Updates from February, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:18 am on February 2, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org Italian Association is born: Press release 

    The OpenOffice.org Italian Native-Lang Project (PLIO) invites you to its first OpenOffice.org press conference in Italy.

    “OpenOffice.org grows up”

    PLIO today becomes an Association, reveals its programs for 2007 and supplies evaluations of OpenOffice.org’s market penetration.
    With OpenOffice.org 2.0 market acceptance improved just everywhere, as shown by the last six months results, and Italy is doing really well.
    Such growth demands a better allocation and management of existing resources, requiring an organization able to hold system-wide conversations. For this reason, PLIO’s members – till now a group of volunteers – decided to found an Association of volunteers to better address growing market needs.

    The Association will be responsible for fund raising and to allocate resources for commons production. Panel will include:

    • Davide Dozza, Association’s President and Co-Maintainer of of the Italian Native-Lang Project,
      .
    • Andrea Pescetti, Co-Maintainer of the Italian Native-Lang Project and Quality assurance responsible,
      .
    • Italo Vignoli, Councilman and Marketing responsible

    PLIO, the OpenOffice.org Italian Native-Lang Project, is the Italian community of volunteers who develop, support and promote the open-source office productivity suite, OpenOffice.org.
    OpenOffice.org supports the Open Document Format for Office applications (standard ISO/IEC 26300) and is available on major computing platforms in over 90 languages, available to 90% of the world-wide population in their own mother tongue.
    OpenOffice.org is provided under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL), can be legally used in any context.

    PLIO, Progetto Linguistico Italiano OpenOffice.org:
    http://it.openoffice.org
    “Vola e fai volare con i gabbiani di OpenOffice.org: usalo, copialo e regalalo, è legale!”

    For further information: Italo Vignoli (+39.348.5653829), stampa@openoffice.org

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 10:19 pm on January 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Format: PDF submitted to AIIM 

    Today Adobe announced its intent to release PDF specification to the International Authority on Enterprise Content Management (AIIM), for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

    Kevin Lynch, chief software architect and senior vice president of the platform business unit at Adobe, said:

    Today’s announcement is the next logical step in the evolution of PDF from de facto standard to a formal, de jure standard. By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness. As governments and organizations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organization will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years.

    I also read that Duan Nickull wanted to acknowledge Bob Sutor from IBM, James Governor (in my blogroll) and Gary Edwards to help Adobe embracing open standards.

    Tonight Adobe is guesting chat live at 5 pm Pacific Time.

    To know more read Leonard Rosenthol’s PDF history and the official Adobe FAQ.

    Welcome Adobe!

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 2:43 pm on January 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Commons and business: Capitalism 3.0 

    Peter Barnes in Capitalism 3.0 talks about the costs and benefits of the free market.

    In his metaphore capitalism is run by an “operating system”, giving too much resources to big corporations, who distribute profits to tiny portion of the population.

    In order to fix capitalism 2.0 “bugs” he suggests to protect the commons by giving it property rights and strong institutional managers named commons trust.

    The book is freely downloadable, but you can also buy it.

     

    • Savio Rodrigues 12:29 am on February 1, 2007 Permalink

      Thanks for the pointer – sounds like a good read.

    • Roberto Galoppini 12:48 am on February 1, 2007 Permalink

      You’re welcome, let me know what do you think about it.

  • Roberto Galoppini 12:38 pm on January 27, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    GPL violation: BT under pressure 

    On the 5th of january someone wrote to the GP-violations project about a possible GPL Violation with the BT Home Hub. Few days later Shane Coughlan, from the Freedom Task Force, a project in Free Software Foundation Europe to help people with licensing matters, explained that:

    There’s no concrete investigation yet.
    BT appears to have released bits and pieces of code, but to fully comply with the GPL we need to be able put those bits and pieces into a piece of firmware.

    After that BT uploaded pieces of software to its website, insisting that it has fully complied. On the topic Shane Coughlan said:

    Some things are still missing. For example, a top-level Makefile and the scripts that would be used to properly generate a firmware image. I did speak with BT on the phone and I emailed them. However, the reaction was not entirely co-operative. That’s a pity.

    Despite the GPL FAQ are clearly explaining how GPL works, very few people know that, as Coughlan reported:

    [..] one of the terms of the licence is that you either distribute the source code with the product using the binary code, or you include with the product a written offer to provide the source code on a physical media used for data exchange.

    Reading comments to a post appeared on the Home Hub blog about the GPL thing it sounds clear that many don’t have a clue yet, but the law doesn’t admit ignorance, if BT would have released a partial copy of the source code it’s definitely not adhering to the terms of the license.

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:51 pm on January 19, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Free software, is it really unambiguous? 

    Richard Stallman argued that the explanation for “free software” is simple – free speech, not free beer – and there is no such succinct way to explain the official meaning of “open source”.

    He also sustained that:

    The official definition of “open source software,” as published by the Open Source Initiative, is very close to our definition of free software; however, it is a little looser in some respects, and they have accepted a few licenses that we consider unacceptably restrictive of the users.

    As I already pointed out definitions of free software and open source are both vague, and beyond definitions both organizations decide unilaterally if a license qualifies or not.

    Today reading about a weird comparison of Software libre and Life libre, I sorted out that people misunderstand also what free software advocates are advocating: definitions after all are just definitions, facts matter!

    Richard Stallman noticed also that companies involved with FLOSS seek to gain the favorable cachet of “open source” also for their proprietary products, calling themselves “open source company”:

    But companies do not seem to use the term “free software” that way; perhaps its association with idealism makes it seem unsuitable. The term “open source” opened the door for this.

    I believe he is totally right.

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 9:08 am on January 19, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    (Free) Software choice: Macedonian organizations demand for 

    Metamorphosis, a foundation organising OpenOffice.org training for representatives of local self-government units in Republic of Macedonia and  Free Software Macedonia demanded from the Government to enable the citizens to choose to be trained in the use of FLOSS.

    According to the two organizations, alternatives like Open Office offer benefits going beyond technological and functional aspects, important in the current economic situation in the country.

    They also refer to the position expressed in a study funded by the European Commission, citing that free software can aid the development of digital industry in EU.

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:07 pm on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Free software: where does it come from? 

    The already famous final report published by the European Commission about the Economic Impact of Free/Libre Open Source Software on innovation and competitiveness of the EU ICT sector. has recently been commented Matthew Aslett.

    It’s interesting notice things like SAP and Silicon Graphics contributing more than MySql.

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 5:34 pm on January 14, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Geodata access policy: the English approach 

    A social and economical explanation of the consequences of the lack of free access to geodata in UK, it’s worth reading it: the tragedy of the Enclosed Lands.
    If interested in the topic from an economical perspective, I suggest you to read a study I mentioned in the post about Italian ZIP code monopoly: an English study stating that Public sector information holders keeping hidden information (raw data) cost the economy half a billion.

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 3:56 pm on January 13, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Catalogue 2007, by Optaros 

    Optaros, a consulting and systems integration firm offering customers assembled solutions using open source software and open standards source, just released a guide under a Creative Commons license (made available also by LWN) reviewing what they consider the 262 best open-source applications.

    The objective of Optaros’ Open Source Catalogue 2007 is to give IT decision makers navigation support by listing the most relevant, useful and enterprise-ready open source platforms, components, frameworks and solutions in an easy-to-read overview.

    Projects are listed in four different categories:

    • operating systems and infrastructure,
      .
    • application development and infrastructure,
      .
    • infrastructure solutions,
      .
    • business applications.

    While the selection and the rating system is based on Optaros’ experiences and the interaction with open source communities and companies, Dave Rosenberg said it would be better suited to a Wiki style of editing.

    Bruno von Rotz, Optaros vice president who authored the report, wrote:

    The Open Source Catalogue is not intended to replace detailed evaluation or proof of concepts, but provide some help to conduct a first selection.

    Send feedbacks to oss-catalogue@optaros.com

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 12:48 pm on January 12, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenMoko: the integrated OS Mobile communications platform 

    Two days ago I got distracted by the Apple’s announcement, while already exists an Open Mobile Communications development platform named OpenMoko, announced by the Open Source in Mobile Conference, held in Amsterdam’s on the 7th of November 2006. OpenMoko is a spin-off of Taiwanese computer First International Computer.

    As observed the concept of the mobile phone NEO1973, likely to be the first 640×480 screen phone available in the U.S., is based on OpenMoko, and it’s quite similar to the iPhone, where the latter is more stylish.

    OpenMoko is based on 2.6 Kernel, has layered an application framework, interface layer, and a few basic programs (dialer, address book, and message application).

    The application framework and the application manager are the key, as Moss-Pultz, OpenMoko head, explained 3,500 applications could be adapted.

    Developers are warmly invited to participate:

    Whoever writes the most popular application gets a free phone, that sort of thing.

    OpenMoko plans to make money by certifying applications, but users might choose to get them from uncertified communities’ applications.
    At the international CES, held in Las Vegas from the 8th of January till the 11th, developers large and small have come together bringing thousands of open source applications to the mobile phone, read the full story.

     

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