Posts Tagged ‘open source’

The Guardian documents a case of creeping jargon: The UK is going to create its own “cloud“:

By 2015, the strategy suggests, 80% of central government desktops could be supplied through a “shared utility service” – essentially a cloud service resembling Google Docs, which lets people create documents online for free.

The move to a “government cloud” mirrors the system used by Google and other large companies, which put cheap “server” computers into huge data centres to provide computing power on demand which is delivered where it is needed via the internet. That would be provided to government departments and local government, replacing the ageing and inefficient systems used in many of the hundreds of data centres presently used – and frequently run at far below their capacity because they are dedicated to one department.

Buried in the story, though, is some news I find exciting: they are encouraging a move to open source. From the same story:

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2000 – President Bill Clinton signs the Child Internet Protection Act into law. The law is implemented to set rules for the web to expose them to pornography and sexual content. In 2003 the law will be challenged, but will be upheld.

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Other Day in Tech History items:

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becomes the first Full length Animated feature
• Quake II becomes Open Source
• Python 2.2 is released

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In his most recent Geekazine podcast, Jeffrey expressed some concerns about open source software on cellphones.

I do not share those concerns.

The issue is not open source; the issue is the Linux/Unix security model, which underlies the open source cell phone operating systems (“*nix” is sometimes used to refer to Linux and Unix to the extent that they have common traits).

That model has proven itself far more secure than any of its competitors over the years.

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2004 – Mozilla launches the web browser that would finally give Internet Explorer a run for it’s money. The Firefox 1.0 web browser was created by Mozilla, who broke free from the Netscape Navigator browser to develop in Open Source. The Gecko layout engine browser would be available for Windows, Mac and Linux – with it being the standard browser in current flavors of Ubuntu. Last year on it’s 3.5 release, it set a new worlds record download. Firefox currently takes 1/5 of the market browser share.

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Other Historical Events in Technology

• Blizzard settles a lawsuit with Micro Star
• Netscape acquires Collabra
• Albert Einstein is awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in Physics

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2008 – It was hailed as a “Mistake” on their blog. With that, Google Chrome is released in Beta on Windows machines. The new browser takes a lot of people by surprise as this was a pretty secretive project – that is, until the comic was released. Google then blogged about it saying:

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we’ve now made the comic publicly available — you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

The browser was suppose to be announced on Sept 3rd.

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Other events in the Day in Tech History:

• The iMac starts shipping
• IBM announces Copper based processors
• The first meeting of the “Virtual Library” project is held

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This week in tech history in 1998, Apple announced it would discontinue the Newton OS and handheld. Steve Jobs said in a press conference that Apple would be focusing on Macintosh computers.

Other interesting notes in Tech History this week – There are 8 days of tech history – Stage 6 shuts down, Netscape goes Open Source, Netscape is discontinued. Intel introduces the PIII processor and “Gigabyte” – a female Belgium hacker is arrested. She hacked to show the public that girls can be hackers, too.

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Open Source seems to be a growing movement. Not everything is part of the “GNU General Public License” though.  Some have even gone as far to make their own Public License standard.

Microsoft does have some Open Source to them, but what would happen if they took their Operating System to that standard? Would people accept the Microsoft OS, or would they finally make the switch to Linux?

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Filed under the “Now I’ve seen it all” category. It’s OpenCola – the softdrink you can make and change the formula. It was suppose to be an “example” of Open Source, however someone took it to heart and ultimately started making the soda-pop.

If you are bored and need something to do, why not make soda? The base formula is on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCola. No word if there is a Chocolate-Cherry Coffee-beer flavor yet, but I bet if you put your mind to it, you can make one.

Meanwhile, Kinetic Organic Interface (KOI) is working on some cool interface ideas for soda cans themselves. Their “Claytronic” system gives the opportunity to actually put rss feeds and movie trailers on the sides of a can. You will also have the ability to flip through screens, turn down volume, etc.

Together, you can have a full experience with your soda, from making it, to watching a movie trailer while drinking it. Truely an innovative step.

On April 3^rd in 2000, Microsoft was found to have an “Oppressive Thumb” on their competitors and violated Anti-trust laws. In other words, Microsoft was a Monopoly. After further Appeals and litigation, Microsoft was ordered to share some of it’s application program interfaces for the next 5 years.

It is impressive to see a company get to the point where they could be considered a Monopoly. I suppose you don’t have to be as humongous as Microsoft, or AT&T in the late 70’s when they violated the antitrust laws – but it does help.  And of course when you get to that level, you get attacked at so many different angles.

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