Links 26/7/2010: Last Catch-up With Free/Open Source Software News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-07-26 09:06:35 UTC
- Modified: 2010-07-26 09:06:35 UTC
What exactly does it mean when Richard Stallman says that the Creative Commons’ Attribution-ShareAlike license has a “Weak Copyleft”? Why exactly is it that “Freeware” and “Non-Free Software” mean the same thing, while “Free Software” is something else entirely? And what is this business with “Free Beer”, and where can I get some? If you’ve asked yourself these questions, this column is for you.
“We have reduced their bills and given them what they needed,” says McGrattan. “We’ve also moved them from proprietary systems to open source so all they have to pay is a support bill. So they are quite happy. They have recommended us to other customers and governments and told them what we have done.”
One of Southern California's successful, serial entrepreneurs is Winston Damarillo, who founded Gluecode, which he sold to IBM in 2005. Earlier this month, his latest startup, El Segundo-based Morphlabs announced it had raised a Series B funding worth $5.5M. We thought we'd catch back up with Winston to hear about the Morphlabs.
[...]
[Winston Damarillo:] All of your startups have been centered around open source projects. What's the open source connection here?
Winston Damarillo: Sixty to seventy percent of our ingredients are based on open source. I always mention that anything I do has an open core, which is, the core of what we do comes from open source. In our case, the workload manager comes from Eucalyptus, the configuration management from Puppet, and a third systems management tool. All three are open source building blocks.
[...]
Winston Damarillo: One of the things I've learned, is that open source is now an accepted ingredient for any enterprise user. People are not scared anymore of using that. On what you need to know, from the business model side, is that we realized that open source support, by itself, is a declining and diminishing return on revenue generation. The more mature the open source product or project, the less the opportunity to make money. A good example of that is the Apache web server, where no one pays for support--they just download it and use it. What a successful company does, is implement what we call an open core--the idea is, you use open source, which you expect will mature over time, but later a product on top of that commercially, which allow you to make open source more scalable. That makes it more sustainable as a product, and not just as a support service.
Gurock Software announced an offer to provide free licenses of their web-based test management software TestRail to open source projects and teams.
-
Security
Mention 'open source security tools' and the first words that come to mind are Nmap and Nessus. Of course, Nessus is no longer open source. Its open source offshoot OpenVAS, has failed to acquire the same levels of popularity. Apart from Nmap and Nessus, Metasploit is probably one of the more popular offerings available on the open source security block.
Unfortunately, the flame wars stirred pent up frustrations among the projects' leaders. SourceFire's Vulnerability Research Team (VRT) continued the debate through performance tests posted on its blog, contending that "Suricata's performance isn't just bad; it's hideously, unforgivably bad." The article goes on to state that Suricata's capabilities are inherently limited by its choice of the Snort rule language, and that despite a million dollars in development, the OISF has "failed, utterly, to deliver on their promises."
The latest version of Truecrypt has many new features, including partitions with larger sector sizes, a volume organiser and automatic mounting of volumes.
-
Graphics
While working on some combat animations, I decided that the current Phoenix animation editor is too hard to use, and there are too many bottlenecks in the route to making it better. So, for now, I am looking into alternative approaches to editing animations.
As I mentioned before, here in the studio I use a Linux computer. Well, calling it a Linux computer is a bit inaccurate. I have a computer and it runs Linux. PCLinuxOS, to be specific. PCLinuxOS, like all Linux distributions, is freely available for download at many different websites. If you want to try Linux, I strongly suggest PCLinuxOS. if you want to explore a bit more, then visit DistroWatch.com. There, you can download and test drive (via a Live CD) any flavor of Linux being distributed today.
-
Symbian
Only companies can become Symbian Foundation members and therfore play a role in decision-making over future developments in the open source mobile operating system. The Symbian Developer Cooperative (DevCo) has now been founded to ensure that the voices of individual programmers are not ignored.
The Symbian Foundation and Nitobi team up in an effort to make it easier for mobile application developers to create mobile apps for any device.
-
Going Free
The former leaders of IBM's Visual Communications Lab have been hard at work on a "summer project" -- desktop software that will display large amounts of information in a number of visual formats.
Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg of Many Eyes fame will be releasing a new data visualization tool they call ‘Time Flow’ soon on the website of their current company ‘Flowing Media’.
-
Mozilla
Beta 2 was actually slated for release today, but the download page is still serving up b1. When it's ready, you'll find Firefox 4 beta 2 at getfirefox.com/beta/.
-
SaaS
Heroku Add-on System will make it possible for the Ruby developers to make use of Apache's open source CouchDB and offer systems capable of storing the unstructured data generated by web applications.
Rackspace's OpenStack could signal a new race to open up cloud computing technology
Open Source integration provider WSO2 is shipping a business rules server aimed at letting companies quickly and easily create, access, and manage business rules within an SOA framework. WSO2 Business Rules Server (BRS) delivers a tool for separating business logic from underlying infrastructure code.
Consider Facebook. Like its web peers, Facebook uses a ton of open-source software. While ostensibly free, to make projects like Linux work for its purposes, Facebook heavily customizes them. While the company may not buy as much software, it ends up writing or customizing quite a bit of code.
-
CMS
This past March we saw a hint of what was coming from the open source Web CMS project called MODx (news, site). Now their latest release, MODx Revolution v2.0, has officially arrived. This is the future of the MODx project. Let's take a peek.
If open source still makes you think of feature-bare products, command lines and dense nerd-level manuals, then you need to get with the times. TeamLabs is a fine example of open source Enterprise 2.0 at work. No more complicated than shopping on Amazon, it allows users to communicate, collaborate and project manage in a clear, stress-free style.
Chalk this one up as a victory for the free software movement: Thesis, the wildly popular proprietary WordPress theme from developer/designer Chris Pearson, is now available under a split GPL, the license that makes it possible to alter and redistribute this software as you see fit.
Pearson’s decision marks the end of a high-drama clash between him and Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPressWordPressWordPress and of Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and a handful of related software. Some folks wondered if the battle of words might end in a battle of legal precedent as Mullenweg struggled to preserve free software principles and Pearson struggled to maintain control over his highly successful software.
-
Joomla!
The project lead team behind open source content management system, Joomla!, is looking for greater contribution from the wider community on which features make the cut, and which are left for the future.
With an estimated 10 to 50 million public websites running under Joomal and with 750,000 downloads per month it is an important open source project. Computerworld Australia caught up with co-founder and core developer, Andrew Eddie, about his own history as well as that of Joomla's, and where the content management system is headed in the future.
-
Education
IT directors interested in open source software have an ever increasing number of resources available for learning more about options, best practices, and pitfalls. Online communities, conferences, blogs, and Webinars all provide perspective.
After a dozen interviews and review of even more online sources, THE Journal put together a list of tips for IT directors considering open source software (OSS) in their districts. The main take-away? Focus on what is needed and what will be accepted in any given situation--and the cost savings aren't so bad either.
-
Healthcare
David Riley, head of the CONNECT initiative for the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) Program. Riley is responsible for creating the product direction and overseeing product development for CONNECT.
I think the collective awe of health care aficionados at the Open Source Convention came to a focal point during our evening Birds of a Feather session, when open source advocate Fred Trotter, informally stepping in as session leader, pointed out that the leaders of key open source projects in the health care field were in the room, including two VistA implementors (Medsphere and WorldVistA), Tolven, and openEMR--and not to forget two other leading health care software initiatives from the U.S. government, CONNECT and NHIN Direct.
-
Semi-Open Source
Clearly, individual OSI directors have been less than thrilled with the open core business model. Simon Phipps, in particular, made a pretty strong argument that open core was just plain bad for business. But, though Phipps is an OSI director, he wasn't speaking in any official capacity on behalf of the OSI with these statements.
This weekend, Russ Nelson, another OSI director and License Approval Chair posted an entry on the OSI Board Blog sharply criticizing open core. This falls under my definition of official response.
Ihaka learned about the open source movement during his time at MIT. “That is really where free software came from, that is were Richard Stallman was and the free software foundation is still based in Cambridge I think. Those ideas were sort of hanging around in the air.”
-
BSD
Putting out new releases of OS software isn't always about adding major new features -- sometimes it's just about making existing features usable and stable. In the case of the open source software FreeBSD, that's certainly the case with the newly hatched 8.1 release.
-
Project Releases
The Open Information Security FoundatThe Open Information Security Foundation (OISF), a group funded by the U.S Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and several security vendors, this week released an open source engine built to detect and prevent network intrusions.ion (OISF), a group funded by the U.S Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and several security vendors, this week released an open source engine built to detect and prevent network intrusions.
The main feature of the new version is a completely re-write of TimeLive with fully integrated set of tools for managing every aspects of projects.
-
Government
The Australian Greens will use any gain in political influence to push for more open source software procurement by Government, according to its spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam.
-
Standards/Consortia
It was just back in May that Google opened up the VP8 video format that they got their hands on through the acquisition of On2 and at the same time they created the WebM container format. VP8 has already received a lot of love by the open-source community -- both developers and end-users -- and support for it has already worked its way into FFmpeg, GStreamer, and other multimedia projects. Google released the libvpx library as their official VP8 decoder library, but now the FFmpeg developers have created their own decoder and it's shockingly faster than that of Google's own open-source library.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Backlash and Negative Press After Microsoft Tells Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) People to DIE
- Follow-up stories
- Censorship as Signal of Opportunity for Reform
- It remains sad and ironic that Wikileaks outsourced so much of its official communications to Twitter (now X)
- The World Wide Web Has Been Rotting for Years (Quality, Accuracy, and Depth Consistently Decreasing)
- In the past people said that the Web had both "good" and "bad" and that the good outweighed the bad
- Comoros: Windows Plunges to Record Low of About 6% in Country of a Million People (in 2010 Windows Was 100%)
- Many of these people earn a few dollars a day; they don't care for Microsoft's "Hey Hi PC" hype
- The Mail (MX) Server Survey for July 2024 Shows Microsoft Collapsing to Only 689 Servers or 0.17% of the Whole (It Used to be About 25%)
- Microsoft became so insignificant and the most astounding thing is how the media deliberate ignores it or refuses to cover it
- Windows Down From 98.5% to 22.9% in Hungary
- Android is up because more people buy smaller mobile devices than laptops
- Microsoft Windows in Algeria: From 100% to Less Than 15%
- Notice that not too long ago Windows was measured at 100%. Now? Not even 15%.
- Microsoft Windows "Market Share" in New Zealand Plunges to 25%
- Android rising
- SUSE Goes Aryan: You May Not Use the Germanic Brand Anymore (It's Monopolised by the Corporation)
- Worse than grammar Nazis
- Gratis But Not Free as in Freedom: How Let's Encrypt is Dying in Geminispace
- Let's Encrypt is somewhat of a dying breed where the misguided CA model is shunned
-
- UEFI 'Secure Boot' Once Again Bricking PCs and Fake Security Models Are Perishing in Geminispace
- Let's Encrypt has just fallen again
- Links 17/07/2024: New Attacks on the Press, European Patents Squashed Even at Kangaroo Court (UPC)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/07/2024: Proponents of Censorship and New Arrivals at Gemini
- Links for the day
- Links 17/07/2024: School Budget Meltdown and Modern Cars as Tracking Nightmares
- Links for the day
- This Should Certainly be Illegal, But the Person Who Helped Microsoft Do This is Still Attacking the Critics of It
- perhaps time for an "I told you so post"
- [Meme] A Computer With an Extra Key on the Keyboard Isn't Everyone's Priority
- (so your telling me meme)
- Africa as an Important Reminder That Eradicating Microsoft Doesn't Go Far Enough
- Ideally, if our top goal is bigger than "get rid of Microsoft", we need to teach people to choose and use devices that obey them, not GAFAM
- Billions of Computers Run Linux and Many Use Debian (or a Derivative of It)
- many devices never get updated or even communicate with the Net, so exhaustive tallies are infeasible
- [Meme] Microsoft is Firing
- Don't worry, Microsoft will have some new vapourware coming soon
- More DEI (or Similar) Layoffs on the Way, According to Microsoft Team Leader
- What happened shortly before Independence Day wasn't the end of it, apparently
- [Meme] Many Volunteers Now Realise the "Open" in "OpenSUSE" or "openSUSE" Was Labour-Mining
- Back to coding, packaging and testing, slaves
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 16, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 16, 2024
- [Meme] Ein Factory
- A choice between "masters" (or "master race") is a false choice that results in mass exploitation and ultimately eradication (when there's little left to exploit)
- Links 17/07/2024: Open Source Initiative Lies and Dark Net Thoughts
- Links for the day
- Media Distorting Truth to Promote Ignorance
- online media is rapidly collapsing
- Android Rises to New Highs of Almost 80% in Cameroon
- How many dozens of nations will see Windows at under 10% this coming winter?
- Links 16/07/2024: TikTok Ban in Europe and Yandex Split
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/07/2024: On Packrafting and on Trump Shot
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Firefox Users Who Think They Know Better Than Mozilla
- Enjoy Firebook
- Firefox Used to Have About Half the Market in Switzerland, But It Doesn't Stand a Chance Anymore (Chrome Surging This Summer)
- Mozilla has managed to alienate some of the biggest fans of Firefox
- Microsoft's Biggest Losses Are in Europe This Summer
- Microsoft's ability to milk a relatively rich Europe is fast diminishing
- How to Make Software Suck and Discriminate Against People at the Same Time
- ageism glorified
- Bing Was at 2.6% in Russia When LLM Hype Started. Now It's Down to 0.8% (for 3 Months in a Row Already)
- The sharp fall of Bing may mean that exiting the Russian market won't matter to anybody
- [Meme] Microsoft Seems to be Failing to Comply With WARN Act (by Refusing to Announce Mass Layoffs as They Happen)
- since when does Microsoft obey the law anyway?
- Microsoft Layoffs Are Still Too Frequent to Keep Abreast of and Properly (or Exhaustively) Classify
- The "HR" department knows what's happening, but whistleblowers from there are rare
- Bahamas Joined the "5% Windows" Club
- statCounter only traces back about 1 in 20 Web requests to Windows
- Links 16/07/2024: Salesforce Layoffs and Microsoft's DMARC Fail
- Links for the day
- Antenna Abuse and Gemini Abuse (Self-hosting Perils)
- Perhaps all this junk is a sign of Gemini growing up
- Possibly Worse Than Bribes: US Politicians and Lawmakers Who Are Microsoft Shareholders
- They will keep bailing out Microsoft to bail themselves out
- The Software Freedom Conservancy Folks Don't Even Believe in Free Speech and They Act As Imposters (Also in the Trademark Arena/Sense)
- Software Freedom Conservancy was already establishing a reputation for itself as a G(I)AFAM censor/gatekeeper
- Djibouti Enters the Windows "10% Club" (Windows Was 99% in 2010)
- In Africa in general Microsoft lost control
- GNU/Linux Share Doubled in the United States of America (USA) in the Past 12 Months
- Or so says statCounter
- Even in North Korea (Democratic People's Republic Of Korea) Google Said to Dominate, Microsoft Around 1%
- Google at 93.26%
- [Meme] The Red Bait (Embrace... Extinguish)
- They set centos on fire, then offer a (de facto) proprietary substitute for a fee
- Shooting the Messenger to Spite the Message
- segment of a Noam Chomsky talk
- [Video] Boston Area Assange Defense (Yesterday)
- It was published only hours ago
- Guinea: Windows Down From 99.3% to 2.7% 'Market Share'
- Guinea is not a small country
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 15, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, July 15, 2024
- What's Meant by "Antenna Abuse" (Gemini)
- syndication is not a monopoly in Gemini and if one doesn't condone political censorship, then one can create one's own syndication service/capsule
- Microsoft Layoffs and Entire Unit Termination: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- What an announcement to make just before Independence Day
- Links 16/07/2024: Old Computer Challenge and One Page Dungeon Contest
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Falls Further and Closer Towards 10% (Windows "Market Share") in Kuwait
- more countries entering the "single-digit Windows" (under 10%) club
- Gemini Links 15/07/2024: Antenna's Pro-Hamas Bias Revisited and Old Computer Challenge
- Links for the day
- [Video] Julian Assange, Over One Decade Ago, Cautioning About What the Internet Had Truly Become
- video is not new
- Homage to Malta
- Malta is probably easy for Microsoft to bribe
- IRC at 16
- Logging has been used for us and against us
- In Malta, Android/Linux Has Overtaken Microsoft Windows (According to statCounter)
- statCounter milestone?
- Links 15/07/2024: China’s Economic Problems, Boeing Under Fire
- Links for the day
- 500 Days' Uptime Very Soon
- Good luck doing that with Windows...
- Windows Falls Below 20% in Tunisia
- A month ago we wrote about GNU/Linux in Tunisia
- Links 15/07/2024: Google Wants Wiz and Why "Sports Ruin Everything"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/07/2024: Old Computer Challenge and Sending Files via NNCP
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 14, 2024
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 14, 2024