Category: Open Source

Since reading the brilliant “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornsby I realised that geeks and top lists is a match made in heaven.

InformationWeek has one of the best researched and interesting ones I’ve seen in a long time, click the link below to read the article:

InformationWeek: What’s the Greatest Software Ever Written

In order for software to be “great”, it “simply” has to fulfil it’s mission perfectly. That’s actually a tall order, and the world could be paved several times over with failed software projects.

So what’s the greatest software of all time:

Colossus the code breaking computer from Bletchley Park that helped break the code of the German Engima machine, estimated to have helped end the war two years early?

The Apollo navigation computer, an exercise in simplicity.

No the winner is UNIX, and especially BSD 4.3.

BSD and the BSD license inspired the ideas of the Free Software Foundation, GNU, Linux and the entire open source community.

I tend to agree, that UNIX is the greatest software ever written, and guess what I’m finally using it as well, 20 years after I realised that I had to learn it, I didn’t get much further than learning the ls command back then however. But thanks to the brilliant combination of the most beautiful GUI on the market, and an open source version of BSD UNIX called Darwin, UNIX now has a friendly face. The friendly face is called Mac OS X.

PS. The original Mac OS is included on the list, and even though it was more than “inspired” by the work done at Xerox PARC, it was indeed great software. I clearly remember the first time I saw a Macintosh in January of 1985, the face of computing had been changed, and it actually doesn’t look that different today.

Ohloh – Explore Open Source

Ohloh is a directory of open source software projects, and it looks like a promising tool when navigating the fragmented jungle of OSS.

Here’s a quote from the Ohloh website:

We’re mapping the open source world by collecting objective information on open source software. Search our site for the most current software metrics and project information on open source software projects.

Microsoft bends on OpenDocument | CNET News.com

Boy did I choke on this news. Once again I though that Microsoft had come to it’s senses and decided to embrace the OpenDocument Format. And this time it sounded really good, with the Danish Ministry of Research and Science praising Microsoft’s apparent 180.

But I suspected that it wasn’t that simple, to me it only sounded that a previously announced conversion tool, being developed by an ISV, who probably isn’t too true to the I (as in “Independent”), will be an open source project and released under a BSD license.

Instead of paying too much attention to the news reports, I turned to the excellent Groklaw, to hear what she had to say, and what an answer:

Is Microsoft clever, or what? Ditto with ODF. Here’s the choice it is trying to posit: You will have to download their ODF translator yourself and install it. Or, just stick with Microsoft’s one-stop competing solution that is built in to their software offering. Considering Microsoft’s monopoly position, and my mom’s and most governments’ typical technical skills, guess what Microsoft hopes moms and governments will choose? I see a plan in not building the ODF translator into Microsoft’s software. So truly clever. It looks open. But it’s marginalizing ODF. I think the press release might better have been titled, “Microsoft announces what it hopes will be its ODF killer.”

As Pamela Jones of Groklaw.net points out, the press-release by Microsoft, contains a lot of FUD:

Open XML and ODF were designed to meet very different customer requirements. By developing the bidirectional translation tools through an open source project, the technical decisions and tradeoffs necessary will be transparent to everyone — Open XML and ODF advocates alike. The Open XML formats are unique in their compatibility and fidelity to billions of Office documents, helping protect customers’ intellectual investments. Open XML formats are also distinguished by their approach to accessibility support for disabled workers, file performance and flexibility to empower organizations to access and integrate their own XML data with the documents they use every day. In contrast, ODF focuses on more limited requirements, is architected very differently and is now under review in OASIS subcommittees to fill key gaps such as spreadsheet formulas, macro support and support for accessibility options. As a result, certain compromises and customer disclosures will be a necessary part of translating between the two formats.

That might indeed be right, but why bother with translating, start moving to OpenOffice.org or the related project NeoOffice instead, that might also save you the huge investment in re-training, since Microsoft Office 2007 will be using a completely new user-interface, introducing the concept of “the ribbon”, a toolbar palette, that I find inspired by something I’ve seen in Mac OS X applications like GarageBand. When I confronted one of the leading members of the Microsoft Office team with that fact, her tounge-in-cheek response was “hush – don’t tell anyone” LOL!

I like innovation, but the UI in Microsoft Office 2007 is totally different from all previous releases, why?

OTOH who cares, since the introduction of Vista will require retraining as well.

If the companies are required to massively retrain their personnel, why not change platform?

Instead, I recommend that you take a look at the UNIX again. You’ll find that UNIX has put on a friendly face since XP was released, thanks to the work done by Apple and the KDE and GNOME projects, modern UNIX no longer is for geeks only, and guess what, KDE and GNOME running OpenOffice.org will look and feel more like plain-old Windows than Windows Vista, making you feel like “you’re still in Kansas”, that’s not the case if you follow Microsoft’s upgrade path.

“Hasta la Vista, Baby!”

Computerworld – Er Danmark et Microsoft-protektorat, Fogh?

Hold da op, nu skal jeg samle min kæbe op fra gulvet, det må siges at være en leder med bid i fra Computerworld.

Jeg bryder mig nu ikke om at IBM bliver fremhævet som et firma der står for åbenhed, men alt i alt en imponerende leder, udtryk for noget der er sjældent i Danske IT medier, nemlig en HOLDNING!

Respekt!

Citat fra lederens konklusion:

Danmark er kort sagt i dag et globalt mønstereksempel som Microsoft-protektorat.

Intet under, at Steve Ballmer for to år siden begejstret proklamerede: ”I want the whole world to be Danish!”

Det er muligt, at vi som nation er bedst tjent med at møde den digitale fremtid med afsæt i en innovationsplatform, som er ejet af Microsoft.

Det kan ikke udelukkes. Microsoft leverer klart et vigtigt bidrag til Danmark.

Men hvis – og dette er et stort men og hvis – vi skal være et rent Microsoftland, så mangler vi at forhandle betingelserne for den suverænitetsafgivelse, det lægger op til.

Hvad Fogh er i gang med nu, ligner ikke forhandlinger, men derimod en betingelsesløs kapitulation.

Det er hverken godt diplomatisk håndværk eller godt købmandskab.

Under alle omstændigheder taler vi her om så væsentlige rammebetingelser for vores fælles fremtid, at det anstændigvis kræver en offentlig debat.

Christiansborg, quo vadis?

Hvis man er til konspirations teorier…Hvor var det lige nuværende Kronprinsesse Mary arbejdede da hun var – “hemmeligt” – i Danmark.

Mobile phone companies join forces on Linux | CNET News.com

According to CNET NEWS.COM, several mobile handset makers are joining forces to develop Linux based smart phones.

This is great news, I guess especially Motorola was upset by the license fees they had to pay Apple for the iTunes logo on the ill-fated iTunes ROKR phone, and the less than perfect support from Apple. Remember the Steve Jobs Keynote from the introduction of the ROKR, where Steve tried to demonstrate one of the key features, the fact that the music would be automatically paused and resumed during incoming calls, and it didn’t work.

The new ROKR E2 is soon to launch in Europe, and it looks quite cool, at least much nicer than the original ROKR.

I hope for an open platform, with complete community involvement, but that is probably hoping for too much.

Welcome to Bandit – Bandit-project.org
Bandit is a promissing project, sponsored by Novell, that aims to solve one of the major headaches of open source systems, indentity management, which is implemented in thousands of different systems.

This is one of the “missing” open source projects.

Quote form the Bandit website:

Bandit is a system of loosely-coupled components that provide consistent identity services and creates a community that organizes and standardizes identity-related technologies in an open way, promoting both interoperability and collaboration..

It implements open standard protocols and specifications such that identity services can be constructed, accessed, and integrated from multiple identity sources. The Bandit system supports many authentication methods and provides user-centric credential management. On this base of a common identity model, Bandit is building additional services needed for Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and for the emission of records to verify compliance with higher level policies.