KIPA has been actively pushing open source use in government. One of its projects resulted in a local version of Linux (called Buyeo) now used in nearly 200 schools in South Korea.
The users are asking, ok screaming, to Microsoft to please, oh please, don't take our XP Pro away from us. So far the big dumb company from Washington state is ignoring their customer pleas.
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Dell offers Ubuntu 7.10 on several of its systems and Dell will soon be offering Ubuntu 8.04 on its PCs, laptops, and its forthcoming UMPC. Acer will soon be offering Linpus Linux on its UMPCs and laptops.
What makes this device more interesting to us is that it runs Linux and Tagan is more than happy to let its customers modify the unit and write their own software.
Opengear has integrated uninterruptible power supply (UPS) monitoring tools in its uClinux-based remote access equipment. Opengear's console servers (pictured at left) now include tools derived from the open source Network UPS Tools (NUT) project, says the company.
Now the GPL, the GPL and other copy-left licenses sort of prevent that from happening by saying, no; you need to share--you need to insure that the freedoms that you had when you received the work are something that can be passed on downstream. And that's a tactical decision because the FSF who sort of puts out the GPL and continues to modify it--modifies it believes that by insuring that the downstream users have freedom and continue to have freedom that there will be more freedom overall. The more people that will release their stuff as free software, the more people will be encouraged to keep things more free in the long run and that ultimately there will be more free and open source software as a result. So--and the GPL is designed to protect that.
Not helping its case is the fact Sun put OpenSolaris under its own license - Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Sun joins a league of other vendors including Microsoft who have written their own licenses rather than use existing open-source licenses. Debian, by contrast, got to its position in the industry using a spread of different, and existing, licenses. Another complication is the Sun-domination of the OpenSolaris work.
"As new form-factors such as netbooks and MIDs (mobile Internet devices) bring Linux to users, they are often and largely unaware of the operating system. Distributions such as Ubuntu, Xandros and others have proven Linux can be as easy to use as Windows. Vendors are also making Linux easier to run, offering options to run Linux inside of Windows, alongside Windows, on USB and LiveCDs, so that complication/difficulty factor is changing," he explained.
That gives Google far too much power over its rival... There are already many sites that refuse to work with Firefox or explicitly say Firefox isn't supported
Comments
Vadim P.
2008-06-14 22:10:52
Fail!