Linus Torvalds is not Bill Gates. He’s a programmer, and an honest man. So when he finds something he likes he says so, without artifice, and that’s all it means. I hope people will understand that following Torvalds’ blog post extolling the Google Nexus One. Apparently Linus has the same problem my son does (along with millions of other people). Directions ... [Link]
Turns out the biggest surprise in the Oracle-Sun drama was not the split within open source over mySQL. It was the split within Oracle over mySQL. (Picture from Oracle’s Collaborate 2007 event.) Ken Jacobs, who was one of CEO Larry Ellison’s first 20 hires, says he is leaving the company after seeking to run mySQL and being turned down. Jacobs gets ... [Link]
Paula Hunter will differentiate CodePlex from sites like Google Code and groups like the Linux Foundation by trying to bring enterprise IT shops into the open source mainstream. Hunter was named the new executive director of the CodePlex Foundation late last week, and spoke to ZDNet Open Source. The CodePlex Foundation is based in Seattle, but Hunter lives in New Hampshire ... [Link]
I have a confession to make. I’m a huge Matt Asay fan (right). Always have been. Matt is the Anthony Bourdain (below) of open source. By that I mean he cooks better than most cooks, writes better than most writers, and he has made himself a big time brand. He’s also hungry for more. One might compare his move to Canonical, ... [Link]
Please note. This is not a political post. It is about politics co-opting the term open source as a frame. At his Global Guerillas site, John Robb (right) calls the conservative Tea Party open source. He compares it, in this context, to open source warfare. I don’t think that’s a compliment, because by that definition Al Qaeda is open source. But ... [Link]
I read Dana’s piece about Symbian possibly going open source too late with great interest. I’ve wondered the same thing about Firefox Mobile, which debuted on Jan 29. Like Symbian on the proprietary mobile OS front, Mozilla’s Firefox has been the leading open source browser for more than six years. Yet it only released its mobile offering, code named Fennec, ... [Link]
If you look at the Internet’s development and compare it to that of TV a generation ago, it’s finally the 1960s. (Two members of the Internet Generation are pictured at right, in 1991. The one on the left is now a video game expert. The one on the right likes Facebook.) My baby boom generation defined TV, starting in that epochal ... [Link]
With as much excitement as Scandinavians can muster, Symbian has gone completely open source. Is it too late? (I found this on the Symbian home page. Any idea what it is? Or what it means? Anyone? Bueller? ) Symbian dominated the mobile world for years. Its real time operating systems powered nearly every phone out there. The Symbian Foundation includes five ... [Link]
One of the great mysteries of our time may be how slowly China has taken to open source. ZDNet Asia blogger Frederic Muller, who has been promoting Linux in China for some time, says it’s about ownership and getting credit. I believe there is something to that. (The picture is part of a screen capture from the U.S. home page of ... [Link]
If I were Steve Jobs I would hate Google too. It took years for the industry to come up with anything even close to the iPhone, and Apple raked in the profits from that. One-on-one, its designers and marketing people can beat anyone. But Google and open source have changed the game. Combine an open source process with Chinese manufacturing, and ... [Link]
Over at ZDNet Government, Doug Hanchard turned his Webcam on himself yesterday (right) to discuss the question of whether the U.S. government should be doing more with open source. Having followed this issue for several years now, I have something important to say about it. It’s a make-or-buy decision. The choice is not always a simple one. Making stuff means taking ... [Link]
The reported Facebook release of a PHP compiler optimized for high-volume transaction services (like Facebook) is yet more evidence the company takes its open source responsibilities seriously. It follows by just a few weeks its becoming a top-level sponsor of Apache. (What is Oprah Winfrey doing on a tech blog? Patience, grasshopper.) Both moves represent good open source citizenship. Cynics will ... [Link]
It’s worth noting that the Apache Software Foundation last week released a major upgrade of its SpamAssassin e-mail filtering software. ASF announced that SpamAssassin 3.30, the first major update since May of 2007, changes the way that rules are implemented. “Rules are now separate from the core product and are instead downloaded using sa-update, SpamAssassin’s automatic update software,” ASF announced, ... [Link]
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Doug Hanchard, over at ZDNet Government, offers a thoughtful and fair defense of the fear now gripping Internet security professionals following the allegedly Chinese attack on Google and others. He concludes with a poll, asking readers whether they would accept having their CPUs registered as a condition for going online. This would make it possible to trace computer crime to its ... [Link]
Slowly. Open source doesn’t overwhelm a proprietary system. It whittles away at its lead, slowly and sometimes unsteadily. It’s the old Aesop story of the tortoise and the hare, and open source is the tortoise. (Warner Brothers re-made the Tortoise and the Hare stories in three classic Bugs Bunny cartoons during the 1940s, co-starring Cecil Turtle (right) Here, watch,). What got ... [Link]
Matt Asay has a great piece over at C|Net today, describing attempts by open source to become more independent of Google, and essentially asking Google whether they are going to let open source leadership slip away from them. But the question can also be looked upon another way. Who needs who more, Google or open source? (Picture from Wikipedia.) Many important ... [Link]
OpenLogic has signed a deal with Germany’s Credativ to provide third-level support to its open source support customers. When you call a company for support, that’s first-level support. When they escalate it to a supervisor that’s second-level support. If you really need an expert, that’s third-level support. OpenLogic is selling this as a push into Europe for its third-party support services, ... [Link]
It’s over. It’s done. The ring has been delivered back safe to Mordor, and Sauron’s Eye gazes benevolently over the Shire. The wicked Gandalf will trouble us no more, nor shall tricksie Hobbitses bedevil our poor servant Gollum. In other words now that Oracle owns Java, Open Office, and mySQL, what will happen to open source? The long-awaited, and feared, completion ... [Link]
With the tech press queuing up at its equivalent of Super Bowl Sunday — an Apple launch — it’s a good time to ask again why open source marketing is so bad. Open source offers great value, it has tons of developers, it has dedicated followers, even political support. But its marketing, and thus its mind share, still lag behind. In ... [Link]
I just installed the latest version of CrossOver from CodeWeavers on my MacBook Pro. I tested it using my installed version of Quicken for windows and it works much better than the previous version.
Congratulations to CodeWeavers and the WINE team.
Tags: Open Source · Tools
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