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Pragmatic Source

From the Department of Kicking Google While It's Down

Google has come under fire for privacy and other issues in Google + of late, but now Microsoft is increasing the heat and pointing out how creepy GMail's contextual ads are.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Thu, 07/28/11 - 2:14pm.

"Well, sometimes when a person loves their gmail very, very much, the two get together and an ad is born." And with that quote, Microsoft hurls a big, fat grenade at Google for its contextual ads in Gmail.

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Have we reached a tipping point for cloud-based VoIP?

Perhaps. More people are using Skype than Facebook and choices abound for low-cost, open-source-based telephone options. Here's a look at one.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Mon, 08/30/10 - 7:21pm.

Some have said that the future of open source is in the middle, and the explosion of cloud-based telephony would seem to bear that out.

OnSIP, Twilio, CloudVox, FreeSwitch, are all telephony platforms that have been making a splash and gaining popularity, and they're built firmly on open source.

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Open-sourcing SETI

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence got a boost this week with the release of the first open source code from setiQuest.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Thu, 08/26/10 - 4:31pm.

The setiQuest project has released its first open source code in an effort to have anyone interested help search for intelligent life out there.

The source code for Open SonATA is available on GIT Hub now and covers three programs:

Waterfall Display:
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U.K. releases its first contribution to Drupal

Following in the footsteps of WhiteHouse.gov, Data.gov.uk has developed its first open source code and shared it with the community.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Tue, 08/24/10 - 9:39am.

The U.K. government has just released its first contribution to the Drupal community.

The CKAN module is what the folks behind Data.gov.uk developed to take all the data stored in their CKAN system and publish it on its Drupal site. For now, the code can be downloaded here. It will be released on Drupal.org soon.

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Curriki: Bringing the open source model to education

It's a repository. It's a community. It's a social network. It's all of the above. And it's all about free, accurate and vetted educational materials.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Fri, 08/20/10 - 10:28am.

Not only can free, online, open-sourced curriculum and books make education more affordable and widespread - it also can make it fun.

So says Scott McNealy, whom you may be more familiar with from his time leading Sun Microsystems. He spends time these days proslytizing for his labor of love, Curriki, a nonprofit repository/community/social network that seeks to gather the best educational materials in one spot for educators, parents and students to use.

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Decorate with Linux

The Linux kernel joins the Bible, Peter Pan and Jane Eyre as one of the greatest works of literature, poster-ized.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Wed, 08/18/10 - 3:30pm.

In thinking of the great works of Western literature, many books come to mind: "Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Bronte. "The Metamorphosis," by Franz Kafka. "Peter Pan," by J.M. Barrie. The ... "Linux Kernel"?

Yes, the source code for the schedule processor in the Linux kernel is depicted in poster form from Postertext (and they note,"Every source code component is in its original compilable form!"):

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Support remains the weak link in open source software adoption

Even with concern about support, a stagnant economy is helping drive more IT professionals toward OSS.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Fri, 08/13/10 - 5:42pm.

Acceptance of open source by IT professionals continues to increase, according to a recent survey that shows the slumping economy helped boost that trend.

A report released this week by Zenoss gave the results of surveys about open source software among IT professionals who attended the USENIX Large Installation System Administration Conference in the fall and the Zenoss open source systems management community.

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Investment in open source software will only go up from here

U.S. and U.K. companies and agencies cite quality, not cost, as the primary reason.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Mon, 08/09/10 - 5:25pm.

This year could be of critical importance to the open source software industry, with a recent survey showing a majority of businesses and organizations in the U.S. and United Kingdom expecting to increase investment in it this year.

A survey by Accenture also showed that nearly 40 percent of those queried also planned to migrate critical operations to open source systems in the next 12 months.

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New tool from OpenAjax Alliance helps make sites more accessible

The OAA's open-source tool will test applications as code is written, not after the fact. Just what the doctor ordered.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Fri, 08/06/10 - 4:05pm.

One group that's been left behind somewhat in Web 2.0 has been people with disabilities. To help bridge that gap, the OpenAjax Alliance announced a new open source technology to help software developers make it easier for them to interact on the Internet.

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Free Software Foundation's Women's Caucus is looking for an intern

The goal: Raise the profile of successful women in FLOSS and get it to other women at a younger age

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Wed, 08/04/10 - 3:21pm.

It's been pretty well documented that women are a distinct minority in the open source/free software community.

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Open source book publishing gets a boost

Between Booki and Curriki, the efforts to get open-sourced books into classrooms could really move forward.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Mon, 08/02/10 - 12:46pm.

The idea of using open-source functionality in the book publishing field has, slowly but surely, gained more momentum lately.

I've written before about how open-sourced textbooks could considerably ease college costs and of some attempts to jump-start efforts in this regard.

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Dell has not abandoned Ubuntu

The computer giant not only hasn't removed the machines from its sales site, it's added a new desktop model.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Wed, 07/28/10 - 10:43am.

Know this: Ubuntu is still for sale on Dell's website. In fact, a new desktop is available via Dell's Ubuntu sales site, loaded with Ubuntu 10.04.

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Celebrating a year of pushing the Feds toward open source

The goal of Open Source For America is to champion the use and adoption of open source software in the U.S. government. A year in, things are going well.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Fri, 07/23/10 - 5:46pm.

To celebrate a year of championing the use of open source software in the U.S. government, Open Source For America has created an awards program to recognize those who took up the challenge.

The Open Source Awards Program will recognize people and projects in three categories: individuals, projects and deployment.

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Software as a Service: Speeding up adoption of OSS?

Drupal founder Dries Buytaert and Acquia CEO Tom Erickson believe in SaaS as business model.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Mon, 07/19/10 - 5:31pm.

Whether you want to call it open core or open source or something else entirely, the software as a service business model has been gaining popularity.

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Adobe's partnership with SourceForge has interesting implications

The strengthening of Adobe's open source community and offerings could signal a change in the debate about Flash v. HTML5. Here's why.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Fri, 07/16/10 - 5:04pm.

The first occupant of SourceForge's new developer platform is Adobe, and that would seem to have interesting implications for the debate over Flash vs HTML5.

Not that any of the press releases about SourceForge's new beta or Adobe's move to SourceForge over GitHub touched on this issue, but it's one of the first things I thought about.

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Happy birthday, Open Source - you're legal now

18 years ago today, 386BSD's version 0.1 was released, ushering in a new era in development. Tip back a pint of open source beer, why don't you?

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Wed, 07/14/10 - 12:52pm.

Today is a landmark in open source history, the unofficial birthday of the movement. On this day, in 1992, version 0.1 of 386BSD (you might know it as Jolix) was released.

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Open Source Business Models Become More Attractive

The appeal of business models based on open source software and middleware is increasing, and drawing some who previously argued against such solutions.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Mon, 07/12/10 - 3:33pm.

The news that Kenneth Bossung had joined OpenGeo as senior VP might have seemed like little more than a glorified press release to some. But there was an interesting twist there - Bossung had spent his entire career thus far with proprietary software companies.

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U.K. government could drop Microsoft for Linux

Out of tens of thousands of suggestions from public-sector employees, two ideas the government chose to highlight as representative suggest just that.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Fri, 07/09/10 - 3:57pm.

Among the dozens of staff-submitted ideas for the British government to save money are two that suggest dumping Microsoft and moving to Linux, OpenOffice and other open-source applications.

To be sure, they are just two among the 60,000 ideas proffered by those who work in the public sector, but just 31 of those were listed on the website for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

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IBM, EU partner on open source projects

The two projects aim to make government run more smoothly and businesses make better use of web-based services.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Wed, 07/07/10 - 10:27pm.

IBM and the European Union are partnering on two projects that, in the end, aim to make government run more smoothly and businesses able to collaborate on web-based services.

Both will take advantage of and contribute to the open source community.

PINCETTE (which means "tweezers" in French) aims to be a new technology that will be able to hone in on even the smallest of software bugs in large networks that control the likes of electrical grids, water pipes and nuclear power plants.

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Many companies distributing open source software don't know it

The disturbing results of an enterprise survey show that many companies distributing and selling software don't understand OSS licensing.

Submitted by Amy Vernon on Mon, 07/05/10 - 6:20pm.

Too many companies have no idea that they're distributing open source software and therefore violating the GPL, a survey by OpenLogic found.

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About Pragmatic Source

After nearly 20 years as a professional journalist for large and small daily newspapers in Florida, Arizona and New York, Amy was part of the Great Newspaper Culling of 2008. That was a good thing. Now, Amy writes for a variety of websites, including NetworkWorld, Discovery's Parentables and Soshable and consults with a variety of sites on their social media strategy.

She also has created the first - and only - bacon news aggregator on the Internet, Bacon Queen and has altogether too many Tumblogs. Amy is the top female user of all time on Digg.com and spends altogether too much time on the computer. You can follow her on Twitter and find more out about her on her website.