Donnerstag März 22, 2007

Simon Phipps is #58 on eWeek's Top 100 Most Influential People in IT List
Simon Phipps is #58 on eWeek's "Top 100 Most Influential People in IT" list. James Gosling is #64 and Andy Bechtolsheim is #52. Congratulations!
( Mrz 22 2007, 05:27:57 PM CET ) Permalink

Freitag März 09, 2007

"U.K. opposition leader calls for greater open-source adoption"
My colleague Patrick Finch just pointed me to these interesting and encouraging news. Here is a quote:
"Shadow chancellor George Osborne has called for an overhaul of the government's approach to open source, arguing that greater use in the public sector could save £600 million ($1.1 million U.S.) a year." Actually, there seems to be a typo in the article, £600 million translates to $1.1 billion U.S, not $1.1 million.
( Mrz 09 2007, 01:11:00 PM CET ) Permalink

Montag März 05, 2007

More details about the Norwegian e-government solution
When I mentioned the Norwegian e-government project the other day, people asked me for mor information about the actual solution. Some more information has just been published on this page.
( Mrz 05 2007, 11:38:16 AM CET ) Permalink

Freitag Februar 23, 2007

South Africa moves to open source
"Cabinet approved a policy and strategy for the implementation of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in government. All new software developed for or by the Government will be based on open standards and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS. This strategy will, among other things, lower administration costs and enhance local Information Technology (IT) skills. The meeting noted that all the major IT vendors in the country have both supported the initiative and made contributions to the development of FOSS. Government departments will incorporate FOSS in their planning henceforth."
Found here.
( Feb 23 2007, 09:26:09 PM CET ) Permalink

Montag Januar 29, 2007

Fascinating
This is quite fascinating! Here is a quote:

"Korea will only get beyond this problem by 1) applying Korean laws on open standards to the certificate authorities, 2) reassigning new certificates which work with open web standards to all Koreans, 3) reprogramming all Korean websites to support 128 bit SSL which will allow for a heterogeneous marketplace of operating systems and web browsers. This is a herculean task and thus Korea stays hostage to Redmond.

Fascinating history. Unintended consequences and de-facto monopolies create costs too high to calculate and must be borne without question."
( Jan 29 2007, 12:21:33 PM CET ) Permalink

Freitag Januar 12, 2007

German "federal center for political education" explains open source
For those of you who can understand German, the German "federal center for political education" ("Bundeszentrale für polititsche Bildung") explains open source on this site. It's presented as a social movement within today's knowledge society.
( Jan 12 2007, 04:13:31 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [3]

New EU report about the impact of open source
A new report about the impact of open source has been published by the EU. The PDF document can be found here. Here are a few hightlights:

• According to figure 12 on page 29 OpenOffice.org is more popular than Samba within European public bodies.

• According to table 1 on page 31 more than 90% of the surveyed Brazilian government organization and more than 70% of the Indian government organizations are using OpenOffice.org.

• According to paragraph 6.2.3.8 on page 35 a market share of 8% in German businesses is estimated for OpenOffice.org.

• Quote from page 102: "Indeed, the group of users was also asked whether as a result of the experimentation they thought they could do with OpenOffice the same amount of work they could do with Microsoft Office. As shown in Figure 46, under 10% of respondents thought they could not, more than 20% thought they definitely could perform as well with OpenOffice, while almost 60% thought they could be as productive with OpenOffice (as confirmed by the time-use analysis) though with some problems. Given their previous lack of experience with OpenOffice the fact that problems were subjectively perceived is unsurprising, but the fact that objectively the productivity of users remained the same and did not reduce is important."

• An interesting read is also table 45, "Conclusions from the comparison of the usage of OOo and MSO in the organizations", on page 244.

Freitag Dezember 01, 2006

Open Schools Alliance
I just was made aware of the Open Schools Alliance. Interesting project! Great to see that open source seems to become more and more popular in the education sector.
( Dez 01 2006, 11:28:09 AM CET ) Permalink

Montag November 20, 2006

New German open source study
I just came across this article which talks about a new German open source study. Here is a key quote from the article:

"Around 47 per cent of the 115 public administrations polled for the study "Structural Change or Flash in the Pan?" said they estimate cost savings potential of more than 50 per cent by using open-source software. Nearly 60 per cent said they plan to deploy open-source software as part of the medium or long-term IT strategy."
( Nov 20 2006, 05:14:46 PM CET ) Permalink

Mittwoch Oktober 18, 2006

"Leaked letter warns of open source 'threat to eco-system'"
Interesting:

"A leaked letter to the European Commission has revealed the extent of lobbying by proprietary software groups to prevent the widespread adoption of open-source software.

Sent in response to a recent report on the role of open-source software in the European economy, Microsoft-funded pressure group, the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) warned of potentially dire effects if too much encouragement was given to open source software development."

The full article can be found here.
( Okt 18 2006, 12:17:25 PM CEST ) Permalink

Samstag August 26, 2006

Great GlassFish feedback!
Congratulations to the GlassFish community! Here is some very positive feedback regarding their work:

"The steady improvements made to the GlassFish experience coupled with an evident commitment to creating a solid Java EE application server (and not just a reference implementation), has made me somewhat of a believer in Sun's new 'Open Source as an Engine for Growth' strategy. GlassFish may not register on too many people's radar screen right now, but as Java EE 5 implementations start hitting the shelves by early to mid 2007 and the open sourcing of Java movement begins gather even more momentum. There will be a spike in interest in Java EE 5 capabilities and GlassFish will be primed for a significant surge in community participation as well as adoption rates. In the meantime, look for the GlassFish community to continue its steady push towards delivering a top notch open source application server that's capable of making some noise in the dense app server market."

Found here.
( Aug 26 2006, 08:58:05 AM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Montag Januar 09, 2006

"Once again, I delay a switch to Windows"
I found quite funny:
"With any luck, Windows Vista, which will finally be released in (fill in year/month here) will be stable and secure enough to use for actual day-to-day work. If it is, I might be tempted to switch. But if Windows Vista is as stable and secure as Linux, it will be just as boring as Linux, so there will be no point in moving to it."
( Jan 09 2006, 12:42:34 PM CET ) Permalink

Freitag Januar 06, 2006

Alternatives to Microsoft on the rise
"Mozilla Firefox championed the open source browser concept and is the primary challenger to IE's dominance. Firefox ended 2004 with 4.64% market share and although it started 2005 on fire, it cooled off during the summer months. Toward the end of the year, after releasing Firefox 1.5, it regained its momentum and closed the year at an impressive 9.57%.

Apple's Safari browser enjoyed a highly successful 2005 as the only browser to gain market share each and every month of the year. Safari ended 2004 in fourth place with 1.56% market share. Safari gained steadily to end 2005, and leaped past Netscape to grab the third leading browser spot at 3.07% market share."

Found here.
( Jan 06 2006, 12:21:14 PM CET ) Permalink

Donnerstag Januar 05, 2006

Second time today: Congratulations!
Congratulations to both teams:

"Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - News) today announced that eWeek Labs selected the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS) and Java(TM) Studio Creator 2 as two of the "Top Products of 2005" in a December 19, 2005 article. Solaris 10, the most advanced operating system on the planet, has also recently been recognized by other IT publications, such as InfoWorld and InternetNews.com."

Just to remind you, both products have open source siblings: OpenSolaris and NetBeans!

The full press release can be found here.
( Jan 05 2006, 07:25:56 PM CET ) Permalink

Mittwoch Dezember 14, 2005

Patrick Finch about the value of open source
Great comment by Patrick Finch:
"The value of open source is not necessarily predicated on all users being able to put back to the source code. Or identify bugs. It's about all interested and capable parties being able to do so. For OpenSolaris, we count our community as those who have actively expressed an interest in working on OpenSolaris, and those who are actively working on OpenSolaris, not the millions of Solaris users out there. It's about not being locked-in to a particular relationship with a particular proprietary vendor. It's about reducing the cost of acquiring the kind of functionalities which, in a maturing sector, we ought to be able to take for granted. It certainly is NOT about hobbyist programmers always being able to build better mousetraps from their bedrooms than large corporations are able to, at least, not all the time. But hobbyist programmers can contribute, and if several corporations wish to collaborate on software, well, they can -in the open."
( Dez 14 2005, 06:53:22 PM CET ) Permalink