietary software provider to help establish how much money the government spends on technology.
Readers need only cast their minds back to a damning report published by the public administration select committee (PASC) last month that lambasted over-reliance on big IT firms in Whitehall over many years.
The cross-party group of MPs, whose committee is chaired by Tory politico Bernard Jenkin, labelled the IT-buying culture in central government as an "obscene" waste of taxpayer money.
- Romanian government tender prohibits open source Aug 17, 2011
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The H Open - According to a report on OSOR.eu, the EU's Open Source Observatory and Repository, an IT procurement tender issued by the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MAI) explicitly bans the use of open source software in any offer made in response. The tender concerns the development of an "Information System of Romanian Criminal Records (Rocris)", with a budget of approximately 2.85 million euros.
- Google's future handset rivals praise Motorola deal Aug 16, 2011
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CNET - Four of the biggest makers of Android phones--Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics, and Sony-Ericsson--have lined up to praise the patent protections they expect from Google's planned acquisition of Motorola.
Google published the four companies' eerily similar supporting quotations on its Web site today not long after Google CEO Larry Page announced the $12.5 billion deal. Samsung and HTC already are the target of Apple patent infringement suits.
Unsurprisingly, each phone maker's leader steers well clear of the fact that the company they rely upon for a popular mobile operating system now expects to become a direct competitor. Google's ambition to run Motorola Mobility as a new division must be raising a lot of hackles, and perhaps is igniting a re-evaluation of where Microsoft's Windows Phone OS fits into the mobile ecosystem.
- UK Digital Future to Fail Without Government Focus Aug 15, 2011
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PR.com - The Government needs to invest in training developers in open source platforms if the country is to stand a chance of competing with its American and European counterparts in digital development.
Open source software is extremely valuable for web companies in the UK but many are experiencing skills shortages that are stalling their growth.
Experts in software development came together at a round table discussion held by hosting provider UKFast. They agreed that open source frameworks are crucial for the continued growth of the UK's technology and digital industries and support from Government should be more forthcoming.
- Bristol Council open source: the allegations in full Aug 12, 2011
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Computer Weekly - Bristol City Council's failure to deliver on its open source strategy is beginning to make the coalition government's manifesto commitment on open source look incontinent.
The council's own open source strategy is looking ineffectual. Bristol Council cabinet committed to an open source infrastructure a year ago - as long as it was doable. It ordered a pilot but that was discredited by an allegation that it had been fixed. Now the council has refused to release the suspect pilot reports under Freedom of Information, it is time to look at those allegations in full.
- Apple's 'bogus' patents will 'strangle' Android: Google Aug 09, 2011
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Sydney Morning Herald - Google's chief legal officer has launched a blistering attack on competitors, including Apple, for attempting to stifle innovation by using "bogus patents" to target Google's Android partners including Samsung.
David Drummond, who is also Google's senior vice-president, wrote in an explosive blog post that the patent wars were pushing up the prices of Android smartphones and tablets. This was part of a "hostile, organised campaign" being waged by Apple, Microsoft and others to "strangle" Android, which Google provides free of charge.
- Google's top lawyer rips Apple, Microsoft and Oracle Aug 04, 2011
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CNET - Google's top legal officer today posted a scathing indictment of adversaries Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle for pursuing "bogus" patent claims that may serve to drive up the costs of phones using Google's Android mobile operating system.
Google Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond paints a picture of rivals envious of Android's success, noting that more than 550,000 Android devices are activated daily.
"But Android's success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and other companies, waged through bogus patents," Drummond writes in a post under the heading "When patents attack Android."
- Mozilla challenges Android with new web OS Aug 01, 2011
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Computerworld - Mozilla has announced an audacious project to build an open source smartphone and tablet operating system to rival the increasingly cosy three-way domination of Android, Apple's iPhone and Windows Phone.
Under the name of Boot to Gecko (B2G), the new OS will take the Gecko HTML rendering engine of Mozilla's Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client and build around it a wholly open source project capable of running atop Android-compatible hardware thanks to re-use of a few nuggets of low-level code from that OS.
- Mozilla eyes open-source mobile OS Jul 27, 2011
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ZDNet - Mozilla revealed preliminary plans on Monday to take the Gecko engine that drives its Firefox browser and turn it into an open-source operating system that will eventually work on phones and tablets.
- Oracle buys Ksplice Jul 25, 2011
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The Register - With 7,000 companies paying for support contracts for Oracle's Enterprise Linux clone, the software giant is, whether anyone likes it or not, a player in the Linux racket. And Oracle just made its competitive position in the Linux space a lot more interesting with the acquisition of a startup called Ksplice.
- LibreOffice Conference Paris, France 12th-15th October, 2011 Jul 20, 2011
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The first annual LibreOffice project's meeting, the LibreOffice Conference, will be held in Paris from October 12th to 15th. It will be the event for those interested in the development of free office productivity software, open standards, and the OpenDocument format generally, and is an exciting opportunity to meet Community members, developers and hackers.
- OpenOffice: Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride Jul 18, 2011
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The Standards Blog - Andy Updegrove - Poor OpenOffice. It’s been open source for so long, and yet its adoption and market importance has always lagged far behind that of peer software like Linux – despite the fact that it’s free and implements a standard (ODF) aggressively promoted by some of the most powerful technology countries in the world. Can this ever change?
If yesterday’s announcement by IBM is any indication, the answer is “not likely,” despite the fact that Big Blue’s latest commitment to OpenOffice, on its surface, sounds like good news. The reason? It’s too little, and too late. Here’s why.
- IBM bequeaths Symphony code to Apache Jul 15, 2011
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ComputerWorld - Hoping to further sharpen OpenOffice's competitive viability against Microsoft Office, IBM is donating the code of its Symphony open source office suite to the nonprofit Apache Software Foundation.
Apache could fold this code into its own open source office suite OpenOffice, on which Symphony was based. In June, Oracle donated the OpenOffice suite to Apache.
"Prior to Apache's entry, there really hasn't been enough innovation in this area over the past 10 years," said Kevin Cavanaugh, who is the IBM vice president for business and technical strategy in collaboration solutions. "It's been constrained because we haven't had a true open source community with a mature governance model."
- Bristol restarts open source pilot Jul 14, 2011
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Computer Weekly - Who can have stepped in to rescue the pioneering open source pilot at Bristol City Council after it collapsed amid alarming allegations that Boo-Hissstems Integrator Computacenter had skewed the scheme's outcome to favour its chum Microsoft?
- IT Industry Welcomes Govt's Draft Policy Of Adopting Open Source Jul 14, 2011
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EFY TImes - The Indian Government's draft policy to go the open source way has been welcomed by the IT professionals all across the nation. The kind of response EFYTimes.com got for the story, speaks volumes about the fact that the industry is excited about the move planned by the Government of India.
The Government has been talking of the open source-based systems for long, but for the first time it is working on a policy on the use of operating systems and device drivers in all new e-governance projects. According to the latest draft policy on e-governance, all new projects must work on open source operating systems only. The draft policy on Device Drivers For Procurement Of Hardware For E-governance says, “Government of India (GOI) endeavours to provide e-governance services, which are technology-neutral, cost effective, interoperable and vendor-neutral. GOI Policy on open standards is a step towards meeting this objective in the development of e-governance applications.” The policy shall apply to all the new e-governance projects as well as the existing ones.
- Google's Open Source Chief Talks Shop in Interview Jul 13, 2011
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Ostatic - In the grand scheme of things, although not everyone would call it "an open source company," Google contributes more open source code to the world than almost any other company. This is one of several points that the company's open source program manager, Chris DiBona, makes in an interview with derStandard.at. As one of the key people who oversees how Android, Chrome and other projects advance and are released in new versions, his perspectives on these projects and Google's overall stance toward open source are notable. Here are some of his choice comments from the interview, including how prevalent Linux usage is at Google.
DiBona notes that Google defaults to the Apache license with its open source releases, and explains why:
- Brazilian government signs up to develop OpenOffice and LibreOffice Jul 12, 2011
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The H Open - The Brazilian government has signed a letter of intent to work with both The Document Foundation and the Apache OpenOffice.org community to develop the Office Suite platforms maintained by both communities. The letter asserts that the ODF standard is already a guarantee of interoperability within the government. As Brazil is one of the biggest users of both LibreOffice and OpenOffice with an estimated million public computers running the free/open source office suites, the govenment aims to make the national contribution to the projects more effective.
The letter(ODT document) was signed on July 1st, during the International Free Software Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It was signed by Marcos Mazoni of the Brazilian government's Free Software Implementation Committee (CISL); Sady Jacques, for SoftwareLivre.org; Jomar Silva, for the Apache OpenOffice.org community; and Oliver Hallor, for the LibreOffice Community.
- Open Source In the Bavarian Government of Munich, Germany: Interview Jul 08, 2011
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Muktware - Anton Borisov interviews Oliver Altehage, Change Manager for LiMux-Project to understand the options and deployment of GNU/Linux and open source in the Bavarian Government of Munich, Germany.
- CISL and communities strengthen FLOSS office suites Jul 07, 2011
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Software Livre - On Friday, July 1, at the International Free Software Forum (FISL) in Porto Alegre - Brazil, the Brazilian Government's Free Software Implementation Committee has signed, along with the communities of the LibreOffice and OpenOffice projects, maintained respectively by the The Document Foundation and Apache Foundation, a Letter of Intent which signals the mutual interest of cooperation with the FLOSS office suites.
The proposal is to strengthen the cooperative position of the Brazilian State with the evolution of the FLOSS office suites, due to its importance within public institutions. The adoption of these tools represents a major success of migrating from proprietary platforms to open source software in all governmental spheres. It's estimated that more than 1 million public computers operate with these solutions, which represents savings on software license fees and national investment in technology.
- Department of Justice's migration to OpenOffice a success story Jul 06, 2011
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OSOR - According to an online magazine aimed at users of the Linux Operating System, since 2008 the Austrian justice ministry has migrated several thousands of desktop PCs to OpenOffice, in a "complete success story" worth highlighting.
- LibreOffice 3.4.1 provides stable new features for every user Jul 04, 2011
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LibreOffice - The Internet, July 1, 2011 – The Document Foundation announces the release of LibreOffice 3.4.1, the second version of the newer 3.4 family, targeting both private individuals and enterprises. LibreOffice 3.4.1 fixes several bugs that affected the previous version, and can be safely deployed for production needs by most users.
LibreOffice 3.4.1 can be downloaded from the following page: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.
LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. Support and documentation is free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers. You, too, can also get involved! See what LibreOffice can do for you »
- Czech environmental agency relying on open source and open standards Jun 30, 2011
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OSOR - Cenia, the Czech Republic's Environmental Information Agency, is relying on a broad variety of open source solutions, says its director Jiří Hradec. "To provision services that vendor independence, we use open source wherever possible."
Hradec was one of the speakers at a workshop on interoperability and standards, organised by the European Commission, that took place on 16 June in Brussels.
The agency's director argued in favour of a common European approach for spatial data applications. "That will foster competition and increase the reuse of applications developed for public administrations." He also wants the EC to extend its licence for open source software, the European Union Public Licence (EUPL), so that it can be used for publishing government data.
- Open source isn’t an innovation killer Jun 24, 2011
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Gigaom - While open standards give customers options, execs from Dell, VMware and Facebook at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco Wednesday said that open source wouldn’t be the death of innovation or revenues in cloud software and hardware development. However, businesses that wish to survive will need to provide value over and above the commoditized aspects of open computing platforms.
- Open barbarians poised to storm Apple's gate Jun 22, 2011
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The Register - Open...and Shut Open source has a tendency to cannibalize and commoditize – and not just surrounding proprietary projects. As described by researcher Dirk Riehle, open source involves a process of continuous innovation and commoditization as communities form to wring inefficiencies from software markets. Interestingly, this same phenomenon happens all the time in the wider software world, and it forecasts diminished importance of closed platforms like Apple's iOS in favor of more open platforms like Android.
Riehle's research plays off the excellent analysis of The 451 Group's Matt Aslett on the rise of permissive licensing in open-source communities. As Aslett points out, GPL licensing has been in relative decline compared to Apache- and MIT-licensed projects.
The reason, as Riehle writes, is clear: "Projects that don't choose a permissive license are at a Darwinian disadvantage over those that do because the later can receive contributions from a broader set of enterprises than the former." Not so surprisingly, this holds true even for source code repositories: GitHub has been beating SourceForge, Google Code, and other source code repositories by being even more open.
Openness matters. Even in the land of open-source software, where openness is the default.
- The real reason most source is closed? Open is hard Jun 22, 2011
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The Register - Matt Asay - Open...and Shut As much as 95 percent of the world's software is written for internal, enterprise use, rather than by vendors for sale, a point famously made by Eric Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Much of this software, in turn, has no proprietary value for the enterprises that develop it. So why isn't the world deluged with enterprise-written open-source software? Why do so many CIOs gladly use open source but not contribute to it?
Because open source is hard. Really, really hard.
- Oracle seeks 'billions' with Google Android suit Jun 20, 2011
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The Register - Oracle is seeking "billions of dollars" in damages from Google with its sweeping copyright and patent infringement lawsuit over the use of Java on Android.
According to an Oracle court filing released on Thursday, Google attempted to hide the scope of Oracle's damages claims and other related information from public view. But Larry Ellison and company want this out in the open. "Oracle’s damages claims in this case are in the billions of dollars,” the Oracle filing reads, and these claims, it says, are "based on both accepted methodology and a wealth of concrete evidence.”
- As Microsoft's monopoly crumbles, its mobile future is crucial Jun 17, 2011
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ZDNet - After nearly a decade, Microsoft’s reign as a monopoly is over.
The consent decree in U.S. v. Microsoft expired last month, officially removing Microsoft from antitrust scrutiny by the United States Department of Justice. And the latest real-world data on web usage confirms that Microsoft’s once-dominant position in the world of personal computing is crumbling.
For the past four years, I’ve collected semi-annual snapshots of web usage from Net Market Share. The data for the first half of 2011 tell an ominous story for Microsoft. See for yourself:
- OpenOffice.org: Breaking up is hard to do Jun 16, 2011
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ITWorld - The proposal to shift OpenOffice.org into the Apache Foundation as an incubator project was approved in a vote over the weekend by a wide margin of 41-5. But the shiny new Apache OpenOffice.org "podling" won't come without birthing pains.
Rob Weir, ODF Architect for IBM, praised the vote outcome in his Monday blog entry, but then took the time to skewer critics of the move to Apache.
Weir's comments were directed at a "small but vocal minority of non-Apache members who disagreed with the proposal attempt to derail it." Weir stated that all opinions were welcome, but didn't seem too thrilled with the idea that some dissenting opinions were actually lobbying against the Apache vote: "The day open source advocates decide to [smother] a new project in its crib, because they personally favor a slightly more established project is the day that FOSS dies."
- Google Launches Open Source Chromebooks Jun 16, 2011
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Ostatic - Today (Wednesday 15th) Google announced the immediate availability of their long awaited “Chromebooks”, and they might just be the best competitor to Microsoft and Apple yet. Based on a solid Linux core, Chrome OS is built to be the fastest way to get to the web. Boasting an 8 second boot time, ease of use, and a familiar interface, Linux has finally found its place on the desktop.
- OpenOffice, LibreOffice and the Scarcity Fallacy Jun 15, 2011
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Rob Weir - As you’ve probably heard, the proposal to move OpenOffice.org to the Apache Software Foundation was approved by a wide margin. Volunteers interested in helping with this project continued to sign up, even during the 72-hour ballot, giving the project 87 members, as well as 8 experienced Apache mentors, at the end of the vote. The volunteers signed up included an impressive number of programmers from OpenOffice.org, RedOffice and Symphony, as well as QA engineers, translators, education project experts, OOo user forum moderators and admins, marketing project members, documentation leads, etc. The broad range of support for this new project, from volunteers as well as voters, was very encouraging.
- The two faces of UK open source Jun 14, 2011
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ITWorld - There are two perceptions about open source in the United Kingdom's government.
First, there is the public-facing perception: that national and local government organizations have launched multiple open source deployment and integration projects over the years that sometimes seem to have trouble actually getting off the ground. But then another open source project is launched--sometimes by the same local governments, and all seems right in the world again.
Then there are the glimmers of what appears to be a darker truth about how open source is really handled in the UK. Glimmers like Minister of Parliament (MP) John Pugh's 2007 statement at the launch of the National Open Centre (NOC): "Open source has enemies, and its enemies are very, very close to government." (The story of NOC and its ultimately fizzled launch was detailed last summer.)
More recently, the CEO of an open source vendor out and out accused one of the systems integrators tasked with implementing the Bristol City Council's latest open source project of deliberately fumbling the project in order to keep the integrators' connections with Microsoft secure and their own wallets fat.
- Statement on OpenOffice.org's move to Apache Jun 14, 2011
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FSF - When OpenOffice.org moves to a non-copyleft license, there's a ready replacement for people who want a productivity suite that does more to protect their freedom: LibreOffice.
Oracle, IBM, and the Apache Software Foundation jointly announced last week that OpenOffice.org would become an official Apache project. OpenOffice.org is an important piece of free software, and many of its supporters suggest that this change will give them more control over the project's future direction. However, users and contributors should be aware that, as part of this transition, it will become easier for proprietary software developers to distribute OpenOffice.org as nonfree software.
- Oracle wants big cut of Android damages as Google's IP headache gets worse Jun 09, 2011
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ZDNet - Oracle is seeking major damages in its lawsuit against Google over Android in a move that reflects how the search giant’s intellectual property headaches may just continue to get worse. Should Google lose this IP battle, Android cuts would go to Oracle and Microsoft.
Florian Mueller highlighted a heavily redacted Google response to a damages argument made by Oracle expert witness Iain Cockburn, a Boston University professor. Cockburn argued that Google would owe unspecified damages if Android was found to infringe on Java.
- Is Linux on the desktop dead? Jun 08, 2011
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Techradar - Since the turn of the century, pundits have been telling us that this will be the year of desktop Linux - and unless something really extraordinary happens, this will be the 11th year that it hasn't happened.
While the open source operating system has made significant inroads into the server and mobile markets, its desktop market share is much the same as it was a decade ago: about 1 per cent. Netbooks gave Linux a shortlived boost, but the world of PCs still largely belongs to Microsoft - with one Unix-spun exception.
Apple's Mac OS X is doing what Linux advocates long dreamed of - it's actually taking market share from Microsoft. Can Linux learn anything from Apple, or does open source need its own Steve Jobs? In short, can Linux win?
- Novell's open source legacy – wake up, little SUSE Jun 08, 2011
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The H Open - Novell's unrequited romance with Linux and free software is over. Having completed its $2.2 billion takeover, Attachmate is dividing the spoils. Novell and its legacy networking business will survive in Utah. NetIQ will inherit Novell's identity and security management solutions, and SUSE has been given autonomy and control of Novell's open source projects from its base in Nuremberg.
Mono has been cast adrift, and the worst aspects of Novell's attempt to sell off a large part of its patent portfolio to a consortium led by Microsoft have been scuppered by the US Department of Justice and the German Federal Cartel Office. But there are still questions left to answer.
SUSE is the only mainstream Linux company to have been owned by a proprietary software company – if we exclude the short history of Corel Linux – and the awkwardness has shown.
- Statements on OpenOffice.org Contribution to Apache Jun 06, 2011
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Trond's Opening Standard - "With today's proposal (Jun 3rd 2011) to contribute theOpenOffice.org code to The Apache Software Foundation's Incubator, Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities. Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future. The Apache Software Foundation's model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development." -- Luke Kowalski, vice president, Oracle Corporate Architecture Group.
- An Invitation to Apache OpenOffice Jun 03, 2011
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An Antic Disposition - Rob Weir - As you have probably heard, Oracle has followed through with their earlier promise to “move OpenOffice.org to a purely community-based open source project.” OpenOffice is moving to Apache.
I’d like to offer you my own thoughts on this new opportunity and what it means. I recommend also the insights of my colleagues Ed Brill and Bob Sutor.
- Oracle drops OpenOffice on Apache, shuns forkers Jun 02, 2011
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The Register - Oracle is shunting OpenOffice onto the Apache Software Foundation, sidelining the original OpenOffice community that forked of the project as LibreOffice last year.
On Wednesday, Oracle said that its contribution demonstrates Oracle's commitment to the developer and open source communities. "Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future," the vice president of Oracle's corporate architecture group, Luke Kowalski, said in a statement. And the move was immediately welcomed by both Apache and IBM, one of OpenOffice's biggest beneficiaries through its use of Open Document Format (ODF).
But the move cuts off the coders who, in September 2010, unhappy with Oracle's treatment of the project, created LibreOffice under the aegis of The Document Foundation. At the time, Novell, Red Hat, Canonical, the Open Source Initiative, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and Google backed LibreOffice and The Foundation.
- Microsoft's lucrative new revenue stream? Android. May 31, 2011
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CNET - The irony's enough to make your head explode: Microsoft makes more money from Android than it does Windows Phone. This according to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, who says $5 from the purchase price of every HTC Android handset sold ends up in Microsoft's pockets.
- Does Amazon "owe" open source? Maybe a little May 31, 2011
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NetworkWorld - When most people look at Amazon, they probably see a retail giant that's constantly growing and reaching into new markets. But at the core of almost all of Amazon's success is open source — yet you rarely see Amazon participating and contributing. What's up with that?
Glyn Moody raised this point on Wednesday, and I have to say he's spot-on. Moody compares Amazon and Google — companies of similar size, that both depend heavily on Linux and open source. Yet Google is an active participant and contributor in open source, and Amazon largely sits on the sidelines.
- EU/UK: FSFE appeals for information on OSS deployments May 25, 2011
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OSOR - On 18 May 2011, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) launched an appeal for users to supply information on recommended open source software applications for use in the UK public sector. The FSFE’s intention is to write a paper which shows how widely deployed the applications are, thereby making them as attractive as possible to UK public sector procurers and suppliers.
- Google slips open source JPEG killer into Gmail, Picasa May 24, 2011
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The Register - Google has announced that Gmail and Picasa as well as its Chrome browser are now using WebP, the image compression format it open sourced last fall in an effort to replace the aging JPEG standard.
With a Friday blog post, the company also said that it has made several improvements to the technology since it was first unveiled.
When Google open sourced WebP last September, it claimed the new image format would reduce the size of web images by a good 40 per cent. The format is based on VP8, the video codec Google acquired with its purchase of On2 Technologies early last year and promptly open sourced as part of the new media format known as WebM.
- DOD Releases Open Source Development Guide May 24, 2011
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InformationWeek - The Department of Defense (DOD) has released a landmark guide for using open-source and open-standards technology to develop software in the U.S. military.
The 68-page guide, "Open Technology Development: Lessons Learned and Best Practices for Military Software," aims to "help U.S. government personnel and contractors implement open technology development (OTD) for software within government projects, particularly in defense," according to the guide, which has been posted in its entirety on the Scribd website and is available for free download.
- Open source .NET mimic rises from Novell ashes May 17, 2011
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The Register - The founders of Mono – an effort to build an open source version of Microsoft's .NET platform – have launched a new company around the project, just fourteen days after they were laid off by new Novell owner Attachmate.
The new company is known as Xamarin, and according to a blog post from Mono founder Miguel de Icaza, it will offer new commercial .NET offerings for iOS and Android; continue the development of both Mono and Moonlight, an open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight; and "explore Moonlight opportunities" involving mobiles and Apple's Mac App Store.
- Skype vs VOIP alternatives May 13, 2011
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The H Open - Glyn Moody - I presume that Microsoft will integrate Skype into its Windows Phone 7 offerings in an attempt to provide it with some unique features over rival mobile operating systems. That will certainly be popular with users, but the mobile network providers might not be so happy, and that could be problematic given the low market share of Windows Phone 7: Microsoft has very little clout here. That might stymie its plans for Skype in this regard – or give yet more impetus to competitors like Android and the iPhone.
Interestingly, the press release announcing the purchase addressed explicitly the issue of how Microsoft would treat rival platforms: “Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms.” To a certain extent, it has to: Skype is all about connectivity, and so the more clients, the more powerful the platform. However, there's plenty of wiggle room in Microsoft's statement: it doesn't promise to support all existing clients, and there are various levels of support.
Full article (2 pages)
- Companies trying, not buying, Office alternatives May 10, 2011
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CNet - Companies are actively looking for Microsoft Office alternatives such as Google Apps, but so far their interest hasn't dented the productivity suite's dominance, a Forrester Research study released today said.
"Adoption of alternatives relative to Microsoft Office is paltry, but interest remains high, with more than a quarter of companies actively looking at or experimenting with Web-based alternatives," Forrester said in the study. "While the free versions of these programs make it easy for companies to try, concerns over user acceptance and compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats continue to hinder broader deployments."
- Oracle wins round one in bare-knuckle Android patent suit May 03, 2011
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The Register - Oracle has won an early round in what is sure to be an epic battle against Google over Android's use of Java.
This week, Judge William Alsup issued a "claims construction" order in which he sided with Oracle on the definition of four out of five patent terms that will help determine outcome of the company's lawsuit against Google and Android. On the fifth term, he sided with neither company, choosing to lay down his own definition. Oracle and Google have until May 6 to respond to the order.
- Farewell, Novell Apr 29, 2011
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The Register - The sale of former local-area networking powerhouse Novell to Attachmate has been completed.
The $2.2bn sale was first announced in November, and it ends the independent life of a once-dominant network operating system vendor. In later years, its original market snuffed out by Microsoft, the company had become the home of the SUSE Linux distribution, only to find its new market overtaken by the likes of Ubuntu.
- Windows still rules OS roost, but Linux and Mac growing faster, says Gartner Apr 28, 2011
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Linux Devices - The worldwide market for operating system software grew nearly eight percent to $30.4 billion in 2010, led by Microsoft Windows with 78.6 percent market share, says Gartner. Yet Linux was the fastest growing server OS, and Apple's Mac OS had the fastest growth on the desktop, says the research firm.
- Idiotic Anti-Linux & Google Patent Decision Apr 27, 2011
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ZDNet - All good patent trolls know that you sue in the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Texas (EDTX). It’s known for its pro-patent judges that speed patent cases along their docket to the patent holders’ victory. That’s not just me and my anti-patent buddies speaking. No less a figure than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has described the EDTX as a “renegade jurisdiction.” It’s no wonder than that patent troll Bedrock chose the EDTX as its battlefield for its attack on Google, and a host of other companies, over a violation of its patent, which appears to be used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
In the case, the EDTX jury on Bedrock Computer Technologies, LLC vs. Google, Inc., awarded Bedrock $5 million. That’s chump change by patent troll standards, but Bedrock has also sued, among others, Yahoo!, MySpace, Amazon, PayPal, Match.com and AOL There’s money in those companies and Bedrock wants it!
- Google fined $5m over Linux patent row Apr 26, 2011
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BBC - A judgement by a Texas jury against Google could have major implications for the search giant and the open source world said experts. The internet titan was found guilty of infringing a patent related to the Linux kernel and fined $5m (£3.2m).
The software is used by Google for its server platforms and could also extend to its Android mobile platform. The kernel is at the core of the open-source operating system meaning this verdict could be far-reaching.
- Germany Clears Novell Patent Sale to Microsoft, EMC, Apple Apr 21, 2011
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Bloomberg - Germany’s antitrust regulator cleared Novell Inc. (NOVL)’s sale of 882 software patents to a group including Microsoft Inc., Oracle Inc., Apple Inc. (AAPL) and EMC Corp.
The Bonn-based Federal Cartel Office cleared the deal after the companies agreed to accommodate antitrust concerns raised by the German regulator and the U.S. Department of Justice, the office said in an e-mailed statement today.
The patent sale was linked to the acquisition of Novell by Attachmate Corp. The sales agreement was cleared only after the companies retracted their original plan and refiled it with new terms, according to the statement.
- Oracle's OpenOffice Move May Be Too Little, Too Late Apr 19, 2011
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PCW - It's hard to say for certain what prompted Oracle to do an about-face on Friday and release OpenOffice.org to the community. After all, it was only a few short months ago that the company made clear its intentions to keep control of the productivity suite itself, spurring the creation of the Document Foundation and its LibreOffice fork.
LibreOffice, incidentally, is thriving in the meantime, having received support from the likes of Canonical and Red Hat and inclusion in their respective Linux distributions. Just a few hours after Oracle's announcement, in fact, the Document Foundation released LibreOffice 3.4 Beta 1.
Nevertheless, Oracle now plans to move OpenOffice.org "to a purely community-based open source project and to no longer offer a commercial version," it wrote in its press release.
- Oracle Gives up on Commercial Open Office Apr 18, 2011
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The Register - Oracle announced Friday that it will no longer sell a commercial version of the Open Office productivity suite, and that the open-source OpenOffice.org will be transitioned to "a purely community-based open-source project."
"Given the breadth of interest in free personal productivity applications and the rapid evolution of personal computing technologies, we believe the OpenOffice.org project would be best managed by an organization focused on serving that broad constituency on a non-commercial basis," said Oracle Chief Architect Edward Screven in a statement.
Oracle will "begin working immediately with community members to further the continued success of Open Office" and plans to continue supporting standards like ODF (Open Document Format), he said.
- Open source and the sluggish UK public sector Apr 14, 2011
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The Register - Confronting their rapidly shrinking budgets, public sector bean counters must imagine that someone somewhere has been casting Chinese curses about living in interesting times. Because when money gets tight, things sure do get interesting.
You would think that at times like these open-source deployments would be the obvious solution. Open source has to be considered for public-sector IT projects and with no upfront licensing costs it ought to be a shoe-in.
But it doesn’t seem to work that way. Jane Silber, chief executive of Ubuntu’s commercial champion Canonical, has a feeling that open source is used as a negotiating tool but that its benefits are not always taken into account.
- OSI fears for Linux if Novell patents land with Apple, Oracle Apr 11, 2011
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Channel Register - In buying up a stash of Novell patents, Apple and Oracle could choke rivals in the virtualization, middleware, mobile, and media markets, according to the Open Source Initiative.
German regulators are looking into the proposed sale of 882 Novell patents to CPTN Holdings, Microsoft-led group that also includes Apple, Oracle, and EMC, and OSI president Michael Tiemann has warned that Oracle could use the patents to shut down virtualization innovation in Linux and attempt to shift the market to Solaris - which Oracle acquired through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems.
- 20 Years of Linux down, and the best is yet to come Apr 08, 2011
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ZDNet - Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, speaking from a wheelchair, opened the 2011 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. This meeting Zemlin said, was for the “leaders of Linux.”
The leaders of Linux aren’t ready to declare victory over Microsoft, Zemlin told me before the presentation, but “We’re beyond the obsession with Microsoft.”
In his presentation, Zemlin amply demonstrated why Linux vendors, developers and users are looking far beyond Microsoft. Zemlin who had had a nasty ski accident, opened his presentation with a clever video celebrating 20-years of Linux history.
- NASA Explores Open Source at Summit Apr 04, 2011
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CIO Insight - As the U.S. government explores revamping its IT infrastructure, open source and the help of the volunteer community could be its saving grace.
NASA has a simple, one-word answer for those who have ever asked any of the following questions: Does the U.S. government use open-source software in research, testing and production? Does it develop its own software and work within a community in an open-source manner? And does it distribute open-source software back to the community, once it's been vetted and sanctioned as ready for prime time by federal IT chiefs?
The answer to each of the above, of course, is yes. But legal caveats, fine print and the amorphous character of software itself make it much more complicated than all that.
- UK Government Promises to Go Open - Yet Again Apr 01, 2011
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COMPUTERWORLDUK - Glyn Moody - Sometimes it seems like I've written the same story about UK government IT plans again and again. You know the one: after years of empty promises, the UK government assures us that this time is will really open up, embracing open source and openness in all its forms.
Guess what? They're at it again:
- FSF to Google: Free Gmail's JavaScript now! Apr 01, 2011
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The Register - The Free Software Foundation has called on Google to release Gmail's JavaScript code under a free software license, continuing its crusade to ensure that all "nonfree" software is eradicated from the world's computers.
- Government puts open source at the heart of its new IT strategy Mar 30, 2011
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Computer Weekly - The government has launched its much-anticipated new IT strategy, with open source highlighted as a key part of its plans, and a promise that the coalition is "determined to do things better."
"We want government ICT to be open. Open to the people and organisations that use our services. And open to any provider, regardless of size," said Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.
The ICT strategy report put open source as a purchasing priority,
- Red Hat Proves That Open Source Is Good for Business Mar 28, 2011
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PCW - Critics of free and open source software are fond of making the argument that software must be locked up, patented and jealously guarded if it is to serve as the basis for a successful business. Well, Red Hat just refuted such claims in a big way this week with its fourth quarter earnings report, which blew away analysts' expectations and placed the company well on track for billion-dollar revenues in the upcoming year.
- UK is a closed source 'stronghold' Mar 28, 2011
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The Register - The UK lags behind the rest of the world in deployments of open source software. Steve George, vice-president of business development at Canonical, believes this is a mistake that compromises not only our economy but also our global competitiveness. In China rural communities are receiving millions of PCs running Linux. In India Ubuntu is the platform of choice for the regional government in Kerala. In France the police force is migrating everything to Ubuntu desktop, and in Andalusia in Spain the operating system sits on at least 220,000 school desktops
- Cutting the cost of innovation Mar 24, 2011
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The Register - Open source software might be free to download, but it ends up costing as much as traditional software because of the complexities of supporting it, or inflexible licensing structures. Or so the argument goes.
You would expect to hear this from Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison or any of the other grand old men of proprietary software. It is more surprising when you hear such thoughts being aired by the head of corporate services at Canonical, the commercial operation behind Ubuntu-flavoured Linux.
- Linus on Android headers: claims "seem totally bogus" Mar 23, 2011
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The H Open - The recent uncertainty cast over Android's Bionic library and its use of Linux kernel headers "seems totally bogus", according to Linus Torvalds. In an interview with Brian Proffitt at ITWorld, Torvalds said "I haven't looked at exactly what Google does with the kernel headers but I can't see they they'd want to do anything fundamentally different from glibc in this respect". He also pointed out that he has said making use of the kernel's system call interfaces, as described in the headers, does not "in any way result in a derived work as per the GPL".
- GNU Free Call Announced Mar 22, 2011
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GNU Telephony - GNU Free Call is a new project to develop and deploy secure self-organized communication services worldwide for private use and for public administration. We use the open standard SIP protocol and GNU SIP Witch to create secured peer-to-peer mesh calling networks, and we welcome all participation in our effort.
- What Happened to the Obama Open Source Initiative? Mar 22, 2011
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IPWatchdog - At least initially, President Obama was keenly interested in exploring how the United States government could use open source software rather than rely on proprietary software. President Obama was so interested in pursuing open source software solutions that on his second day in Office he asked Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, to lead his open source charge. In fact, President Obama reportedly asked McNealy to prepare a report on how the federal government could employ open source software, but as yet, some 26 months later there has been no mention of the report or across the board government adoption of open source software.
- NASA Set to Host Open Source Summit Mar 15, 2011
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WebProNews - One of the leading scientific agencies in the United States, if not the world, clearly values open source software. WebProNews reported on their partnership with RackSpace in July 2010 seeking to expand upon RackSpace’s technology used for cloud hosting and computing, and now NASA has announced they will be hosting an Open Source Summit on March 29th and 30th. The Summit, to be held at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, will seek to bring together leading engineers and developers from NASA with key figures in the open source community. NASA hopes that a standard can be created that will facilitate more of NASA’s work to be open sourced, as well as streamlining implementation of open source into NASA.
- IE: Computer Service Board switches to open source software Mar 11, 2011
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OSOR - Ireland’s Local Government Computer Service Board (LGCSB) is moving to open source software in a move forecast to have major migration ramifications, it was announced on 18 February 2011.
- Government takes action on open technology Mar 10, 2011
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The Guardian - Graham Taylor, chief executive officer of Open Forum Europe, applauds the government's recent moves on open source and open standards.
It's been an interesting few weeks in regard to open source. From being what in the past I classified a 'laggard' (that was the polite form) in Europe, the UK government is now intent on matching its Action Plan on Open Source, Open Standards and Re-use with....well, action! And in doing so it has shamed some other European countries that have been content to limit deliverables to a paper strategy.
- Parliamentary inquisitors turn their gaze on 'fat cat' suppliers Mar 10, 2011
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UKauthorITy.com - The alleged "fat cats" of the computer industry are emerging as the focus of attention of a parliamentary inquiry into public sector IT failings. At the opening evidence session, members of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee repeatedly probed witnesses with allegations that IT suppliers have shaped government policy to their own ends and blocked the adoption of open source technology.
- Can OpenBravo challenge incumbent ERP with open source? Mar 09, 2011
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ZDNet - Can OpenBravo open source ERP compete with the established, proprietary vendors? The absolute numbers would suggest no but a deeper dive suggests otherwise.
- Three good reasons to buy an open-PC Mar 09, 2011
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CIO - For many small business users, all the rational arguments for using open source software like Linux make a great deal of sense: It's free, customizable, compatible, and it's free of vendor lock-in, to name just a few.
- Ban the Microsoft virus, government told Mar 01, 2011
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Computer Weekly - Microsoft web software is like a computer virus in government computer systems and must be banned, a meeting of the British Computer Society's Open Source Specialist Group heard last week.
- Vint Cerf, On The Internet's Challenges Feb 28, 2011
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The Huffington Post - The Internet browser is the most susceptible to viruses. The browser is naïve about downloading and executing software. Google is trying to help by releasing the Chrome browser as open source. Open source platforms allow people to find problems and fix them. This is a big issue -- giving people more protection against (infected) websites. Right now, the biggest challenge is the browsers that allow the malware to get into computers and infect them.
- Top 59 Open Source Websites Feb 28, 2011
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Linux Planet - This time we've done something a little different and made a list of top open source Web sites.
- Windows open-source apps to the rescue Feb 22, 2011
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ZDNet - When many people think of open source, they think of Linux. But there are plenty of open-source applications that benefit Windows users — and excellent ones at that.
- Farewell MS Exchange, Hello Linux Open-Xchange Feb 22, 2011
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LinuxPlanet - Where oh where can we find refuge from Microsoft Exchange? One option is Open-Xchange, a groupware suite that serves as a replacement for Microsoft Exchange. From a licensing and cost perspective, OX looks like a great deal--but that means nothing if your users are going to revolt. So let's look at how OX stands up from the user's perspective, and whether you can cut the ties or not and still keep users happy.
- Local Government considers open source software strategy Feb 21, 2011
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Silicon Republic - The Local Government Computer Services Board is evaluating a strategic move to open source software now that its long-standing agreement to use Microsoft technology has come to an end.
- Yahoo to open-source cloud-serving engine Feb 21, 2011
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NETWORKWORLD - The cloud-serving engine lets developers build services in containers that sit above the virtual-machine layer, letting developers quickly deploy applications that are up and running with a set of common services.
- Open Source and Open Government Take the Stage at the State Department Feb 15, 2011
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The Huffington Post - Open source technology and collaborative models will matter in media, mapping, education, smarter cities, national security, disaster response and much more in 2011 and beyond. The success of open source in building systems that work at scale offers an important lesson to government leaders as well: to meet grand national challenges and create standards for the future, often it's best to work collectively on them.
- Open Source Obama Feb 18, 2011
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ZDNet - Every day, tens of thousands of developers from businesses, colleges, and homes contribute patches or new code to open-source programs. It’s not every day though that the White House does it. That’s exactly what happened last week when the White House’s New Media Director Macon Phillips announced the White House’s second code release to the open-sourceDrupal content management system (CMS).
- No more desktop Linux systems in the German Foreign Office Feb 17, 2011
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Linux Today - "In response to a questionPDFGerman language on "the use of open source software in the Foreign Office and other Government departments" submitted in parliament by the SPD (Social Democrats, the main German opposition party), the German government has confirmedPDFGerman language that the German Foreign Office is to switch back to Windows desktop systems.
- Open Source Finds a Friend in Big Government Feb 17, 2011
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E Commerce Times - The evolution of open source adoption at the federal level should be a plus for commercial providers. "We see this progress as an endorsement of our development model that is suited to these applications," said Red Hat Chief Technology Strategist Gunnar Hellekson. However, he also expressed disappointment that many agencies haven't generated the legal guidance necessary for their procurement departments to go after open source options.
- Estonian Ministry saves millions by using open source office Feb 16, 2011
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OSOR.eu - Using the open source costed the ministry no more than 64.000 Euro over the past ten years, being simply the annual budget for training users. Had it continued to use a proprietary office suite, the costs for purchasing or renting proprietary software licences and user training would have ranged between 1.4 and 2.8 million Euro, Merilo showed in a presentation at the Latvian Open Technology Association (LATA), a trade organisation, on 18 January in Latvia's capital Riga.
- Man decides to open source his genetic data using GitHub Feb 15, 2011
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geek.com - Manu Sporny, founder and CEO of Digital Bazaar, has decided to use GitHub to store a project of a very different nature. Rather than a piece of software, he is listing his own genetic data as an open source project. He has released all his rights to the data and made around 1 million of his genetic markers public domain.
- Protected Planet, UN Online Mapping Application, Built with Open Source Geospatial Technologies Feb 14, 2011
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Protected Planet, an interactive mapping website launched in October, provides information and media on protected areas across the world. Developers from the United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) built the server-side components of the application, while front-end development and visual design was handled by Vizzuality, a Madrid-based company that specializes in biodiversity informatics. As both organizations are committed to open source solutions, UNEP-WCMC used PostGIS for the Protected Planet spatial database, while Vizzuality relied upon GeoServer to serve Protected Planet's geospatial data. PostGIS and GeoServer are both supported by OpenGeo, a global leader in open source geospatial solutions.
- Can Free, "Open-Source" Software Bridge the Gender Gap in Technology? Feb 14, 2011
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If girls are taught computer skills in school from an early age, then there will be just as many female computer programmers as male ones ... at least, in theory. But when computer classes involve being taught to use products from Apple, Adobe and Microsoft -- and include activities like field trips to the Apple Store -- who's benefiting from them? The girls, or the corporations that sponsor their classes?
- Land Registry selects open source software Feb 11, 2011
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Guardian - A spokeswoman for the agency said that the software will "support the Land Registry's continued investment in management information and business intelligence to monitor the organisation's performance and efficiency."
- Competitive Benefits Drive Businesses to Open Source Feb 09, 2011
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PCWorld - Vendors of proprietary software are fond of warning potential customers that open source software isn't ready for business, typically citing subpar features or a higher total cost of ownership (TCO). Well, if any more data was needed to counter such claims, Gartner Group has provided it. In fact, more than half of the organizations recently surveyed by the research firm have adopted open source software solutions as part of their IT strategy.
- European Parliament starts free software user group Feb 08, 2011
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osor.eu - One member of the European Parliament and a handful of their advisors and assistants started a free software group last Saturday, aiming to increase the use of free and open source software in the European Parliament's IT infrastructure. The user group is open to all who works in the European Parliament, including staff and assistants working in political groups.
- Open source and the network's role in the cloud Feb 07, 2011
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cnet - The announcement of the latest release from open-source cloud-management software project OpenStack is remarkable in many ways. The rapidly growing OpenStack community is gaining ground on a mature platform--this release adds image management and support for unlimited object sizes in its object storage service software--and there were a number of new IT vendors added to the list of supporters.
- Learning from the open source movement Jan 28, 2011
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The Guardian - Technology's revolutionary idea can have immense benefits for social businesses. It is time we adopt them, says Geof Cox.
Open source isn't only for computer geeks. It is the 'intellectual property wing' of social enterprise and probably, globally, its most successful aspect. About three quarters of the internet runs on open source software. But let me pick out just three inspirational areas:
Open Source
Four
freedoms define Open Source Software:
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The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
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The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
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The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
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The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
- Managing Open Source vs. Proprietary Issues Mar 03, 2011
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Harvard Business Scholl - In their new book, The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development, HBS professor Josh Lerner and London School of Economics professor Mark Schankerman look at the impact of open source software on economic development, as well as the resulting policy and management implications. In this excerpt, they discuss how corporate managers should consider the interaction of open source and proprietary on software they develop and use.
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