Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Software”

Is Oracle Abandoning Java?

It appears as if Java can be added to the list of things that Oracle spent big bucks acquiring from Sun for no apparent reason. Last Wednesday, InfoWorld’s Paul Krill wrote an article around an email the site received from “a former high-ranking Java official” who said, “Java has no interest to them anymore.”

Java logoThe article prompted JAXenter to speculate, “It’s possible that Oracle sees few other ways to make money with Java than by suing Google, who many might argue have boosted the Java community with [what] is arguably one of the biggest Java-based innovations in years — Android.”

FOSS Hits & Misses on a Monday Morning

The day has changed, but the commentary remains the same: In a minor FOSS Force shuffle, I’ve moved from giving commentary on Wednesdays to giving it on Mondays. And while there is no one item that stands out in a grand way to start the week, there’s no reason we can’t begin the week with several smaller items, right?

LibreOffice_logoLibreOffice has won, get over it: Last week, I innocently posted an article on Facebook about LibreOffice’s fifth birthday — yes, it has been five years, surprisingly — and for some reason it ran into some resistance from one friend who isn’t exactly too fond of the name “LibreOffice” — “Libre isn’t English” (huh?) — and he seems to think that the remnants of OpenOffice are better served if the LibreOffice folks just fold up their tent and rejoin OpenOffice. Yeah, I laughed too. That’s not going to happen because, for all intents and purposes, OpenOffice was fatally poisoned as soon as Oracle got a hold of it, making the LibreOffice fork necessary. If anything, OpenOffice developers should drop OpenOffice and join LibreOffice. Anyway, happy 5th, LibreOffice.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Lunduke Pens Book, Year of the Desktop Won’t Happen & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Mea culpa: I went to bed last night thinking it was Wednesday, woke up today thinking it was Thursday, went along with my usual Thursday work plan (which differs little from any other weekday) until Christine Hall emailed me and asked, “Where’s the wrap?”

Oops. With apologies and with a brand new calendar in hand, here’s the weekly wrap-up.

Pasadena Convention Center
With Wyld Stallyns opening for him, Bryan Lunduke will give his ‘Linux Sucks’ talk here, at the Pasadena Convention Center, during SCALE 14X in January
Photo by Jamie Pham)
Bryan Lunduke at SCALE: While all the speakers and keynotes are not yet chosen (though, truth be told, there will be a big announcement coming soon regarding one of the keynoters for SCALE 14X; remember where you heard it first), one of the speakers already tapped for the show is FOSS raconteur Bryan Lunduke, who will bring his annual “Linux Sucks” talk to the first-of-the-year Linux/FOSS event in 2016. Lunduke’s talk, oft given at SCALE and LinuxFest Northwest and other events, will be given in a venue that can fit his popularity, for starters, as well as being professionally filmed this time around. But wait, there’s more: You don’t have to wait for the movie when the book — that’s right, Lunduke has penned a book entitled, wait for it, “Linux Sucks” (spoiler alert: it doesn’t) — will be available on Oct. 8. More information can be found at the “Linux Sucks” link above. See you in Pasadena, Bryan.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

FOSS Training Campaign, Red Hat Aims At $2 Billion & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Highlighting the week’s activities in the FOSS realm is, say it with me, money. You know, the thing that we all want but that most of us never have enough of. Some have it and some need it — making it a good thing we’re about to tell you who is who with this weekend’s wrap up.

Open FOSS Training Indiegogo Campaign: Back home again in Indiana — Martinsville, Indiana, to be exact — Matthew Williams has taken the baton and is running with it when it comes to training folks in the use of free/open source software, or what we lovingly refer to as FOSS.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

FOSS the Solution to Piracy Newspaper Says

It’s not news that parts of the world are awash in pirated software, mainly Windows and MS Office. What is news is that in many countries, governments are no longer turning a blind eye to software piracy at the corporate level.

Recently in China, once considered something of a safe haven for piraters, a two year joint effort by Chinese police and the U.S. FBI led to 25 arrests and the seizure of $500 million in counterfeit Microsoft and Symantec software products, which included over 290,000 counterfeit discs and fake certificates of authenticity. The incident reportedly led to the bringing down of two criminal organizations that were responsible for distributing up to $2 billion in pirated software.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FSF turns 30, Italian Military Goes LO and ODF & More…

FOSS Week in Review

First things first: If you noticed the abscence of the clockwork-like timing of each of FOSS Force’s articles this week, it’s because our editor-in-chief Christine Hall lost a battle with gravity involving a staircase and spent some time recovering from a good banging-up. When you get a chance, wish her a speedy recovery.

FSF30-lettermark-effectsSpeaking of things as certain as gravity…

FSF Turns 30: Mark your calendars for Oct. 3. The Free Software Foundation — you know, the guys and gals who continue to tirelessly advocate for “free-as-in-freedom-and-beer” technology — is gearing up for its 30th birthday party. The party will feature an address by FSF founder and president Richard Stallman. You can learn more about the event on the celebration page and the RSVP form is open. If you so desire to use a hashtag on social media (though the FSF has this caveat about social media), knock yourself out with #FSF30.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Linux Foundation Scales, Raspberry Music Pi & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Back to school, back to work, back to just about everything else free and open source this week: The temperatures could be a little cooler in California, but there’s a modicum of cool to go with the heat.

Like the following items in this week’s wrap…

Tipping the Scales for Linux: Sean Michael Kerner over at Datamation wrote an article accompanying a video interview with Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, who says, among other things, why the foundation is just going to keep growing.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Is Microsoft Enterprise Mobility a Trojan Horse?

It’s been easy to think that the FOSS world has little to worry about from Microsoft these days. By the time Steve Ballmer was forced out a few years back, the company seemed to be a basket case. Windows was becoming less relevant by the minute, many consumers were sparing themselves the expense of Office by adopting LibreOffice and OpenOffice and efforts to launch Windows Phone were going nowhere, even after Steven Elop drove Nokia to the brink of bankruptcy, allowing Redmond to purchase the Finnish company’s once unstoppable phone business at fire sale prices.

Microsoft logoAlthough some have been trying to sound the alarm, many of us have been lulled into complacency brought by a belief that Microsoft is no longer a real threat and that we are now free to concentrate all of our energies on growing Linux and FOSS, which is basically all we’ve wanted to do.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

GNOME Is Old Enough To Vote

GNOME logoOn Saturday the popular desktop environment GNOME turned eighteen. Always looking for an excuse for chocolate cake and ice cream, this is a birthday I celebrated, even though I’m not a user.

It’s hard to believe that GNOME is only eighteen, since it seems as if it’s been around forever.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

LibreOffice Hits Prime Time, Bug Bites KDE Plasma 5 & More…

FOSS Week in Review

LibreOffice 5 Ready for Prime Time: LibreOffice, the office suite of choice of yours truly and others in the FOSS field, is now in the starting blocks to take on the proprietary office suites. The Document Foundation announced this week the release of LibreOffice 5.0, with a significantly improved user interface, with a better management of the screen space and a cleaner look. In addition, the latest LO release offers better interoperability with proprietary office suites such as Microsoft Office and Apple iWork, with new and improved filters to handle non standard formats.

libreofficsplash-300x85“In 2010, we inherited a rather old source code, which had to be made cleaner, leaner and smarter before we could reasonably develop the office suite we were envisioning for the long term,” said Michael Meeks, a director at TDF and a leading LibreOffice developer. “Since 2010, we have gone through three different development cycles: the 3.x family, to clean the code from legacy stuff; the 4.x family, to make the suite more responsive; and the 5.x family, to make it smarter, also in terms of user interface.”

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

A Guided Tour of LibreOffice

LibreOffice logoI have been using LibreOffice since it was called Star Office and all documents opened in a tabbed interface, as in most modern spreadsheet applications (anyone remember those days?). From those early days until now, I have considered Star Office/OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice to be an excellent, if not superior, tool compared to many on the market.

Don Parris

Don Parris wears a Facility Services cape by day, and transforms into LibreMan at night. He has written numerous articles about free tech, and hangs out with the Cha-Ha crowd, learning about computer security. He also enjoys making ceviche with his wife, and writing about his travels in Perú.

Latest Articles