open posts

Filed under: Business, Developer, Internet, Security, Commercial, Open Source

Does software piracy hurt the open source community?

by Danny Mendez Jul 30th 2008

Louis Suarez-Potts, the community manager for the open-source Open Office project, says software piracy also hurts the open-source community, and though it can be argued that open-source is bad for innovation, most of us love the open source community. So does the occasional pirated piece of software really hurt our beloved open source projects?

Suarez-Potts thinks it's bad for everyone including the open source community since pirated software theoretically takes "customers" away from open source projects. For example, a college student may never end up downloading Open Office since he copied Microsoft Office from a friend, but that's not to say it hurts the money-makers like Microsoft at all. A little bit of piracy helps to establish big company's products as "the standard", hurting open source projects even more and making it harder for them to get their foot into a user's door.

Now we'd like to pose a question: Like the college student used in the example above, does pirating software generally prevent you from trying Open Source software or would you have put the cash down anyway even if you couldn't get it for free?

Tags: community, hack, hacker, hackers, open, open source, OpenSource, piracy, pirate, software

Filed under: Features, Linux, Open Source

Flipping the Linux switch: Myths about Linux

by Kristin Shoemaker Jan 24th 2008

There are a lot of funny, preconceived notions about Linux (and Linux users). Some ideas fall in to the realm of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). Some ideas have an inkling of truth to them, and have grown and mutated into full fledged myths. Sort of like how Vlad the Impaler became Dracula, but with a lot less violence and a lot more compiling.

Some of the myths may even be stopping you from trying Linux. You want to try it, sure... but it's too hard or can't do what you need or you're not a hacker.

Let's lay some myths to rest today. Pitchforks, torches and garlic are optional.

Tags: free, Linux, linux-switch, Microsoft, myths, open, open source, OpenSource, truth

Filed under: Design, Developer, Fun, Internet, Web services

Digg's API contest winners

by Chris Gilmer Jun 29th 2007

Digg, your favorite social news site, ran a contest to celebrate and promote the release of the Digg API.

Entrants to the contest used both the Digg API and the Flash toolkit to create interesting works that could be viewed in flash and on the Adobe Apollo platform. Submissions ended on May 16th, and the work started for the judges who narrowed things down to the top 10.

Criteria for the final decision was based on:

Effective display of data
Usefulness
Creativity

From this point Digg users got their say. Check out the winners on the site. This is just another great example of what we get when companies open their API's for developers to tool around in.

Tags: api, code, digg, open, source, winners

Filed under: Text, News, Windows, Office, Productivity, Microsoft

Microsoft's Office Open XML spec gets final draft

by Ryan Carter Oct 11th 2006

Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, Toshiba and the The United States Library of Congress have all approved the Office Open XML (OOXML) specification to be sent to the ECMA (a European standardization association). This is the next step in Microsoft's spec being accepted across many systems, platforms and applications. This is also the format that is the new hotness in the 2007 version of Office, at a beta-tester's workstation near you. I have to say that I have been very happy with Microsoft's 2007 Office system, and especially the XML format. It seems to make documents save and open a little bit faster, not to mention the endless interoperability features I haven't had a chance to test out yet. I think Microsoft is really on the right track here, and it shows, even in the beta. Hopefully this standard will be as versatile and flexible as we all think it will, but right now it is looking good.

Tags: 2007, document, Microsoft, office, OOXML, open, windows, XML

Filed under: Web services, Social Software

Facebook registration now open to everyone

by Jordan Running Sep 26th 2006

Today Facebook, the U.S.'s second-largest largest social networking site, opened its doors to the world. With the long-anticipated addition of regional networks, new Facebook registrants no longer need an email address from a Facebook-approved college or company to join. Facebook's Carolyn Abram explains the privacy implications of the change on the official (and frustratingly feed-less) Facebook blog, and there's now a How this expansion affects you page as well. Facebook was originally planning to launch the expansion shortly after the launch of the News Feed, but after users had a bit of a privacy freak-out, they delayed the expansion to give the community a little time to get their heart rates back under control. There was still widespread resistance to the move, but nothing on the scale of the News Feed. Users seem pacified by the fact that college, high school, and work networks are still as exclusive as ever, and the riff-raff (like me) still can't get too close.

Tags: expansion, facebook, open, social, socialnetworking, socialsoftware

Filed under: Developer, Web services, Social Software

Facebook opens API

by Jordan Running Aug 17th 2006

This is pretty huge. Facebook, the #2 social networking site in the U.S., has released an open API that allows third-party developers to "make remote procedure calls to Facebook on behalf of a Facebook user." The current version of the REST API allows applications to get information about a Facebook user's profile, friends, photos, events, messages (but of course requires said user to be authenticated). The API is free to use with a "soft" limit of 10,000 requests per day, and the Facebook Developers site currently provides PHP5 and Java client libraries, though the API could be accessed with pretty much any language.

Update: Commenter George brought to our attention Facebook Friend Mapper, a very cool Facebook/Google Maps mash-up that demonstrates what's possible with the new Facebook API. Very cool.

Tags: api, developers, facebook, open, rest, socialnetworking, socialsoftware, webservices

Filed under: Productivity, Mozilla

Make Firefox allow "Open with" for all files

by Jordan Running May 29th 2006

A minor peeve of mine is the way Firefox tries to protect you from yourself, i.e. not letting you choose the "Open With" option when downloading certain files, and instead making you save it to your hard drive first. Usually this only applies to executable files, but Firefox's definition of executable is pretty broad, so sometimes this restriction kicks in even when opening, say, JavaScript files. Oddly, there's no option to fix this, not even in about:config. If you've had it with this "feature," though, there is something you can do, but as you've probably guessed already it requires editing some files hidden deep in Firefox's innards. If you're comfortable with the risk, though, click through to this tutorial on Opening EXE files directly in Firefox (the server seems a bit slow just now, so you may have to try a couple times).

Tags: download, exe, executables, firefox, fix, hack, open, openwith, tweak

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