Back in 2006, I wrote a piece for LXer called “A Brief History of Microsoft FUD”. This ran through successive attempts by Microsoft to dismiss GNU/Linux in various ways. One of the better-known was a series of “Total Cost of Ownership” (TCO) studies. By an amazing coincidence, these all showed that Microsoft Windows was cheaper [...]

As 2011 comes to an end, there are 28 international open data platforms in the open government community. By the end of 2012, code from new “Data.gov-in-a-box” may help many more countries to stand up their own platforms. A partnership between the United States and India on open government has borne fruit: progress on making [...]

Open source and innovation are locked in a dynamic and symbiotic relationship. Open source, community-based development evolved to meet developer needs for access and openness. While early open source represented innovation in development processes — and, of course, was enabled by the emergence of the Internet and Web search — it did not always result [...]

Years ago I hung out with a friend who had a prosthetic hand. It was a stiff plastic hand, like a store mannequin hand, that could open and close in a simple grip. It didn’t have much functionality, but it had a bit of fun factor — my friend liked to remove it to scratch [...]

The blind hatred of Free Software Foundation President Richard Stallman toward proprietary programs is such that he has given speeches in which he advocated for software piracy. Stallman wrote this the day after Steve Jobs died: “As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, ‘I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m [...]

Two years ago at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst predicted that in only a few years, 100 percent of major business software platforms and applications would incorporate open source components. That vision is now playing out, with lots of organizations incorporating open source in custom applications, using pure open [...]

The digital age has added significantly to the tools available to scientific work, but has also introduced new challenges. Glyn Moody describes the present situation, and suggests that we need true openness with respect to scientific software. One of the key inspirations for the free software movement was the scientific tradition of sharing information and [...]

The passing of Steve Jobs earlier this month triggered reactions that spanned the gamut — from expressions of appreciation and sober reflection to some tasteless extremes of zealotry from a subset of the open source community. We can learn a lot from Steve Jobs, even if we ultimately have different goals. Back in 1997, Steve [...]

Venkat Mangudi, an open source evangelist and OSI Days speaker, recalls how his 10-year-old kid made him realise that Linux should be made compulsory in schools. He also explains how FOSS came to the rescue of small businesses, the new open technologies revolutionalising the world and how to overcome the ‘Ow’ of discomfort in open [...]

Creative Commons held its Global Summit a few weeks ago in Warsaw, with amazing international participation. Without question, the most-discussed topic was the upcoming 4.0 release of the licenses, including related issues and a lively debate regarding whether the licenses should be ported to specific countries – or whether we should instead try to create [...]

Sometimes you stumble on the most interesting projects, and you get all inspired to start making stuff yourself. The other day, I came across a really cool DIY attempt at building a voice activated robotic arm. Okay, to be fair, the robotic arm is already built, but the good news is that it only costs [...]