Cool Stuff
Among other things I’m also a news editor at Linux User and Developer, and so I have to sift through a lot of material every week. In the process I find news, and a lot of “not news”. Some of the “not news” however is still interesting though, and I want to link to it somewhere—so here’s some free software goodies (and baddies) appearing on the web this week:
From O’Reilly’s xml.com:
A tutorial on batch-converting files from OOo-loadable formats (including versions of Microsoft Word) to ODF format. Anyone in Massachusetts reading? You need this:From Microsoft to OpenOffice.org
A nice guide to free software operating systems presents how the different components vary between various free and partly-free distributions:
Differences between Distributions
Patents are in the news—here are some broader opinion pieces about the situation:
Discusses the negative impacts of software patents:Linux Journal: Towards the Anti-Commons
Sun exec put a sensible article under the flame-bait title “Open Source is Irrelevant”. Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president, Sun Microsystems’ point, which is absolutely, positively correct (even if I do say so myself, and in fact I did say so myself) is that open standards are the key. He doesn’t say it, but I did℄in a world with open standards, open source will win anyway. So promoting open standards is the best way to promote open source.
A Linuxdevices articles says DRM is a bad idea. Well, yeah, I think a lot of us had that figured, actually. But Victor Yodaiken makes the point rather forcefully. File it under “ammo”:
A visually impaired user writes a rebuttal to claims that visual aid software is a good argument for sticking to Microsoft Word despite its refusal to support the open document format.
Visually Impaired User Weighs In on Assistive Technology Debate
An interesting article which claims there are still many miles-to-go before Linux is “ready for the desktop”. The biggest problem I see though, is that a number of these “faults” amount to Linux not being Windows, and/or not being a massive multi-national monopoly forced onto users. For example, Apple Macintosh might fail some of these criteria! Personally, I’ve been using Linux on the Desktop since 2000.
2006 is NOT the year for Linux on the Desktop
Interesting article on the state of open source CMS systems:
Mining the untapped potential of open source content management
Weird little text adventure game which sounds really boring, written in Ruby. Interesting because, (1) it’s written in Ruby, and (2) it sounds like it might involve some interesting agent programming. Probably more fun to code than to play:
Mud, FUD, and other Crud...
From the radical software liberation front, some gloating over the “mistake” of separating the “Open Source” movement from the “Free Software” movement. Trouble is, it’s only ever been free software fanatics (i.e. the people who spit in your face when you say the words “open source”) who have ever claimed that any such distinction exists:
Let’s Burst the Open Source Bubble
A dubious presentation claiming that patents are harmless. I’m with the poster who points out that the author’s arguments only apply to commercial organizations, which is next to irrelevant where true innovation is concerned—nothing new ever comes out of corporations, they only repeat. Here it is:
Linux Today: The Truth About Patents
An amusingly ironic blog which claims that some entity called “open source” (as if it were a company or a person) has overlooked the use of free software in education. Well, maybe this is a cockeyed way of saying that we haven’t been as successful as we should be in actually getting into the classroom℄but anyone with a clue knows this is not because we’ve been ignoring it, as Debian-Edu/Skolelinux, SEUL, and lots of other projects will prove! Oh well, I think he meant well:
Actually this is a good article, although it is a bit on the paranoid conspiracy theory side. There is an old saying though, that “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean everyone isn’t out to get you”. And we know Microsoft has it in for us, but Tom Adelstein has produced a nice guide to their malfeasance and collusion with powerful influence peddlers:
Does the DoJ use Microsoft as a shill Against Linux?
Brief summary of rebuttals against recent US-CERT statistics that have been used to claim that Windows is “safer” than Linux. If you’re reading this, you’re probably part of the choir, but let me pass you the score anyway: