Open Source Archive

In a recent article Thom contributed his opinion to the discussion about the openness of Android that started when Google choose to withhold the source code for honeycomb, here are my 2 cents. In the article the obligations GPL puts on Google are made very clear. This makes it clear that Android is indeed an open-source project. However being open-source and being open aren't always the same thing.

Yahoo plans to release some technologies, including storage technologies, to the open source community, a senior executive of the company said. These are systems that Yahoo built to help it handle large numbers of users on its websites, but that don't necessarily give it a competitive advantage, said David Chaiken, chief architect at Yahoo, in an interview in Bangalore on Friday.

"Now that Linux is the most popular free Unix-like operating system, it shouldn't be a surprise that some projects have begun treating non-Linux operating systems as second-class citizens. This isn't out of contempt for the BSDs or OpenSolaris, it's just a matter of limited manpower: if almost all the users of the application have a Linux operating system and if all the core developers are using Linux themselves, it's difficult to keep supporting other operating systems. But sometimes the choice to leave out support for other operating systems is explicitly made, e.g. when the developers want to implement some innovative features that require functionality that is (at least for now) only available in the Linux kernel."

Late last year Australia's biggest telco Telstra was sharply criticised for using GPL'd code in several of its new products - but not publicly distributing changes it made to the code when doing so. However, it looks as though the company has now come clean, publishing a source code CD of the files changed in its development effort and acknowledging the GPL and Lesser GPL. It's good to see companies responding to the open source community this way and engaging - makes a change from the past!

"A recent survey by Gartner found that more than half of organizations surveyed have adopted open source software (OSS) solutions as part of their IT strategy. Nearly one-third of respondents cited benefits of flexibility, increased innovation, shorter development times and faster procurement processes as reasons for adopting OSS solutions. However, the survey revealed that only one-third of responding organizations had a formal OSS policy in place."

"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 work in the European Parliament, including staff and assistants working in political groups."

The fork of OpenOffice called LibreOffice is going to have its first official release soon. This version is primarily a code cleanup, and so it will not be much different to OpenOffice 3.3, which is also about to be released soon. For the subsequent release of LibrOffice, however, there are proposals starting to emerge which are quite interesting. Tech Drive-in reports on a mock-up of a proposed overhaul of the LibreOffice UI.

The Free Software Foundation announced today that it will be supporting the WebM project. As Brett Smith, license compliance engineer for the FSF, said in a press release: "Google has been working to bring together a broad coalition of organizations to support WebM, which will go far to help it become the video codec of choice with HTML5. e want the world to know that we also support WebM: with its developer-friendly patent license and free software reference implementation, it's a good choice to help ensure the Web fulfills its promise of providing a free way for the world to communicate."

Some people swore to me that just because the free-software General Public License (GPL) clashes with the Apple App Store's Terms of Service (ToS), didn't mean that Apple would actually pull down GPLed apps. Well, Apple just did. Remi Denis-Courmont, a Linux developer of the popular VLC media player, has just announced that Apple had pulled the popular GPLed VLC media player from its App Store.

Now this is interesting. We see what is at its core a very valid concern, in practice not a problem to anyone, and, thanks to the tone of the press release, close to trolling. The Free Software Foundation Latin America is complaining about something that has been known for a while - there is some non-Free code stuck in the Linux kernel (mostly firmware). A valid issue of concern from an idealogical viewpoint, but sadly, the tone of the press release turns this valid concern into something close to trolling.

"So what is the state of the Hurd? Is it vaporware, like Duke Nukem Forever? Fortunately not: the code exists, there is still work going on (for instance as part of Google Summer of Code), and there are even some relatively functional Hurd distributions. Let's look first at the code and the current architecture, and then at the Hurd distributions."

InfoWorld's Neil McAllister offers 20 questions to test your knowledge of the open source and free software movements. Which was the first commercial Linux distribution? How many separate clauses make up the typical BSD-style open source license? What is the difference between the GPL and the LGPL?

Free Software Magazine published an interesting lexicon of terms that are thrown around within the Free Software and Creative Commons worlds that have particular meaning, and might not be familiar to people who aren't open source or free culture advocates.

We are heading towards a world where we no longer own the hardware we buy -- and there is no point in having free software if you can't own your hardware.