software

Mi amigo Dave Rosenberg has a thoughtful post on why open source wins against SaaS (Software as a Service). The answer, in a nutshell, is "community." SaaS sets up a one-way relationship with consumers, whereas open source breeds both consumers and producers, and so sustains itself better.

Dave writes:… Read more

Trolltech has been working for years on open-source software for Linux-based mobile phones, but the company took another step Tuesday by making its full package available as open source.

The software, called Qtopia Phone Edition, has been available under either open-source or commercial licenses, but the latter option included more features. "Until now some Qtopia components, like the telephony, DRM (digital rights management) and the safe execution environment software stacks, were only available under the commercial development license," the company said. Now, though, all the components will be available under version 2 of the open-source General Public License (GPL). … Read more

Them's fightin' words!

That was my reaction when later last night I got the official Microsoft comment on my story about the Mozilla Foundation pumping new energy and funding into development of the Thunderbird e-mail software.

I'd asked about whether Microsoft was worried about competition from the project, given that Firefox has fared relatively well against Internet Explorer, and whether Microsoft would help Thunderbird programmers get their software working with Microsoft's Exchange e-mail server software.

What I got from Clint Patterson, public relations director for Microsoft's Unified Communications Group, went a couple notches beyond the "… Read more

The obvious answer is "Use something else." Some, however, don't like simple answers to obvious questions, so I'm now going to spend 1,000 words or so saying, "Use something else." You have been warned...

For a variety of reasons, I've been thinking lately about what to do when open-source software is not good enough for a given set of needs/requirements. There are some who believe that we should use open-source software, even if it's rubbish. I'm not among that group.

Fortunately, this is less and less an issue as open-source software becomes better--even superior, in a growing number of instances--to proprietary software. I use Adium (open-source instant messaging application) because it's better than Apple's iChat (though I turn to iChat when I want to do video chat because, well, Adium doesn't offer this feature). I use NeoOffice (OpenOffice for the Mac) increasingly because I actually prefer its presentation program to Microsoft's PowerPoint, but I have to head back to PowerPoint when I want to embed video in a presentation.

And so on.

For those who think that open source is something to impose, I disagree. I believe that open source can carry its own arguments. When it can't, I don't use it, but hope for people to come along who will fill the void. They almost always do.… Read more

Cisco System's CEO John Chambers is ready to add more alliteration to his name. Try calling him the collaboration kid.

Chambers, a keynote speaker Monday at Salesforce.com's user conference, "Dreamforce Expo," demonstrated the use of telepresence technology to collaborate on landing a sale.

With the increasing popularity of broadband, Chambers noted it will change the way employees work, how they work and the work itself over the next decade. And he forecast that the next wave of productivity and innovation will be driven by Web 2.0 tools that will enable collaboration.

Chambers has a … Read more

It's only fitting that one of the great game developers for Mac would dabble in the new iPhone gaming market. Freeverse Sudoku sports a smooth and beautiful interface for playing the addictive Japanese numbers game using the touch screen on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can even "pencil in" numbers to see how they work as you play.

iPhone link: http://freeverse.com/iphone/sudoku/

Web site link: http://freeverse.com/games/game/?id=7014

QNX Software Systems, one of the old guard in the the embedded operating systems industry, made a move Wednesday to fend off rival Linux by opening its Neutrino product source code for all to see.

But don't mistake the move for a true adoption of open-source software. Although QNX's hybrid model lets outsiders see, change and extend the Neutrino software, commercial use of the software requires purchase of runtime licenses, the company said Wednesday. Academics and noncommercial developers get free use of development tools.

The Neutrino development process will be more "transparent," and outsiders will be … Read more

I couldn't help but comment on this news out of Australia that 2Clix is suing an online forum because a few forum members think 2Clix's products stink. The open-source world thrives on transparency. Not so with dear little 2Clix, which wants everyone to speak nicely about it, regardless of truth. Even in the proprietary world, this is extreme behavior.

The problem with such vendor-defined truth is that, well, it's often not very truthful. Dialogue is actually helpful for establishing such truth and motivating purchase decisions. Apparently, 2Clix can't see this.

From the article:… Read more

The Samba team has released an early look at a new version 4.0 of the open-source file-sharing software that's geared to mesh more tightly with Windows networks.

Samba reproduces Windows protocols used by file and print servers, letting Linux or Unix operating systems handle some tasks a Windows server ordinarily would. The most notable feature of the Samba 4.0 alpha release is support for Windows Active Directory logon technology used since Windows 2000, project leaders said last week.

The feature has been under development for years. The Samba group released a version of Samba with the Active Directory support … Read more