opensource

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google didn't invent open-source programming or pioneer the mobile-phone software market, but when it comes to its Android project, don't accuse Google of playing follow the leader.

Although the company has long used open-source software within its internal operations, Android is Google's highest-profile attempt so far to use the collaborative programming method to change how computing is done outside the company's walls.

Google is hardly the first company to try using open-source software to shake up the industry. What's notable is Google's willingness to ruffle feathers in the open-source world, including … Read more

If you've ever thought about making professional-quality animations but decided not to because of the cost of the software, your excuse just got up and walked out the door. For Windows, Mac, and Linux, Blender is a free, open-source 3D rendering program that puts the power of the medium back into the hands of the artist.

Blender features a laundry list of animation essentials that can be broken down into categories: Interface, Modeling, Rigging, Rendering, Animation, UV Unwrapping, Shading, Physics and Particles, Imaging and Compositing, and Real Time 3D/Game Creation. The interface, though loaded with complicated tools, is … Read more

Your mother uses AOL Instant Messenger. Your spouse prefers MSN. Your office insists on Yahoo. Your ex is on MySpaceIM (shudder). What are you going to do? You could run all those chat clients at once, or you could use the multichat protocol app formerly known as Gaim: Pidgin, available for Windows, Linux, and in a portable Windows version. Like Trillian, Fire, and other third-party IM clients, this open-source messaging application lets you access multiple IM networks from one window, including Google Talk and ICQ as well as lesser-known protocols such as Jabber and Gadu-Gadu.

Pidgin's IM features are … Read more

Mozilla's Thunderbird has come into its own with version 2 for Windows, Mac, and in a portable edition. Starring features and innovations that take aim at both Web e-mail clients and industry standards such as Microsoft's Outlook, open-source Thunderbird offers the best of both worlds.

Back and forward buttons, like the ones you have in your Web browser, let you jump through messages in the order that you viewed them. Keep your e-mails organized with tags, even across dozens of message folders. Configuration is as simple as entering your e-mail address and password. Search results can be saved, … Read more

Red Hat on Tuesday released the ninth incarnation of its enthusiast version of Linux, making a move that rival Ubuntu couldn't: the inclusion of the KDE 4 user interface.

That's because Fedora and Ubuntu have different approaches to new projects such as KDE 4, which is new, significantly different from KDE 3.5, and not yet settled down.

Red Hat has two versions of Linux, the free Fedora that's designed as a proving ground that can get new projects into the hands of early adopters while helping those projects to mature, and the subscription-fee-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux … Read more

I'm out at JavaOne in San Francisco this week and one discussion I've heard popping up with some regularity is, "Do we need to do something to protect open source in a cloud computing world?" I've written about aspects of this topic at length previously. However, given that this is an area that is buzzing up a bit, I thought it would be useful to boil down the key issues and give my personal take.

The nub Copyleft licenses, such as the GPL used for the Linux kernel and the majority of other open-source projects, … Read more

An open-source project called CoreAVC-for-Linux is back up and running at Google Code after a copyright tangle with a company called CoreCodec.

Google removed the CoreAVC-for-Linux project after CoreCodec said the software violated its copyright in a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) "takedown" letter dated April 30. "We have directly verified by downloading the file from the site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted software," the company said in the letter, available at the Chilling Effects Web site.

Now the project is online again, after the company sent a reinstatement … Read more

Well, it took a few months, but Yahoo on Wednesday caught up to Firefox 3 with a beta plug-in for its Delicious bookmarking service.

The Firefox add-on for Delicious "now has full Firefox 3 support while retaining Firefox 2 compatibility," said Nick Nguyen, senior product manager for Delicious, in a blog posting.

Delicious lets people save their bookmarks online, tag them with descriptive keywords, and share them with other Delicious members.

It's only one plug-in, I know, but since I'd griped about its absence before, it's only fair for me to call out its availability for download … Read more

Joining the growing list of remixed Mozilla applications such as Songbird and Flock is Spicebird. Besides keeping the avian theme in Firefox and Thunderbird, open-source Spicebird takes the core of Thunderbird, the calendaring power of the Thunderbird plug-in Lightning, and integrated contact list chatting capabilities, and ties them all together with a widget-based landing page.

Loaded with potential, but heavily in beta, India-based Spicebird has a long way to go before it's ready for general use. The bugs and challenges facing users are noticeable nearly from the moment you start up the program. The interface and most of the … Read more