June 1st, 2009 Benjamin Horst
In a recent post, the North-by-South blog announces Brazil is aggressively expanding their Telecentro program, community free software workshops and technology education.
The Brazilian National Support Project for Telecentros (public computer labs with free, public Internet access) intends to support the deployment of 2 - 3,000 new Telecentros and towards achieving the goal of 10,000 active Telecentros by the year 2010. Almost all of the Telecentros are built using entirely free and open source software. Adding to the social benefit of the project, the rapid timetable will be met by training Brazilian youths on how to install Linux, configure the workstations and servers, and get the Telecentros online, up and running.
What an excellent national project that will pay future dividends as generations of Brazilians learn computer skills on open platforms, and then become the very developers to advance those platforms in turn.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source | No Comments »
May 13th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Internetnews.com reports Firefox Hits 270 Million Users, Without Linux.
The open source Firefox web browser from Mozilla now has some 270 million users. That’s the figure that Mozilla staffer Aza Dotzler is now claiming, and it’s not an easy number to calculate.
Calculating the number of users of any open source application is notoriously hard, but Mozilla has some techniques that can help it arrive at a reasonable estimate. It measures the number of installations pinging the update servers daily, and multiplies that by three to reach its guess.
But the system doesn’t count Linux users of Firefox. Author Sean Michael Kerner writes:
If we take Fedora’s number of users to be 13 million, Ubuntu Linux’s to be another 8 million, then roll in Debian, SUSE, Mandriva and Gentoo users, I don’t think it would be unfair to say that Firefox easily has over 100 million active daily users and nearly 300 million users total (but that’s my own calcuation).
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source | No Comments »
April 23rd, 2009 Benjamin Horst
That’s right, today is the release day for Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope!
Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more.
One of the most user-friendly Linux distributions, Ubuntu’s combination of an attractive user interface, strong community of developers and users, and backing by a well-capitalized company (and leader), have pushed it to the forefront in recognition and into a true competitor to the longstanding dominance of Windows and other closed-source software.
Further, as a small taste of what the future will bring, the agility of open source is demonstrated by the quick creation of a mature netbook-tailored version in the Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source | 1 Comment »
April 13th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Our friend Christian Einfeldt reports on Slashdot that Hungary and Tatarstan (in Russia) have made strategic moves to adopt Free and Open Source Software.
On April 2, the Hungarian government announced that it will be modifying its procurement rules to mandate that open source procurement funding match expenditures for proprietary software, according to Ferenc Baja, deputy minister for information technology. In Tatarstan, a Republic of 3.8 million inhabitants, the Deputy Minister of Education announced that by the end of this school year, all 2,400 educational institutions in Tatarstan will have completed a transition to GNU/Linux, following a successful pilot program it rolled out in 2008.
With the 2010 annual OpenOffice.org conference to be held in Budapest, Hungary, this is especially timely news.
Posted in Education, Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | No Comments »
April 8th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Google’s Android platform, while starting slow, shows a great deal of potential and has piqued the interest of many phone vendors and carriers. In the NY Times’ piece T-Mobile to Use Google Software in Devices for Home, Ashley Vance discusses new T-Mobile devices planned for Android.
T-Mobile plans to sell a home phone early next year and soon after a tablet computer, both running Android, according to confidential documents obtained from one of the company’s partners. The phone will plug into a docking station and come with another device that handles data synchronization as it recharges the phone’s battery.
There have been many rumors of netbooks adopting Android, in part because it is expected the brand power of Google would be strong enough to convince buyers they don’t need Windows. In fact, T-Mobile’s home phone sounds very much like a phone-netbook hybrid to me:
T-Mobile’s use of Android to advance its ambitions also shows just how blurry the line has become between phones and computers. Its tablet-size phone device resembles a small laptop without a keyboard and has a seven-inch touch screen. It would handle basic computing jobs like checking the weather or managing data across a variety of devices in the home.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | No Comments »
April 6th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
ComputerWorld publishes a lengthy piece titled 25 Highly-Anticipated Open Source Releases Coming This Year.
It’s a roundup of some major open source project releases scheduled for the rest of this year, although article commentors pointed out a number of important projects that weren’t mentioned… which shows how important and enormous the field of open source has become.
Firefox 3.5, Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10, Android, Maemo, Eclipse, OpenOffice.org 3.1, Kaltura, Dimdim, Foswiki, WordPress, several open source hardware projects, and much more.
It’s going to be a huge year for open source!
Posted in GNU/Linux, Maemo, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Wiki | 1 Comment »
April 3rd, 2009 Benjamin Horst
John C. Dvorak, a PC Mag columnist long seen as a major Microsoft apologist supporter, has become enamored of Ubuntu for himself and his readers, and expresses it in a recent column, Dvorak Likes Linux:
The critical mass has been reached, and it’s time everyone tried Ubuntu.
A strong statement, and a major shift for the irascible writer. He expands it with:
I seriously like the Ubuntu 8.10 implementation and will now install it permanently on my latest machines. It’s a winner…
In many instances the complexity of Linux turns out to be smoothed over by the Ubuntu architecture. It’s so good that I’m a little annoyed with myself for not getting to it sooner.
It’s a pretty amazing change for this IT veteran, made even more so when he caps off the piece with this:
If I had a small or mid-size company, I’d probably use only Linux and open-source software, just to stay out of the way of the software police and their onerous “audits”—another abhorrent situation that, to me, is intolerable.
Congratulations, John, for coming around! Welcome to the new world.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | No Comments »
March 31st, 2009 Benjamin Horst
It’s long been common sense that economic downturns aid some businesses, even while harming most others. Beneficiaries tend to include discount retailers, as shoppers shift downmarket, as well as similar cost-conscious products and services that can replace more expensive alternatives.
Because of its price benefits, open source is now benefiting in this way, writes Eweek, in Why Recession Is Causing Enterprises to Rethink Open-Source Strategy.
Author Chris Preimesberger writes:
Budget limitations and continued improvement in software and associated services are making open-source software alternatives such as MySQL, SUSE Linux, OpenOffice.org and plenty of others look mighty good to IT managers and CFOs.
Interviewing Matt Asay from Alfresco, the article asserts that open source is starting to be seen as the safe, default option that will save a manager’s job, whereas in the past it was often considered new, untested and risky.
Is this evidence of an arriving tipping point?
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
March 23rd, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Matt Hartley, writing for Internet.com, suggests to the country Let’s Use Stimulus to Boost Open Source in Schools.
His argument, in summary, is that the stimulus funds to be delivered to schools gives those schools the perfect opportunity to address the upfront costs of switching to Linux and an open source software stack. Then, for years and years after, the schools will benefit from the lower cost and longer lifespan of hardware and software running the open source stack.
This stimulus bill may be the only shot of fresh federal funds education is going to get for a very long time. This means whatever approach US education opts for regarding technology, it had better be something that can be sustained when the stimulus funds run out. This is where I see open source software and Linux stepping up to the challenge in a way that’s not practical for Windows.
Hartley also points out that at least two states have already made significant investments in open source, paving the way for others to follow: Indiana and Ohio.
Indiana installed 22,000 computers with Linux and open source in 2006 in a program to cut costs per machine so it can work toward a one-to-one student to computer ratio. In 2007, an Ohio school district began migrating all of its computer systems to Linux and open source as well.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | No Comments »
March 19th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Several years ago, the French Gendarmerie police force began its migration to open source for the 90,000 desktop computers used by its 105,000 police officers. In a recent followup (Gendarmerie Saves Millions With Open Desktop and Web Applications), OSOR.eu finds the Gendarmerie continues to succeed with its open source strategy:
The French Gendarmerie’s gradual migration to a complete open source desktop and web applications has saved millions of euro, says Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Guimard. “This year the IT budget will be reduced by 70 percent. This will not affect our IT systems.”
The migration still continues now, as new systems are bought to replace older machines. In this way, change is managed as a gradual process, while the general rule against buying new software licenses (using legacy licenses until they are replaced with open source) means that money is being saved immediately.
“If one of us wants a new PC, it comes with Ubuntu. This encourages our users to migrate.” Guimard estimates Gendarmerie since 2004 has saved 50 million euro on licences for standard office applications, hardware and maintenance.
The decision in 2004 to move to open source, was raised by one of the Gendarmerie’s accountants. “Microsoft was forcing us to buy new software licences. This annoyed our accountant, who tried OpenOffice.” According to Guimard the proprietary software maker then started lobbying the Gendarmerie, which is how the general manager found out about the experiments. “When he saw OpenOffice worked just as well and was available for free, it was he that decided it should be installed on all 90,000 desktops.”
After sampling open source with OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird, the Gendarmerie took another step and migrated to Linux as well.
In 2007 the Gendarmerie decided to replace even the desktop operating system. Guimard: “Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority.”
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 2 Comments »