Open Source Archive

Two open-source leaders joined Linux founder Linus Torvalds in disparaging software patents Tuesday, the newest volley in a battle that pits the cooperative programming philosophy against Microsoft.

Software, whether application software like gcc or system software like Linux which are part of the Free Software Foundation attract masses by their appeal of being free. In reality, this in-born-nature of FSF software of being free (in the sense of freedom of speech and not free beer) is not so clear and cogent to a common man. More significantly, if one takes an in-depth look into the Linux world, things seem to go the other way. Update: Fanatic OSNews reader Hubert Figuiere lets us know of the Paul Ferris' rebuttal to this editorial. Thanks Hubert!

An interesting interview of RMS answering questions on Linux, HURD, free software on non-free OS, Solaris, BSD License, GCC and Standards amoung others.

The debian project has some interesting developments related to its GNU/Hurd port, including a solution to the annoying limitation mentioned above.

Free and open source software is often criticised for being less usable than its commercial equivalent. Good user interface design isn't some magical thing that FOSS developers can't do for themselves, however. I've written a short article describing five key points of good interface design that any developer can use in their projects. (Note: hosted on a slow connection, please use the Coral Cache if possible).

I've always had mixed feelings about the Open Source movement because while my feelings suggest that this is surely a great innovation in software development, there are other (many) things that I don't agree with. Nevertheless, I've been contributing to free software (or open source) since 1996 and I'm still doing it. Nothing famous or that you might have heard of, though. But enough that I feel I have some insight on the subject.

We're a small, Open Source software vendor that's been offering a variant of an Open Source CRM since 2000. We have some large corporate clients with significant installations and hundreds and hundreds of users with smaller ones. Our product is called Centric CRM though until recently it was known as Dark Horse CRM.

This is a reaction to the Article "The Paradox of Choice" by Adam Scheinberg: I've held the position that choice is a paradox since my early childhood, and that it is not necessarily a good thing. Remove choice of religion and think of all the wars throughout history that might not have existed.

Basically, the author of cdrecord modified its license to not allow modifications of his code by distros without doing so in cooperation with the author.

When AT&T balkanized its Unix holdings in 1993, two different companies ended up walking away with pieces of the original Unix. Novell originally bought it all, then decided to keep the Unix source code and sell the Unix trademark -- the name, in other words -- and the Single Unix Specification standards to the X/Open Company. The Open Group, as it is now called, has since learned to use these assets profitably by offering qualification testing and certification for operating systems. If your OS meets certain requirements, passes the qualification tests, and you pay the fees, you get to call it Unix. Should GNU/Linux get certified?

Peter Johansson, a compsci student at the Chalmers University in Sweden has written an article about the differences of corporations and the Open Source community in today's software world.

"Based on Open Source Technology" is used by more than one proprietary software company as a marketing boast. Even Microsoft, everybody's favorite symbol of software proprietarism, now boasts about releasing software under an open source license. Obviously, the phrase "Open Source" is now considered a plus when trying to sell software. Will this lead to more open source contributions by companies trying to associate themselves with this "movement" or will it lead to the death of open source as we know it?

Do you need open-source legal protection any more than you need meteor insurance? Advocate Bruce Perens predicts a widespread attack on open source from proprietary software vendors.

This article discusses the political differences between Mono & dotGNU, two .NET re-implementations.