opensource

Correction 8:40 a.m. PDT Sept. 19: Google didn't disassemble Vista to employ the security feature described below. See this separate blog post for details.

During Google's launch of its Chrome Web browser, the company went out of its way to acknowledge the debt it owes two open-source projects, Firefox and WebKit. But Microsoft, an uncommon ally in the open-source realm, might also deserve a tip of the hat.

After some digging through the Chrome source code, Scott Hanselman, a senior programming manager for Microsoft, found that the browser uses an open-source Microsoft project called the Windows Template Library, … Read more

There are several excellent freeware video playback programs out there, and VLC media player is one of the best. Made by "those VLC folks," or VideoLAN as they prefer to be called, the wildly popular open-source player now offers a slightly better experience than before for both Windows and Mac.

VLC will now cooperate with Last.fm, there's direct playback of video URLs, and, unexpectedly, a lot of attention has been given to how VLC interacts with the Internet. Users will find VLC to be more secure, with options for strictly regulating Internet usage through the player … Read more

Open-source and currently in use by planetarium projectors, cross-platform Stellarium brings astronomer-level features to stargazers of all levels of interest. It's not quite as robust as its competitors, but it's also a much faster program. It doesn't suck away your RAM into a black hole when loading or running. Be aware that it only runs in full-screen mode, making any other programs you're running inaccessible except for the ALT-Tab switcher.

The default catalog includes 600,000 stars, with upgrade modules that can push that up to 210 million stars. The constellations of 10 different cultures are … Read more

Time for our semi-irregular roundup of Google items:

• Gmail Labs has produced three new features that people can try, according to Google's Gmail blog. One is a keyboard shortcut, "G" then "L," that brings people to a list of labels so they can show a specific category of messages. Another is the ability to move the Gmail control elements around on the left-side navigation bar, so users can reorder instant-messaging contacts, labels, and other items to put their preferred controls at the top. Last is the ability to pick your own colors for labels, … Read more

OpenOffice has pushed their popular Microsoft Office freeware alternative into release candidate territory. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, open-source OpenOffice is a productivity suite analogous to and compatible with Microsoft's near-ubiquitous tool. There is more to recommend OpenOffice 3 than the price tag, though.

New features you can test out now include Microsoft Access database support and a multipage view in Writer, the Word analog, nearly unlimited character support in sheet names, Google Doc-style collaborative editing of a single spreadsheet simultaneously, and much-needed support for Office 2007 file types.

Empirically, OpenOffice 3 seems to start marginally faster than … Read more

The way things have gone this week, you'd be hard-pressed to find a mention of anything not related to Google Chrome.

Now that we've gotten the obligatory nod out of the way, it turns out that cross-platform Stellarium is one of the coolest apps around.

It won't report on your Web surfing habits, either.

Open-source and currently in use by planetarium projectors run by Digitalis Education, it brings astronomer-level features to star-gazers of all levels of interest. It's not quite as robust as Google Earth or Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope, but it's also a much … Read more

Samsung Electronics has agreed to sell its investment stake in Symbian to mobile phone maker Nokia, according to a Reuters report.

In June, Nokia announced plans to acquire the remaining stake in smartphone software developer Symbian that it didn't already own. Nokia, by having full ownership of Symbian, wants to beat back the competition from Apple's iPhone and other competitors by accelerating its product development and serve as an open-source operating system platform for other handset makers, wireless carriers, and software developers.

Nokia, according to the Reuters report on Tuesday, will pay $410 million for its Symbian stake. … Read more

Google has released the beta version of a new browser, Chrome. In its comic-book pre-announcement, Google stated correctly that watching videos, chatting, and even playing Web-based games didn't exist when browsers were first invented. For the user, Google wants the browser to disappear and to focus on the applications and pages users are viewing, rather than on the border with its tools, and such. Google has rethought the Internet browser--some of its basic underpinnings are quite novel--but users will recognize some features as they exist in other, open-source browsers on the market today.

At the moment, only the Windows … Read more

Google has undone an earlier ban on the Mozilla Public License, an option for open-source projects hosted at its Google Code site.

Ostensibly as part of an effort to discourage the proliferation of open-source licenses, Google dropped support for the MPL earlier in August. Now, though, the company reconsidered, restoring it and adding support for the Eclipse Public License as well.

"How we think about licenses is getting a bit more nuanced," said Chris DiBona, leader of Google's open-source team in a blog posting.

Before, the company had tried to discourage the increase in the number of … Read more