FOSS Force

Microsoft & Friends Define ‘Commitment to Openness’

By Christine Hall on November 5, 2013 |

On Halloween, the day after we posted an article on Ross Gardler’s presentation on Microsoft’s behalf before an open source audience in North Carolina, a FOSS Force reader posted a comment:

“Microsoft has made a lot of upstream contributions in the last two years, a lot more than our friends at Canonical have.

“I’d say that Microsoft is very difficult to trust, but they are probably more committed to FOSS than Canonical.

“‘We will know that day has arrived when Microsoft quits threatening every open source project under the sun with patent litigation.’

“They haven’t done that in years, unless I’ve missed something.”

Tuxmachines Tentatively Sold to Techrights

By Christine Hall on November 4, 2013 |

Business, Media and News

The passage of time is sometimes just too sad, but we must accept the inevitable.

One of the most popular Linux sites, Tuxmachines.org, announced on October 28th that it has been tentatively sold for $1,000. The Clarksville, Tennessee based site, owned and operated by Susan Linton, made the announcement in a short post on the site:

“I guess tuxmachines.org has been sold for $1000. I know it’s kinda low, but times have changed and the new owner plans to carry on the tuxmachines tradition.

“I suppose that’s all I should say for now until the deal is written in stone.

“Thanks everyone for everything: all the visits, all the jokes, comments, and donations. But more on that later as well.”

Although Ms. Linton doesn’t identify the purchaser, it was evidently bought by Roy Schestowitz who is perhaps best known for publishing the FOSS site Techrights. Mr. Schestowitz blogged about the purchase of the site on October 30th.

WordPress Becomes Big Brother & More…

By FOSS Force on November 3, 2013 |

Internet, Media, News, Politics, Security and Web Apps

FOSS Week in Review

Is Netflix coming soon to a Linux near you?

Saurav Modak at Muktware was observant enough to note last week that Netflix is now offering-up programming with a choice heretofore unavailable. For the time being they’re still pretty much married to Microsoft’s dead or dying Silverlight, but they’ve taken HTML5 on as a lover. This gives users of the popular movie outlet a choice that, at the very least, should make things easier for Linux users who insist on using the Netflix service:

“Although hackers have already made a workaround to stream Netflix videos in Linux machines, performance is generally low and video playback is not hassle free. Some workarounds include running the entire browser in Wine, or running a Silverlight plugin in Wine and make it compatible with the browser. But all of them come at a cost of performance. Switching to HTML5 from Silverlight will greatly reduce all these hassles, as all you will need is a latest standard compatible browser to stream movies and TV shows. This will also allow support for mobile devices and tablets which are adopting more HTML5 standards day by day.”

Your Take On Microsoft’s Direction

By FOSS Force on November 1, 2013 |

Business and Polls

The results of our “Redmond Road Poll” are in.

About a month ago we decided to speculate on where Microsoft would be five years down the road. Obviously, the company is in transition and is trying to reinvent itself fast. The traditional desktop market, where Windows dominates, isn’t going anywhere and reports of it’s demise are premature, but it is shrinking and becoming much less important, especially in consumer space.

In addition, Microsoft is facing increasing competition on the desktop. Apple’s desktop market share has been on a slow upward tick for five years or so, and Google’s Linux based Chrome OS is gaining enough traction to prompt the Motley Fool to ponder if it could “destroy Windows.” Adding to Microsoft’s woes is the fact that nearly every major OEM has gotten serious about adding well configured Linux machines, mostly running Ubuntu, to their consumer lineup.

Is Microsoft Committed to Open Source?

Ross Gardler, speaker for Microsoft at All Things Open

Is Microsoft Committed to Open Source?

By Christine Hall on October 30, 2013 |

Business, Internet and Web Apps

It would’ve been very easy to just ignore the presentation titled “Microsoft and Open Source” at the All Things Open conference in Raleigh last week, except for one thing–the presenter.

The folks in Redmond didn’t grab just anybody to speak for them. They sent someone with some serious open source cred, Ross Gardler, who is currently President of the Apache Foundation and is a co-founder of the OpenDirective project. He’s been employed by Microsoft Open Technologies for the past year or so.

PHP Attacked, the Shuttleworth Tea Party & More…

PHP Attacked, the Shuttleworth Tea Party & More…

By FOSS Force on October 26, 2013 |

Hardware, Internet, Mobile, News, Security and Software

FOSS Week in Review

NSA: Locking the barn door after the horse is stolen

On Monday, Reuters reported in an exclusive story that the NSA had failed to install some super duper software meant specifically to protect the agency from inside threats at the site in Hawaii where Eric Snowden downloaded thousands of classified documents. In other words, after spending who knows how much taxpayer money developing internal security software, made by Raytheon by the way, and getting it installed and tweaked at NSA installations everywhere, little Eric Snowden was shuffled off to one of the only, if not the only, locations where internal security wasn’t in place. In hindsight, this made the NSA akin to two lengths of case hardened steel chain being bound together by a link made from a paper clip.

SolusOS: Life Happens…Distros Die

By Ken Starks on October 25, 2013 |

Distros and News

switchboard The emails began about 7 AM.

“Is Ikey serious. Is this a joke. WTF?”

“Ken, have you seen this?”

“This has got to be a joke…right? Everything was OK yesterday? What happened?”

Here in the US, those of us who follow such things woke up to somber news:

“It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the closure of SolusOS. Simply put, there is no longer enough manpower to fulfil [sic] the vision. What began as a Debian derivative evolved into an independent distribution, without the large development team required to back such an effort.”

All Things Open: On Vendor Mistrust, Containerization & Profiting From Open Source

By Christine Hall on October 25, 2013 |

Security and Software

The first ever All Things Open conference in Raleigh, North Carolina is now history–but it’s history that will repeat itself. At the sendoff after the last workshops had finished, Conference Chair Todd Lewis announced that the event had been a bigger success than expected, with something like 800 in attendance, and that the event would definitely be returning to the Old North State’s capital city in 2014.

The three presentations I was able to attend at the afternoon session started with “Open Source Communities in a For Profit World” led by John Mertic, a Solutions Architect for SugarCRM. Although Mr. Mertic is a personable enough person and his presentation was well thought out, his ideas were a bit disturbing to this dyed-in-the-wool open sourcer. I’ll save the whys and wherefores for next week’s in depth look at this workshop. Suffice it to say, right now I’m hoping that when I review his presentation I’ll find I misunderstood some of his ideas.

All Things Open: Microsoft Explains Open Source

By Christine Hall on October 24, 2013 |

Business and Politics

Here on the morning of the second and last day of the All Things Open conference I took advantage of the opportunity to hear Microsoft’s take on open source. The presentation was offered by Ross Gardler who’s worked for Redmond for about a year. Mr. Gardler is also President of the Apache Foundation.

ATO: Weathersby on Firefox OS and Clark on Open Source Hardware

By Christine Hall on October 23, 2013 |

Business, Hardware, Internet, Mobile, News and Web Apps

The All Things Open conference is off and running!

If there was any doubt that Raleigh would be the perfect place to hold a major tech conference, an open source conference at that, those doubts are now laid to rest. In spite of a super large room, this morning’s keynote addresses, by Andy Hunt and Whurley, were presented to a standing room only crowd. The line lor lunch, provided free with admission, was…well, let’s just say something about the mouth of a gift horse, if you catch my drift.

Using FOSS in a Windows-Centric Corporate Environment

By DarkDuck on October 22, 2013 |

Software

FileZilla running on Windows — FileZilla, a free and open source FTP client that can run on Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux.

You have probably installed Linux on your work laptop and impress your colleagues with the style and performance of your operating systems. You promote Linux! Lucky you! I am envious!

Unlike you, I do not have this opportunity. Neither do many other office workers. That is because medium and large companies have their own policies about the software allowed to be used on their computers. More often than not, the choice of operating systems is Microsoft Windows, unfortunately. That can be because of some specific software required for business or because of management’s numbness. However, that’s not the point of this article.

Everything Open 2025 – Australia

FOSDEM 2025

State of Open Con 25

ATO RTP Meetup – Speaker John Willis

International FOSS Hackathon

Microsoft & Friends Define ‘Commitment to Openness’

Tuxmachines Tentatively Sold to Techrights

WordPress Becomes Big Brother & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Your Take On Microsoft’s Direction

PHP Attacked, the Shuttleworth Tea Party & More…

FOSS Week in Review

SolusOS: Life Happens…Distros Die

All Things Open: On Vendor Mistrust, Containerization & Profiting From Open Source

All Things Open: Microsoft Explains Open Source

ATO: Weathersby on Firefox OS and Clark on Open Source Hardware

Using FOSS in a Windows-Centric Corporate Environment