Juan J. Martínez used to talk here about Open Source and Other Things.
This is a blog in archive mode, you can read new posts at en_GB@blog
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From Trond’s Opening Standard.
This is after Oracle’s management of the OpenOffice.org community led to a successful fork of the project: LibreOffice. Oracle, you’re doing it definitely wrong.
Copyright © 2010 Linux Journal. All rights reserved.
I think this chart from Who Contributes the Most to LibreOffice? summarizes it all: 133 new coders and 55 localizers since the fork!
This is good news, to add to LibreOffice obtaining the 50,000€ needed for The Document Foundation. Go LibreOffice!
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From The story behind the story behind the news today by Michael Meeks, regarding The Document Foundation.
Good news! (and about time!)
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By Dave Newman about Leaving .net.
Yesterday someone asked me if I knew any popular OSS web application developed with Mono (open source, cross-platform, implementation of C# and the CLR that is binary compatible with Microsoft.NET). I couldn’t name one.
Do you know any popular OSS web application using Mono (.NET)?
Six months ago we were unpacking in Exeter, and in less than seven days, we’ll be packing again. We’re leaving Exeter and Devon, and after the 15th of August we’ll be settled in Reading (Berkshire).
Our reasons to move are professional, because I have a deal with my current company to start doing business stuff in UK, and that means being near of London.
Moreover Alex is looking for a school for the next course, and for some reason, Exeter isn’t the best place to find a job. May be it’s the good weather or the high quality of life, I really don’t know.
In those six months I’ve tried to get involved with the Linux local communities in the area, going to D&C GNU/Linux User Group meetings (although we just went once, because one hour train isn’t what I call local) and E-Space meetings (in Exeter, but unfortunately not really Linux/OSS related); but I somewhat failed.
Moreover I’ve lost track with the Fedora ambassadors list, mainly because it isn’t that easy to start in a new country, and when things started to stabilize, the ambassador list got lost in my TODO list. Shame on me.
Anyway, not everything’s lost. I’ve been planing different initiatives that, because I ran out of time, I won’t start in Exeter, but hopefully I’ll manage to run in Reading.
One of them will be based in the public library. From my experience in Exeter (and I believe this applies to all public libraries in Devon), they have some spaces where you can put non-profit advertisements, and it can be a good start for a Fedora/OSS information point
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I can be in the library for one hour every week (Saturday morning, for example), and give lightning talks about Fedora and OSS to anyone interested, and it could even be a good start point for a release party for the upcoming Fedora 14.
So, I want to catch up with the list and my local ambassador activities, and get in touch with the local users group in Reading (SCLUG). I really want it to work this time, because I’m going to stay in Reading for a long while.
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From Slashdot comment on ‘SugarCRM 6 Released, But Is It Open Source?’ (* I think he meant free as in free beer).
Very insightful and worth reading comment that sums up all the downsides I’ve seen in open core based products.
You may argue that the open core model helps the company use an open source development model while keep making money in the old-fashioned-way just selling licenses, but it won’t happen: there won’t be an open source community, because it would be enemy of your business model (which is selling licenses!).
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From OpenOffice & GStreamer, by Michael Meeks.
Very good question, and a worth reading post.
I really enjoyed the quality argument part, because you know how pleased I am with OpenOffice.org’s quality (just in case: I’m being sarcastic).
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From Mark Shuttleworth comment on bug #532633 (about the position of the windows buttons in Ubuntu Lucid).
These are the shocking words of the comment, quoted here to attract your attention, but please: read the comment entirely. Why? Because I think it enlightens some points that are widely misunderstood in the way the Ubuntu community works.
Ubuntu community is open, but being an open community is not the same as saying everybody has a say in everything. So it’s open to a certain level of openness.
I’m not saying that this is wrong, just it’s better to be clear about it.
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From Android and the Linux kernel community, by Greg Kroah-Hartman.
The whole post it’s worth reading, lemme quote another sentence Google shows no sign of working to get their code upstream anymore
. That’s important, IMHO.
It reminds me the complaint on the way Google is developing another open source project: Chrome (er, Chromium browser); they use several open source libraries, including them in the source tree, and forking existing FOSS code bits for Chromium like a rabbit makes babies: frequently, and usually, without much thought.
So if you want, you can find a pattern here. Google isn’t playing the open source community rules, they’re just using (abusing?) open source. Come on Google, give something back!
