Unixster

Well, it’s been a few weeks since the launch of Apple’s comically named “iPad,” and there’s no doubt the world has much to think over. That’s particularly true for those in the FOSS community, of course, given the decidedly closed nature of Apple’s new device. Fans of Cupertino may be swooning with delight, but the picture is less clear for those of us in the rest of the world. The new device is “a frightening step backward for computing and for media distribution,” according to the Free Software Foundation.

It’s not every day that a major operating system gets opened up, never mind one that leads the global market in its category. So, when the news came out last week that that’s just what the Symbian Foundation had done — and four months ahead of schedule, no less! — it was hard not to get excited. Android is no longer the only big kid on the open source mobile block, it seems, and the scales are now tipped considerably more in FOSS’ direction.

When the Symbian Foundation announced the opening up of its namesake smartphone platform on Thursday, it caused a major shift not just in the mobile landscape but also in the FOSS world. Announced by Nokia back in 2008, the transition of the leading platform from proprietary code to open source was completed four months ahead of schedule and is the largest in software history, the foundation said. “The development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry,” said Lee Williams, the Symbian Foundation’s executive director.

I was having dinner with friends the other day and we started talking about word processing programs we’d all used in office jobs. “You know, I’ve been using Word for over 20 years,” I said, and immediately felt older than dirt. But it was true.

[While not exactly FOSS news, this is pretty much an obituary for Microsoft Word and all word-processing apps. Best article I've seen in some time - Steve]

FOSS coders are a strange breed. Many devote years of their lives and unquantifiable amounts of their passion to a job that may return nothing in the way of concrete rewards. It can, in fact, be thankless — FOSS coders may get ridicule and criticism instead of riches. Why do they do it? "[Humans] need a purpose in life," says blogger Robert Pogson, "and for some, that purpose includes coding."

Recently, five college professors spent an intense five days with Red Hat employees and other members of the free and open source software (FOSS) community. Red Hat called the experience POSSE (Professors’ Open Source Summer Experience). The goal of the week was to show how FOSS could be used in post-secondary education, and to create a community to further the goal.

The only references to software source code that I found in TomTom’s prospectus related to a discussion about copyright protection of source code (as opposed to “object” code, not open source code). I searched via a .pdf “find” and admit that even after apparently illegally obtaining the TomTom prospectus, I did not read it. In fact, TomTom appears very concerned with its intellectual property (IP) rights, particularly patent protection. TomTom’s position would appear to be a no-no among true-believer open source companies (if you believe there is such a thing) and FOSS zealots.

This is WFTL Bytes!, your occasiodaily FOSS and Linux news show for Wednesday, July 29, 2009, with your host, Marcel Gagné. On today’s newscast . . . an unholy alliance (or a really good one, depending on who you ask), Yahoo turns B-movie monster, Alfresco cosies up to Ubuntu, TUX is in your pocket, and "What are you? Color-blind!"

Last week I talked about some the advantages of Free/Open Source software for us end users. Today developers speak on why they like to use FOSS; I received so many excellent responses that I have split this into two parts, and the second part will run tomorrow.

Free software may be becoming more attractive to businesses, but even though using the software is free, chances are they’ll still need to hire some technical assistance from time to time. Open source tech support experts sometimes need a few different skills than their proprietary counterparts, but their salaries are often quite similar — if not better.