Free Software Linux

One of the most dispiriting aspects of the ACTA saga is that practically everything has been conducted behind closed doors. What we know is largely from leaks and a few, costive hints from officials when they deign to let us little people peak behind the curtain for a millisecond or two.
On Open Enterprise blog.

It seems that, having lost its position as monarch of the world of computing, Microsoft has decided to become the industry jester. Last week I wrote about its amusing suggestion that we should all be taxed to clean up the mess its software has caused. Now we have this witty post on Microsoft's Port 25 site, which involves writing about open source software applications and the platforms they run on without mentioning “Linux” once.
On Open Enterprise blog.

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.

It seems every day we hear about hideous cost overruns on public sector projects in the UK. What makes it even more frustrating is that open source, a real no-brainer for many applications, is rarely given the chance to prove itself here. Which means, of course, that there are no case studies to refer to, so no one gives open source a chance etc. etc.

Against that background, a new paper by Darrel Ince, Professor of Computing at the Open University, which rejoices in the deceptively-bland title of “The Re-development of a Problem System”, is pretty exciting stuff. The summary gives a good flavour of why that might be:
On Open Enterprise blog.

You might think that's a pretty ridiculous question to ask, since the canard about open source being less secure than closed source has been debunked many times. But it seems that some people didn't get the memo:
On Open Enterprise blog.

As long-suffering readers will know, I've been banging on about the dangers to free software – and much else – of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) for a long time. The bad news is that ACTA hasn't gone away or got better in that time; the good news is that more and more people are becoming aware of just how awful it is, and why the secrecy surrounding its negotiations is just plain wrong.
On Open Enterprise blog.

One of the decisive moments in computing history was when Microsoft was investigated for and found guilty of breaching US rules on anti-competitive behaviour. Microsoft's line in defending itself was that it was not anti-competitive, that this investigation was all down to desperate, failed competitors trying to take their petty revenge by setting the government on the company, and that it should be allowed to “innovate”, untrammelled by those silly governmental authorities that just don't understand all this groovy technology stuff.
On Open Enterprise blog.

As I've noted many times, one of the big benefits of deploying open source is freedom from lock-in: using open formats that anyone can implement means that it is relatively easy to change supplier. That's not the case with Microsoft's code and formats, as the following sad saga underlines...
On Open Enterprise blog.

We tend to think of free software as (mostly) new, so the fact that Apache celebrated its 15th birthday yesterday seems pretty extraordinary. We also typically think of free software as being the perennial plucky underdog, but as this post on the Apache Software Foundation Blog reminds us, Apache has been the leading Web server for almost its entire existence...
On Open Enterprise blog.

Remember the browser ballot screen that Microsoft agreed to add as part of its settlement with the EU over competition issues? It's happening now:

Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will begin offering a “Web browser choice screen” to Internet Explorer users in Europe, as required by the European Commission. Internal testing of the choice screen is underway now. We’ll begin a limited roll-out externally next week, and expect that a full scale roll-out will begin around March 1, a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.
On Open Enterprise blog.

I've written about the growing interest in HTML 5 a couple of times, and there is a parallel discussion around the role, if any, of Flash and its proprietary codecs in an Open Web. And now, hidden away in this dull press release from Google, we have another ingredient added to the bubbling cauldron...
On Open Enterprise blog.

In the famous online argument between Linus and Minix creator Andrew Tanenbaum during the very early days of Linux, one of the more memorable statements from the latter was the following:

I think co-ordinating 1000 prima donnas living all over the world will be as easy as herding cats.
On Open Enterprise blog.

As you may have heard, last week there was a bit of kerfuffle over Google's Buzz and its implications for privacy. And Google has responded:
On Open Enterprise blog.

Readers with a taste for high comedy may remember my post “Why SAP is Such a Sap over Software Patents”, which rather took to task a certain large German software company over its stance on software patents. Now, to be fair, SAP has done some good things for free software – not many, but some – and Matthew Aslett has produced an excellent summary of these on his 451 CAOS Theory blog, which I urge you to read.
On Open Enterprise blog.

It has been a sad spectacle to see the British Library – without doubt once the greatest library in the world, and hence a powerful force for disseminating knowledge as widely as possible - become more and more enmeshed in locking down research in proprietary formats.
On Open Enterprise blog.