Free Software Linux

One of the many sad aspects of Sun's disappearance into the maw of Oracle is that many will see this as “proof” that its strategy of building on open source was a failure. But as Simon Phipps, Sun's former Chief Open Source Officer, rightly says in his valedictory blog post:
On Open Enterprise blog.

Here's an interesting project: the Open Course Library. These are its goals:

* design 81 high enrollment courses for face-to-face, hybrid and/or online delivery
* lower textbook costs for students
* provide new resources for faculty to use in their courses
* our college system fully engages the global open educational resources discussion.
* improve course completion rates

Here's some background on the project:

Not my words, but the subtitle of a book that apparently has wise words on the harm inflicted on society by intellectual monopolies:

A weary early 21st century Microsoft executive travels to the near 'post-recession' future UK and is greeted by an horrific situation:

Computer hardware is now just a commodity product; software is all free and open source and technical support on stable and secure software is merely an insurance policy. Worse, regulation and agreed standards are preventing monopolies from thriving and product interoperability is taken for granted.

Our hero is right to be shocked. Back in 2008 when he left ...

A weary early 21st century Microsoft executive travels to the near 'post-recession' future UK and is greeted by an horrific situation:

Computer hardware is now just a commodity product; software is all free and open source and technical support on stable and secure software is merely an insurance policy. Worse, regulation and agreed standards are [...]

All around the world, it seems, people just can't get enough of this amazing free office suite, which is now turning in serious market shares in some countries. For, example, according to this report, there are now 12 million users in Brazil, representing fully 25% of the entire office market there. Meanwhile, plucky little Italy has notched up 4 million downloads in the last 12 months (that's downloads, not users, but still impressive)....
On Open Enterprise blog.

Paul Ginsparg is one of the key players in the world of open access. Indeed, he was practising it online before it even had a name, when he set up the arXiv preprint server (originally known simply by its address "xxx.lanl.gov"), which has just celebrated its half-millionth deposit:

Like many, I was intrigued and ultimately disappointed by the first of the new Microsoft ads. But I assumed that it was in the nature of a teaser – or maybe even a clever ploy to lower expectations for later episodes, thus increasing their eventual impact....
On Open Enterprise blog.

–

## In this issue
* It's not the Gates, it's the bars
* Act on ACTA!
* Fight the Canadian DMCA!
* Rhapsody and Naxos go DRM free
* Refusing Digital Monitoring Policies
* 5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G
* autonomo.us activist group to focus on freedom in network services
* identi.ca is autonomo.us
* GNU spotlight with Karl Berry
* Richard Stallman's speaking schedule
* Take action!

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

I think if Bill Gates met a Debian system and installed a program from the repositories, he might just go to his engineers and say, "Why can't it be like this?"

An analysis of how Microsoft controlled the British press and committees, using wealth

I have tremendous respect for what Bill and Melinda have chosen to do with the great wealth that Microsoft afforded. The Gates Foundation is tackling some huge challenges in global health with courage, innovation, and persistence, the same qualities which represented Microsoft at its best. But it doesn’t mean that the great Gates fortune was acquired in an entirely fair way or that Bill should be held up uncritically as a model of a successful businessman for doing so. To do so is to rewrite history and endorse a way of doing business which is harmful both to consumers and markets

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Pretty much my view, too.

When Eric Schmidt left his job as the chairman and CEO of Novell to become the top executive at Google in 2001 he privately told journalist John Battelle that one of the things he was looking forward to was no longer competing with Microsoft.

Here's a piece about cloud computing that ask a pertinent question:

Why isn't the world's biggest and most powerful software company taking the initiative here? For all of Microsoft's chest beating about internet delivery as the next phase of its development, we've seen precious little in the way of action.

There are so many reasons that it's hard to pin down. Perhaps it's with Ray Ozzie, the successor to Bill Gates, who is still settling into his job. Or perhaps it's just the stifling bureaucracy of a corporation that stretches as far as the eye can see.

But there's also something missing from this analysis of cloud computing. Nowhere is it mentioned that an essential prerequisite for creating huge server farms to keep the clouds afloat is free software: if Google or Amazon had to use proprietary software, paying for each instance clouds would never, er, get off the ground.