opensource

Most of the time, changes in the technology landscape happen gradually. Sometimes we can look back and pick out some inflection point--though, in my experience, such are more about storytelling convenience than anything more concrete. However, at least as often, things just evolve until one day we've clearly arrived in a different place.

Such is the case with open source.

It's gone from being an outsider movement to an integral component of the computer industry mainstream. However, more specifically, it's clearly entered a phase in which pragmatism, rather than idealism, is the reigning ethos.

Matthew Aslett touches … Read more

Demand for OpenOffice.org 3 has been so high on its first day of out of beta that the official Web site crashed.

In the meantime, users can also download it for Windows and Mac from Download.com, and there are a couple of torrents being shared as well on the usual big-name trackers.

After using OpenOffice's MS Word analog, Writer, all day, I can confirm that this update is worth it for the improvement in response and load times, if nothing else. The installation is still enormous, with an installer about 130MB for Windows users and 160MB for … Read more

Assessing the open-source scorecard is complicated. A complete "state of open source" would fill many pages. But here are a few things that have struck me over the past year or two.

Large swaths of open source have become mainstream--to the point of invisibility. Jay Lyman summed this up well in the context of the last LinuxWorld. We've also seen large vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM, generally de-emphasizing Linux and open source as businesses in their own right.

Just to be clear, invisible is absolutely not the same thing as irrelevant. However, some open-source fans who … Read more

Mozilla Labs plans to announce a plug-in called Geode on Tuesday that gives the Firefox Web browser a better ability to understand and use geographic information on the Web.

Geode details at this stage remain sketchy, but here's the example used in the alert about the project: "With Geode, a user who is looking for restaurants while they are out of town will be able load up their favorite review site and find suggestions a couple blocks away and plot directions there."

Geotagging most commonly refers to photos with geographic data stored within the file, but there … Read more

Several major changes have been implemented in the latest upgrade to the open-source freeware called The GNU Image Manipulation Program. Known as The GIMP, these changes include some midlevel user interface adjustments and improvements to several tools. Version 2.6.0 is also the first release that attempts to integrate GEGL, a graph-based image processing framework that allows for non-destructive image editing.

The GEGL integration is mostly a back-end change with a tentative implementation. In other words, the bugs are not necessarily all worked out. As such, it is not turned on as a default. You can use it in … Read more

Open-source freeware alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, has released the third release candidate of its next major-point upgrade for Windows and Mac. The full version of OpenOffice.org 3 is due next week, so it's extremely doubtful there will be any major changes from this point on.

While Sun Microsystems is making sure that all its T's are crossed and I's are dotted, OpenOffice 3 Release Candidate 3 offers quite a few new features, including much-needed support for Office 2007 file types, Microsoft Access database support, a multipage view in MS Word-analog Writer, nearly unlimited character … Read more

Google has released an open-source software project called Update Engine that programmers can use to keep their Mac OS X software up to date.

"Update Engine can update all the usual suspects, like Cocoa apps, preference panes, and screensavers. But it can also update oddballs like arbitrary files, and even things that require root--like kernel extensions. On top of that, it can update multiple products as easily as it can update one," Greg Miller, a programmer on the update engine team, said in a blog posting Monday.

The Update Engine project is hosted at Google's open-source site. … Read more

The open-source firmware for portable music players, Rockbox, just updated to version 3.0. Along with the upgrade, three years in the making, comes the RockboxUtility. This makes it even easier than before to install the firmware on your MP3 player, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The first time I looked at Rockbox, its appeal was obvious--especially to iPod users who were less than impressed with Apple's laissez-faire approach to iPod firmware improvements. Who wouldn't like the capability to customize their space-age MP3 player with an old skool retro cassette skin, the capability to enlarge … Read more

Mozilla pushed out an update to its e-mail client Thunderbird today. The 2.0.0.17 update, for both Windows and Mac versions, corrects two potential exploits. Centered around Newsgroup functionality and an obscure UTF-8 hyperlink spoof, they could've allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary code.

A spate of bug fixes, memory leaks, and other less severe tweaks were addressed, too. The full changelog can be read here.