Archive | OpenSource

Open Source means that users have the freedom to see how software works, adapt it for the own needs, fix bugs and limitations and contribute back to the community.

PySIG last Thursday: Jython

By Ted Roche on October 29, 2005 in OpenSource, Python, Technology

The Python Special Interest Group (http://www.pysig.org), a chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group (http://www.gnhlug.org) had it’s monthly meeting last Thursday at the Amoskeag Business Incubator in Manchester, NH.

Kent Johnson put on a very good presentation and demonstration of Jython, complete with working demos, sample code and handouts. Everyone from novice to journeyman practitioner walked away with a better appreciation of what Jython is (simplifying, a Python interpreter/runtime written in Java) and what it isn’t, when to use it (working in a Java environment or wanting to use Java-based library functions). Great job, Kent! I’ve posted some notes from the meeting as well as Kent’s notes to the PySIG wiki at http://www.pysig.org/pywiki/PyNotes20051027.

Nearly a dozen people attended at the Amoskeag Business Incubator (thanks to them for the free space and projector), including new attendees brought in by Bill Sconce’s recent appearance at the ACM/IEEE seminar series and from my posts to the SwaNH lists. See, PR works!

Reserve April 21-24, 2006 for a trip to Milwaukee?

By Ted Roche on October 28, 2005 in FoxPro, LAMP, Microsoft, MySQL, OpenSource, Python

On his Hentzenwerke Publishing website, Whil Hentzen says, “Reserve April 21-24, 2006 for a trip to Milwaukee. That’s all I can say right now. Trust me.”

Yeah, right. Wonder what he’s up to…

I’ll bet April in Milwaukee is almost as nice as the Novembers we’ve spent there at GLGDW…

Did MS flip-flop on supporting OpenDocument formats?

By Ted Roche on October 28, 2005 in Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

Slashdot post: MS Office 12 To Utilize ODF?. J. Random Luser writes “Groklaw is carrying a story about Microsoft quietly engaging a French company to develop Open Document filters for Office 12, due out mid-2006. The SourceForge project claims to be an import filter for MS Office, and that is how the developer describes it. But ZDNet quotes Ray Ozzie as talking about an export filter from MS Office, and this french blog takes Ozzie at his word. Ostensibly the tarball unpacks as OpenOfficePlugin, and SourceForge has the WindowsInstaller.msi listed as ‘platform independent’.” From the ZDNet article: “Ozzie told me that supporting ODF in Office isn’t a matter of principle. Microsoft isn’t opposed to supporting other formats. The company just announced support for PDF, and he added that the Open Office XML format has an ‘extremely liberal’ license.”

Follow-up: Check out the weasly words in Microsoft’s denial (citation lost): “We have no plans to directly support the OpenDocument format at this time,” I suppose that leaves open the back door of “indirectly supporting” by paying a third-party to write an import/export filter.

David Berlind follows up with long but insightful piece, “Hidden OpenDocument agenda uncovered in Massachusetts” concluding with the words, “If that’s not enough for Microsoft, then one can only assume that some other agenda is indeed in play. Just not the one that has so far been implicated.“

Apache vs. IIS: 50 million vs. 15 million

By Ted Roche on October 26, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

Slashdot has its monthly feeding frenzy over the Netcraft numbers: Apache Webserver Surpasses 50 Million Website Mark. chris81 writes “For the first time ever, the Apache Web Server is powering more than 50 million websites, according to Netcraft’s Web Server Survey for October. Although relative share fell by 0.67 percent, the total number of sites powered by Apache grew to over 52 million. Microsoft’s IIS finished second with more than 15 million sites served.”

Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols likes Microsoft, well, a little

By Ted Roche on October 25, 2005 in FoxPro, Microsoft, OpenSource

Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols is not well-known as a Microsoft fan; on the contrary, he tends to be one of their outspoken critics. So, I was pleased when I saw him praise Microsoft in his recent eWeek opinion column:

I haven’t been a big fan of personal database programs for a long time now. The only one out there these days that I care for at all is Microsoft’s Visual FoxPro. Yes, I can say good things about Microsoft products—when they really are good.

MySQL 5.0 released for production use

By Ted Roche on October 24, 2005 in LAMP, MySQL, OpenSource, Technology

The Latest Updates from MySQL AB RSS Feed notes MySQL 5.0 Now Available for Production Use. “MySQL AB today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.0, the most significant product upgrade in the company’s ten-year history. The major new version delivers advanced SQL standard-compliant features such as stored procedures, triggers, views & new pluggable storage engines. Over 30 enterprise platform and tool vendors have also expressed enthusiastic support for the new release of the world’s most popular open source database.”

Shipping no WINE before it’s time, twelve years to beta

By Ted Roche on October 22, 2005 in FoxPro, OpenSource, Technology

OSNews notes After 12 Years of Work, WINE is Going Beta. “After roughly 12 years of work, the Wine Project is about to take its widely used Windows translation layer to a place it has not been in all that time: beta. Wine Project leader Alexandre Julliard, who has worked on the software nearly since its beginning in 1993 and maintained it since 1994, said in an interview yesterday that the beta release is “a matter of days away.” He has since updated that forecast and said it would be released on Tuesday, October 25th.”

A remarkable platform, WINE Is Not an Emulator, but rather a thin layer that maps Win32 calls to matching Linux calls, running some applications even faster than on their native OS. Note that Visual FoxPro is a popular item in the Application Database, named to the Top 10 Silver List.

FireFox Logs One Hundred Million Downloads

By Ted Roche on October 20, 2005 in OpenSource, Security, Technology

Last OSNews post for the morning, I promise! They report Firefox Sees 100 Millionth Download. “Just shy of Firefox’s first birthday party, the Mozilla Foundation celebrated the 100 millionth download of its Web browser Wednesday. “This is a great milestone. Our massive, worldwide community of grassroots marketers and users – not to mention the developers – have helped to put out a product that’s really kicking butt,” said Asa Dotzler, the Mozilla liaison to the SpreadFirefox community.”

Ubuntu 5.10 Server Released

By Ted Roche on October 20, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

OSNews notes Ubuntu 5.10 Server Released. “The Ubuntu team is proud to announce Ubuntu 5.10 Server, the first release of Ubuntu designed especially for server environments. Like the standard desktop Ubuntu, it occupies a single CD. However, it is distinguished by the following features: Includes server-oriented kernels with out-of-the-box automatic support for multiprocessor systems; Includes a wide variety of popular server applications such as apache, mysql, postgresql, php, zope, openldap, bind, samba, and more.” Visit the OSNews site for links to download the CD image for PowerPC, i386 and AMD64.

Ubuntu has taken the world by storm, recently highlighted as the Desktop OS of choice in Linux Journal poll. I’ve been impressed with the Debian-based distribution. It will be interesting to see what innovations they bring to their server version.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 released!

By Ted Roche on October 20, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

OSNews reports OpenOffice.org 2.0 Released to Servers. “OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been silently released to servers. It can be found here. OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.”

UPDATED: BitTorrent links here

If you evaluated OpenOffice.org 1.1.x and felt it wasn’t ready just yet, give this new version a try. They improvements are remarkable. This is an office suite suitable for 95% of home and office workers. (I have used OpenOffice exclusively for over a year.)

If you offer custom applications to your clients that integrate or automate MS Office or WordPerfect, take a look at what would be involved in bringing in OpenOffice.org as another alternative. Your clients can obtain OO.o for free, and your application can offer many powerful new features.

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