Open Source Alliance Cyberjaya

At the opening of the trade fairs LinuxTag and IT-Profits the Senator of Economics of the German federal state of Berlin Harald Wolf announced in Berlin on Wednesday that his department would from 2008 on be switching to Linux. The controversial IT strategy of the federal state would moreover incorporate open standards to a greater degree, the Senator declared. The shape assumed by Berlin’s IT landscape had to be “an open one,” the politician, who is a member of the left-wing PDS, said, adding that “I very much want this to go beyond lip service.” This was the only way the 3,700 IT companies in the Berlin-Brandenburg Region, most of which were small and medium-sized enterprises, with their staff of 40,000 people in all, could develop cost-effective and adaptable applications, the Senator averred.

Mr. Wolf intends to set an unambiguous example for a more open approach in his own department. According to the Senator the servers within the traditionally Novell-supported network will next year migrate to Linux. This was in addition intended to keep the option open of implementing open source on the desktops of the department, he said. For Mr. Wolf, who also at times acts as the Mayor of Berlin, the general motto appears to be: “Not either/or but and.” He was banking on a “platform-neutral infrastructure,” he declared. The fact that the Federal Ministry of the Interior was prepared to act as patron to the LinuxTag event, though controversial in some quarters, underlined the importance accorded the topic of open source by the administration of the Federal Republic, especially with regard to critical applications, the Senator stated.

So far the Senate of Berlin, the government of the federal state, has been skeptical about a relentless migration toward free software. Towards the end of 2005 the parliament of the federal state of Berlin had called for the IT landscape of the capital including the approximately 58,000 workstations used by Berlin’s administration to be migrated to Linux and open-source programs. Since then Berlin’s Department of the Interior in particular has repeatedly countered the vision of the parliamentarians with its own open systems approach that takes its cue above all from current cost-effectiveness considerations and features heterogeneous systems. On the other hand members of Berlin’s IT economy have of late pushed for a realignment of the IT strategy of the federal state and demanded a shift of emphasis toward open source. (Robert W. Smith)

Source: Heise Online

Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Office desktop applications are threatened by open source code.

“Touch one member of the Linux community and you will have to deal with all of us,” Linux Foundation director Jim Zemlin warned Microsoft in a column that appeared May 25 on the BusinessWeek “Viewpoint” slot of its Web site.

Labeled the foundation’s “formal” response to Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith’s statements earlier this month, the column suggested that the foundation was prepared to step in with countervailing patents if Microsoft took action against anyone.

The foundation’s board of directors includes representatives from AMD, Bank of America, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, NEC, NetApp, Oracle, and Microsoft’s newfound Linux partner, Novell.

The Linux Foundation in San Francisco is the organization that resulted when the Open Source Development Labs and Free Standards Group merged earlier this year. It continues to sponsor the work of Linus Torvalds, Linux originator and holder of the Linux trademark.

Read more: CRN

Microsoft and the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics are going to create an open source translator between China’s emerging Unified Office Format (UOF) and Microsoft’s own Open XML (OOXML) file formats.

It is a burst of execution-suspected interoperability that one might lay to the number of Chinese armed with computers and the Chinese government’s determination to have its own non-Microsoft format. UOF is also based on the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and there’s been talk of those two combining, but it may or may not be technically possible – or politically viable.

According to Microsoft, “Our customers have told us their data needs can’t be addressed by a one-format or one-standard-fits-all approach. Everyone wants to use their data in slightly different ways. That’s why we are enabling customers to pick from whatever format they want to use with their Office documents – whether it’s ODF, Open XML, PDF or new standards like UOF.”

Read more: .NET Developers Journal

This debacle over school computer software shows just how beholden the big institutions in society are to major software companies, and in particular – Microsoft.

The Government should have just stumped up the $2.7 million to keep Microsoft Office on those Macs, then vowed to go open source when the contract term ends – on all computers in the every school. That’s a good ten year plan to have anyway.

Microsoft has the right to be paid for its products and set its own licensing terms, but if the Government isn’t willing to meet its price and those terms, it has an obligation to look at more viable alternatives.

The Ministry of Education and the whole of Government need to take a coordinated look at a move to open source software. This may not have been viable before, but Linux is more user-friendly than ever before, which is why in the US, Dell has started selling PCs with Ubuntu 7.04 as an alternative to Windows starting at US$599.

Maybe Edubuntu is an option for New Zealand schools.

Read more: NZ Herald

Dell has started selling two consumer desktops and a notebook fitted with a factory-loaded copy of the new Ubuntu Linux 7.04, making it the first of the major OEMs to offer standard low-end Linux SKUs.

Prices start at $599 and $849. The desktops are a $599 Dimension E520n and an $849 XPS 410n. The notebook is a $599 Inspiron E1505n.

In a prepared statement Dell said, “With no software costs associated with Ubuntu, the base price for each system is competitively priced and fully configured.” Dell is prepared to provide hardware support through its normal support channels and is telling people to go to dedicated web sites and Linux forums or to Canonical for software support.

The systems are targeted at Linux enthusiasts as a result of that feedback Dell got in its ideastorm.com suggestion box. Desktop Linux merchant Linspire has predicted the best Dell can expect from the move is to sell 50,000-100,000 units. Dell could of course be opening a can of worms if the uninitiated start buying these systems.

Dell says it is offering “hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been thoroughly tested and certified by Canonical. For hardware options not offered with this release, Dell is working with the vendors of those devices to improve the maturity and stability of their associated Linux drivers, and expects to have a broader range of hardware support with Linux over time.”

The default software includes the Ubuntu kernel and applications. The peripheral options offered with Ubuntu will be a subset of what is Dell offers with other operating systems. It says it’s using partial open-source or proprietary drivers where there is no equivalent open source driver, including Intel wireless cards and Conexant modems. It’s not including any support for proprietary audio or video codecs that are not already distributed with Ubuntu 7.04 such as Quicktime, MPE, WMA, WMV and DVD.

Read more: Linux.SYS-CON

FREMONT, Calif., May 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — VA Software Corporation (Nasdaq: LNUX), the online media and e-commerce leader in community-driven open source innovation, today announced it has changed its name to SourceForge, Inc. The change reflects the company’s strategic focus on its network of Web properties following the disposition of its enterprise software business. The company’s Nasdaq ticker symbol will remain the same.

The SourceForge(R) network includes media sites Slashdot(R), Linux.com, ITManagersJournal, freshmeat(R), and NewsForge. The network is also home to SourceForge.net(R), the world’s largest distribution and development platform for Open Source projects, and ThinkGeek(R) one of the leading online retailers for innovative technology products.

“The technology market was built on the power of community,” said Ali Jenab, president and CEO of SourceForge, Inc. “SourceForge is a trusted brand for those on the front lines of innovation. Renaming the company around the SourceForge brand allows us to focus our energy and resources on building an ever stronger business around what we believe are the most passionate communities in any industry.”

The media industry continues to shift to a publishing model built on community-generated content and interaction, a model SourceForge, Inc. pioneered in the late 1990s. Advertisers are increasingly embracing this model and recognizing the unique role SourceForge, Inc. plays as a connector for the tech community. The global technology community that SourceForge, Inc. and its online network of Web properties bring together represents the leading edge of community-driven content and collaboration and the most influential IT buyers. The company’s evolution is consistent with both its founding principles and the future of the Web.

“We’re at the right place at the right time and we’re doing the right things,” said Jenab.

Read more: LXer

A startup in Alameda, Calif. plans to release a kind of holy software grail the third or fourth week of June. Lina said its dual-licensed Lina virtual Linux machine will run more or less normal Linux applications under Windows, Mac, or Linux, with a look and feel native to each.

The concept recalls Java, which has long promised “write once, run anywhere” compatibility. As with Java, Lina users will first install a VM specific to their platform, after which they can run binaries compiled not for their particular OS, but for the VM, which aims to hide OS-specific characteristics from the application.

In Lina’s case, the VM is essentially a Linux environment that supports standard C/C++ applications, or even perl and python, if their respective interpreters are installed. CTO Nile Geisinger explained, “You have to compile binaries specifically for Lina, but it’s fairly trivial, no different than compiling binaries for SuSE or Red Hat.”

In the big picture, the goal is really to bring the huge world of open source software to the masses, said Geisinger, explaining, “We work in an office park with dozens of companies, and we’re the only Linux users. Everyday, we are motivated to bring all the fantastic open source applications to the rest of the world.”

Open source developers will be able to use Lina for free, while commercial developers will pay an as-yet undecided licensing fee, the idea goes.

Read more: LinuxDevices.com

Open source startups can hit profitability sooner than it took closed source incumbents, as long as they steer clear of rivals’ costly business practices.

That’s according to MySQL chief executive Marten Mickos, who told vendors and venture capitalists open source companies could cut their costs by not ploughing money into expensive sales and marketing activities.

However, start-ups shouldn’t expect a fast track to growth just because they have adopted open source code or development methodologies.

“Maybe we [MySQL] come from Scandinavia, but open source is not socialism, it’s not a party. Open source is not a business model. Open source is a smarter way to produce the goods and distribute the goods. It doesn’t give you a biz model automatically,” Mickos said.

Speaking at this week’s Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), Mickos picked what he believes are the four most promising business models: advertising, licensing your product with a closed-source product using and OEM model, maintenance, and charging for enterprise-class features.

“Maybe today you have to be bigger to become profitable, but maybe you will get there sooner as an open source company then a closed source company. Closed source companies spend enormous amounts of money on sales and marketing,” Mikos said.

Industry pundits estimate the traditional enterprise vendor model sees 75 per cent of revenue ploughed straight back into sales and marketing.

“How much did Linux vendors spend promoting Linux compared to IBM on OS/2? How much is MySQL spending on marketing in the database sector – not much. There’s a very strong benefit for open source companies and they have a chance to rise sooner on this profitability curve,” Mickos said. ®

Source: The Register

Addressing an audience at the Open Source Business Conference, Free Software Foundation (FSF) lawyer Eben Moglen discussed the upcoming version 3 of the General Public License (GPL 3). Moglen anticipates broad adoption of the license even among open-source projects that do not use the current version of the GPL. Moglen also took the opportunity to nudge Google and encouraged the company to release the source code of open source application improvements used internally.

The GPL does not require companies to release the source code of patches and program modifications that aren’t distributed. In theory, companies like Google have probably made many, many modifications to widely used open source applications without submitting the patches and improvements upstream for the benefit of other users.

Although FSF founder Richard Stallman decided not to force companies like Google to disclose internal-use enhancements with the new version of the GPL, Moglen believes that companies should do so out of obligation to the community. Moglen believes that members of the open-source software community should put pressure on companies and try to convince them to disclose the non-public enhancements they have made to open-source software programs. Although Google is only one of countless companies that enhances open-source software products for internal use, Moglen chose to single out Google because the company’s business model depends so heavily on open-source software.

Although I can understand and appreciate Moglen’s desire to compel companies like Google to help advance the open-source products that they use internally, I think it would be a mistake to exert pressure to an extent that risks alienation. Declining to release patches may seem a bit exploitative, but Google more than compensates for it in many other ways. For instance, Google has invested millions of dollars in open-source software development with its Summer of Code program, which also actively expands the size of the open-source software development community.

Source: Ars Technica

Two Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks that are used heavily by free and open source software projects, freenode and the Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC), are building bridges by swapping staff and observing each other’s operations. The rapprochement brings together two organizations that sprang from a single project, and may be a precursor for more intimate ties.

Both networks got their start with OpenProjects.net. Founded by Rob ‘lilo” Levin, OpenProjects.net was the precursor to the Peer-Directed Projects Center (PDPC) and freenode. (The OpenProjects.net domain is no longer affiliated with PDPC or freenode.) OFTC separated from OpenProjects.net, at least in part, due to philosophical differences about management and fundraising.

The split, which OFTC network operations committee chair David Graham calls “a very acrimonious and unpleasant separation,” started in 2001. Graham says that all of OFTC’s original staff members were former OpenProjects.net staffers.

OFTC formed a network specifically for free software and open source projects. “The two networks have evolved separately over the half-decade since, with very few staff remaining on either side from that split.”

Last year, Levin was hit by a car while riding a bicycle and died due to the injuries he sustained.

Christel Dahlskjaer, head of staff for freenode and a board member for PDPC, says that, since Levin’s death, freenode has moved to a “more inclusive approach, where both users and staff are involved in decisions and changes pertaining to the future direction of the network.” In addition, Dahlskjaer says that freenode is moving to a “more transparent system” that’s more in line with the community nature of freenode. She says Levin would be “very pleased and proud of what we have achieved with both freenode and its parent organization PDPC in the months since his passing.”

Freenode has grown by about 8,000 users since last October, according to Dahlskjaer. For reference, the Search IRC site pegs OFTC at an average of 3,751 users over the last week, while it estimates that freenode averaged about 33,300 users over the same period. Adding 8,000 users in just six months is substantial growth.

Dahlskjaer also says that the PDPC is “embraced more by the community” despite losing Levin as a fundraiser. “We are seeing a trend in donations from organizations such as the Wikimedia Foundation as well as individual donors, enabling us to focus on other projects such as arranging FOSSCON.”

Read more: Linux.com