Community, Incorporated
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Quick thoughts on the (possible) demise of OpenSolaris
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes that the “writing is on the wall. OpenSolaris is on its way out.” Is it really? And what does that mean for the FOSS landscape?
It makes more sense for Oracle to fully embrace Linux. A well-organized transition from Solaris/OpenSolaris to Linux — where Oracle redeploys the Solaris folks to working on [...] -
Microsoft sneaks in Firefox extension via Update
The good news is that Microsoft is writing extensions for Firefox. The bad news is, the Redmond giant is slipping the extension onto systems without notifying users and making it difficult to get rid of the extension. Even worse? It’s an extension that allows Web sites to install software onto users’ PCs behind the scenes [...]
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What do you want for free? Do users have to pay up to complain?
Matt Asay excorates the whining masses that are taking Twitter to task for its ill-considered removal of the @replies feature. Asay says “pay money so that you actually have the right to voice your displeasure as a customer rather than as a user.” However, Asay misses a glaringly obvious point here — Twitter hasn’t given [...]
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Using selfishness to put crowds to work for you
How do you enable “the wisdom of crowds”? Part of the power of community is that a group of people can solve problems much more easily than individuals, but only if you can provide tools that make it possible for them to do so and appeal to their own interests.
Derek Powazek has an interesting post [...] -
Miro puts code up for adoption
I’ve heard of “orphaned” code, but this is a new one. The Miro project is trying a new approach to funding: asking enthusiasts to “adopt” lines of code.
From the letter to adopters on the site:
We’re a small non-profit in a sea of big budget, for-profit competitors, and the recent stock market crash has severely hurt [...] -
Oprah comes, Oprah goes: Who cares?
As a tool, Twitter has its advantages and disadvantages, but does it really matter if Oprah Winfrey decides to keep up with her account or not? Apparently the Silicon Alley Insider finds it fascinating, even tracking the number of people following her and the rate of new followers compared to other popular folks on Twitter.
I [...] -
The argument for free fonts
Bring up free fonts around typeface designers, and you’ll probably get an earful about the relative quality of free and open source designs against the professionally designed fonts. Mark Pilgrim, over on Dive into Mark gives an earful back.
The context here is a discussion of using dynamic Web fonts (a typeface, to be more accurate) [...] -
What does Oracle mean for Sun's open source efforts?
So much for a big blue Sun. Instead, the company is being gobbled up Oracle for about $7.4 billion. Does this mean that Oracle will become “the biggest contributor to open source,” or a gaping hole in the FOSS ecosystem?
Sun often likes to brag that it’s the largest contributor to open source — and not [...] -
Prioritizing bugs to boost Linux adoption
What are the problems that need to be solved to boost Linux adoption? And in what order? If we get the order right, we can make more users happier faster, says Scott Ritchie.
Ritchie starts by looking at bugs in Wine. After 16 years in development (give or take), Wine is pretty good, but it still [...] -
Yet another "Mac vs. PC" article that misses the point
BusinessWeek has yet another article on the relative costs of Macs vs. PCs, and author Arik Hesseldahl comes down on the Mac side:
PC makers in the Windows camp have done everything possible to make their products progressively worse by cutting corners to save pennies per unit and boost sales volume. There’s good reason Apple is [...]
