Opinions

opinions

Some comments on the Gartner report on FOSS on Microsoft Windows

I had heard about the latest Gartner report claiming that Microsoft Windows will become the dominant platform for "Open Source" (and free) software in the future. While there are certainly a number of ...

by David Sugar – 6/27/2006

opinions

The pull of the fruit

I tried my hardest to help my wife love Unix. When we were still dating, I built a little Debian machine for her so we could chat on ICQ while I was at work (and gave it to her on Valentine’s Day; are ...

by Kirk Strauser – 6/26/2006

opinions

Ask FSM: Backwards compatibility

Hello, everyone. I'm doing some research into the history of backwards compatibility and thought I might hit up the gurus here for some facts and resources I can look to for additional information. Ba ...

by Matt Barton – 6/25/2006

opinions

Just a thought: free distributed search?

Every once in awhile, I just get a hare-brained notion. Today's was, why do we use a central website for doing internet searches at all? Why Google? Consider the success of the Planetary Society's dis ...

by Terry Hancock – 6/25/2006

opinions

The pull of the fruit

I tried my hardest to help my wife love Unix. When we were still dating, I built a little Debian machine for her so we could chat on ICQ while I was at work (and gave it to her on Valentine’s Day; are ...

by Kirk Strauser – 6/24/2006

opinions

Non-libre, missing out, move along

I would like to recount if I may an experience I had earlier this week. I think it’s an example of the importance of software companies having to eventually accept the free-as-in-speech software busin ...

by Edward Macnaghten – 6/23/2006

opinions

I hope the year for Linux never comes

Toward the end of 2005 I was reading about “the year for Linux” everywhere I went. No matter where I looked, I always found articles by GNU/Linux fans (like me) that expected this year (2006) to be “t ...

by Edmundo Carmona – 6/23/2006

opinions

This is a sad, slightly unreal IT story

I had to spend 9 hours in Miami, waiting for a connecting flight. 9 hours wasn’t quite long enough to go out and about, but was long enough to get bored to death. So, I decided that I would pay $7.95 ...

by Tony Mobily – 6/22/2006

opinions

Foreign languages and documentation

At the developers conference this year, held in Sorrento, Italy, I was fortunate enough to meet and have dinner with some Italian MySQL users—some of whom had travelled from Rome to be with us that ev ...

by Martin Brown – 6/22/2006

opinions

The good, the bad, and the downright nasty

Sometimes you feel good about waking up in the morning, and the rest of the day brings you a few extra satisfactory moments. For example, I got extatic when a n00b friend of mine phoned and told me “I ...

by Mitch Meyran – 6/21/2006

opinions

How the net was lost

Those who currently struggle to maintain what is called “Net Neutrality” on the internet I think have taken too limited an approach to their struggle. What they ask is to maintain an existing status q ...

by David Sugar – 6/20/2006

opinions

DRM, guardrails, and the right to be stupid

I’m a big believer in rights. I believe in the right to speak your mind, the right to act however you want, as long as you aren’t interfering with others’ rights; I even believe in more controversial ...

by Terry Hancock – 6/19/2006

opinions

Vulgar in the open

Over the last week or so, I have been watching the World Cup with growing pleasure. Seeing such teams as the US, the Ivory Coast and Trinidad and Tobago fighting hard and not giving an inch to suppose ...

by Alan Berg – 6/18/2006

opinions

Programming and philosophising - should we leave it to the experts?

The other day I saw a filler article in an Aussie newspaper that was all about blogging (I would give you guys a link but firstly, I can’t remember which paper, and secondly, it really was a fluff pie ...

by Bridget Kulakauskas – 6/18/2006

opinions

Rosalyn's COMPLETELY LOST in free software blog

Hey! I got a blog! Hi everybody. My name is _Rosalyn Hunter_, and I've been using a GNU/Linux system exclusively since about 2001, so I've used a lot of software that hadn't reached version 1 yet. Now ...

by Rosalyn Hunter – 6/16/2006

opinions

“Free” as in “free lunch”

Too long ago, when I was a sprog growing up, my elders and betters drummed into me in no uncertain terms that there was “no such thing as a free lunch”. At the time, I was going to school and my lunch ...

by Edward Macnaghten – 6/16/2006

opinions

Towards a free matter economy (Part 6)

This article explores the legal problems that will be faced by free-design communities developing hardware for space. >I have learned that distributed problems require distributed solutions—that centr ...

by Terry Hancock – 6/15/2006

opinions

Microsoft’s ME/98 patch dilemma: a golden opportunity for FOSS

A few days ago I posted about Microsoft’s efforts to curb unauthorized distribution of its products by misrepresenting a piece of malware as a “critical security update”. However, Microsoft’s also aro ...

by Matt Barton – 6/14/2006

opinions

The demo experience

I may qualify myself as a power user sometimes - I'm not afraid to go dabbling in a system merely using a command line interface and an alien looking text editor (alien looking to those who think Note ...

by Mitch Meyran – 6/14/2006

opinions

DRM, guardrails, and the right to be stupid

I'm a big believer in rights. I believe in the right to speak your mind, the right to act however you want, as long as you aren't interfering with others' rights; I even believe in more controversial ...

by Terry Hancock – 6/14/2006