Published by Robert Pogson April 15th, 2011
in technology.
Well, that’s not a direct quote… but Oracle is letting OpenOffice.org have more freedom as a community-driven project. They should have done that ages ago. They certainly learned from the spurt of activity over at LibreOffice.org since large numbers of developers split from OpenOffice.org and tons more piled on an in a couple of releases pulled far ahead of OpenOffice.org.
You can read Oracle’s words on Screven’s Blog.
“Given the breadth of interest in free personal productivity applications and the rapid evolution of personal computing technologies, we believe the OpenOffice.org project would be best managed by an organization focused on serving that broad constituency on a non-commercial basis,” said Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect. “We intend to begin working immediately with community members to further the continued success of Open Office. Oracle will continue to strongly support the adoption of open standards-based document formats, such as the Open Document Format (ODF).”
The tone of the last paragraph sounds like they may be washing their hands of a product that did not flood them with money…
“We will continue to make large investments in open source technologies that are strategic to our customers including Linux and MySQL. Oracle is focused on Linux and MySQL because both of these products have won broad based adoption among commercial and government customers.”
I haven’t read whether this will allow the two communities to merge but it seems likely, assuming not too much blood has been spilled. I have been very impressed by LibreOffice. My SVG works at last!
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson April 15th, 2011
in technology.
These guys have jumped right in. Kogan has (end of May?)
Continue reading ‘Kogan’
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson April 15th, 2011
in technology.
M$ keeps changing their ABIs. That’s why IE 10 will not run on Vista. Vista and “7″ are supposed to have the same interfaces yet IE 10 will not run on Vista but will on “7″. That’s why migrating from XP to “7″ is such a mess. Many applications have to be replaced. GNU/Linux has the same sort of problems but we can usually recompile software and carry on or pick the latest version from the repositories and run it.
I choose GNU/Linux. It works for me and not some corporation trying to manipulate the world.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson April 15th, 2011
in technology.
“Microsoft’s behaviour could infringe EU competition rules if Microsoft were to implement anticompetitive agreements that foreclose competition or abuse a dominant position on the relevant market(s).
It should be noted that Microsoft is not present on the PC hardware market. It is primarily the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), who act as intermediaries on behalf of end users, and provide them with an “out-of-the-box” product, by combining PC hardware, client PC operating system and applications for which there is demand.
The Commission is aware of the difficulties encountered by consumers who want to purchase a PC with a non-Microsoft operating system or without any operating system at all. At the moment, the Commission is however not in possession of evidence suggesting that this is the result of practices in violation of EU competition rules as laid down in Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
The Commission will continue to monitor the developments in this field so as to ensure that competition and a level playing field are preserved amongst all market players. ”
see EU Commission Response
No evidence? There’s an elephant in the room! How did it get there? See the hole in the wall. The OEMs are mostly outside EU. The deed was done there and the evidence is hidden. One must use some reasoning to connect the dots
Connect all those dots and there is plenty evidence. You can easily connect the dots and you may have to dig deeper outside EU to find the smoking gun but because the crime is global does not mean the market in EU is not being abused.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson April 15th, 2011
in technology.
The trolls/fans promoting that other OS often tout the immunity of Linux systems to lack of effort because it is not worth the bother. Recent information shows it’s not for lack of trying:
- a few % of Android/Linux smartphones are infected compared to 60% of PCs with that other OS,
- the number of personal computing devices in use with Linux has probably doubled in the last year and certainly would be a worthy target, and
- 88% of the successful attacks on Linux smart phones are easily preventable.
See Digitimes – Android handsets in China account for 64.1% of 1Q11 global virus/malware attacks, says NetQin
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson April 15th, 2011
in technology.
Not long ago there were comments here that some software just must be sold as a licence to use. This was given as a reason that FLOSS could never succeed in the market. Well, Adobe, one of the flagships of non-FLOSS software has started selling pay-as-you-go instead of pay-up-front. Sweet. It’s still not a cloud-service, but that will come. Now Adobe will have a large increase in customers because they changed their licensing model to pay-as-you-go. That’s proof that paid-up-front licences are not the only way to go. Now little guys/startups will more easily be able to afford Adobe’s products. Because the service is open-ended the profit potential increases. Imagine that.
This licensing model has all kinds of advantages for businesses. Pay-as-you-go is an immediate tax deduction instead of depreciation which is spread over years. FLOSS can use a pay-as-you-go model as well. Red Hat has been very successful with it.
- Robert Pogson
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