Open Source Daily Journal

Ubuntu has long been in the background of more prominent open-source projects that has been silently creeping, making a name for itself. It is after all based on Linux that itself is based from of course Unix, one of the oldest languages that has ruled the realm of mini to mainframe computers in the infancy of the internet. One of the best benefits of Linux and other derivatives or flavors as they are called is the ability to strip unwanted parts of the base operating system leaving only the needed ones intact. This allows an old Pentium computer to become and FTP server making for a cheap and deployable form of technology in an old package. Continue Reading »

Firefox is hailed to be the best and most used browser to date which has taken over the much infamous Internet explorer from Microsoft. Why, the problems the software giant has with issues ranging from unfair commercial acts to plain ignorance of their user’s needs in terms of customization. The Fox is truly killing IE for millions now prefer to use it because they can totally customize their installation, with plug-ins that come from the users themselves who contribute to it’s improvement. Continue Reading »

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無料のソフトウェアとオープンソース産業の共通事は開発者がソースコードを利用できることでしょう。無料ソフトウエア産業はユーザーにそのソフトのソースコードを利用し、好きなようにソフトを使用することを目的としてソースコードを開発者に提供します。どちらかというと哲学的な性質を持ちます。一方、オープンソース産業は協力的な努力で生産的な結果を生み出すことを目的として、ユーザーにソースコードを利用させます。ユーザーに自分たちの提案をソースコードに反映させ、現存のものに付加させます。何年間か、産業は同様な概念を使って対応していましたが、曖昧さを避けるために「オープンソース」はマーケティング用語で無料ソフトと同義語のように使われるようになりました。しかし、このことは結局問題を多くしました。そのため、この二産業は別離し、自分の道を歩むことになりました。お分かりになりましたね。「オープンソース」は本当は「無料ソフトウェア」とは反対の意味を持つのです。

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Foxit Reader 2.3 is an open source program that reads PDF files. This is a very good alternative for Adobe Reader. The one main advantage of Foxit Reader that Adobe can not practically compete with is its relatively small size. The download size of Foxit Reader is just 2.55 MB compared to the Adobe Reader which is a resource hog that eats up around 22 MB of your space. When you click the Foxit icon, it opens almost instantly. Thers is no splash screen that displays so and so, created by so and so. Its annotation tool enables you to highlight text, draw graphics and make notes in PDF. You can also print and save them. You can also convert a PDF into a text file. And it gives you added privacy. It does not connect to the internet without you knowing it.

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Google proudly announced last October 21, that the source code for the company’s Android mobile phone operating system is FREE of CHARGE and is now AVAILABLE. Those wanting to download the source code can visit the web site for the Android Open Source Project. Google cites that an open source platform that is consistently studied and being improved on and further developed by a responsible community can hasten the development and innovation. It can also open up economic opportunities and ultimately provide the best technological innovations for a better mobile phone user experience. Google is hoping that by making the source code open, it will facilitate to faster development and many applications will be readily available, and it will bring down mobile phone prices.

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The common thing in both the Free Software and Open Source communities’ approaches is the open availability of the source code to developers. Free Software Community provides source codes to developers with the goal of which, that the user is free to do what he wishes with the software’s source code. It is more philosophical in nature. While, Open Source Community believes in providing these source codes to users, with the aim that collaborative efforts can bring productive results. It motivates the users to freely provide their suggestions for the source code and can append it to the existing one. For some years, the communities were working with the same concept and “Open Source” came to be used as a marketing term for free software to reduce the ambiguity, but somehow, it contributed to more problems. So the two communities parted and started their own way. So now you know, “Open Source” is really opposite to the original context of “Free Software”.

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Content management system (CMS) is not new. Yet, not many business owners are aware of how the technology can help to bring their business to the next level.

A website owner greatly relies on their web designers to manage their website, which is time consuming and costly.
Here are some various CMS solutions that may be suitable for you:

1) Joomla – One of the most popular and commonly used CMS today, the software is released under GNU General public license, so anybody can use the software and make modifications to give for their own use.

2) Drupal – Drupal is a solid, high quality platform that is claimed to be user friendly and well liked by web developers. Only 1 installation is needed for multi sites.

3) CMS made simple – A much simpler key that is quick to learn and easy to use. This software is very good for small websites with few pages. Business owners that are new to the online world will find this software fitting.

With the coming of a new year, it seems sort of natural to look back and admire the best and forget the rest of the past year with the hope that the coming year would bring something better and brighter. The year 2008 witnesses the release of the Rails 2 application program. Rails 2 packs more features that aim to provide additional capability to program developers to make them more productive and effective. The newest release of Rails boasts of an improved Configuration Management feature paired with better JavaScript loading performance. Aside from these, other note worthy features includes easier View Management, easy Authentication, condensed Migration Syntax, Active Record Data and XML/JSON and upgrades on performance and maintainability.

Adopters and investors are questioning the economic viability of the open source model. Open source solutions are now becoming a choice of large projects and even by conservative businesses. They are now concerned with this question when a few years back this would not have even reached the discussion table. Now more than ever before, even the conservative IT shops are starting to seriously look at when and where open source softwares would make sense to them.

There are some issues that argue that OSS is not long term viable because of the lack of a viable economic model. Successful and expanding implementations of OSS in the mainstream IT world continue to disprove this assumption. Open source does not have a unique business model or a singular model for that matter. The advantage of OSS model is that it can be leveraged within a wide array of profit, non-profit, indirect and direct revenue business model strategies.

Source: eosj.com

The FOSSology project by HP is geared towards analyzing open source programs in order to determine under what licenses the various pieces of codes can be classified under. The main thrust of the project is anchored on the premise that although a certain application software like the GPL for example may be classified under a particular license, some of the underlying codes can be potentially classified with other licenses. HP intends to assemble an active contributor�s base by providing the gateway to the open source community in to assist in developing additional features to achieve a valuable data mining tool to analyze software.