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Last updated: February 09, 2010 06:00 PM CET

February 09, 2010

Charles Schulz : Events & Non-events

This week started the wrong way. Some people started to create what is litterally a storm in the teacup, while some other people made announcements that in my view are extremely disappointing and quite concerning for some practitioners of FOSS licensing management and consultancy. Let me explain this point first.

Black Duck was awarded a patent on Open Source licensing conflict resolution. The patent itself seems to cover the “core technology” of the software developed by Black Duck, and not the actual practice of FOSS licensing management and optimization, which is something that Ars Aperta incidently offers both through its traditional services and certification programs. I have to say that I am not really sure what the patent covers or does not cover, but it sure brings a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt for the existing competitors or potential competitors of Black Duck Software, existing consultancies in similar field and last but not least, customers. No wonder Bradley Kuhn got upset about this. I do find these news quite unsettling myself, and I cannot wait to see Black Duck’s patent promise. At least that should remind some not to trust so called Open Source experts who use laptops with Windows, MS Office and Internet Explorer. It’s a small but telling sign they treat FOSS as some sort of disease and not as something to rationally analyze and assist their customers on. And do I need to repeat this again here? Software patents are bad, they stifle competition, customer choice, block innovation and lessen value. You may call them a reality, you don’t have to necessarily add to it.

What really strikes me as a real storm in the tea-cup is the pseudo announcement that Ubuntu will drop Openoffice.org from its upcoming Lucid Lynx release, in its netbook edition. The news came from this website and got quickly picked out by the largest french newspaper, stirring quite an uproar among the French community.

Let me offer some thoughts on why these news are nothing short of non-news, aside the mere fact that there is no official announcement by Canonical or any Ubuntu release team on this matter.

First, OpenOffice.org is a large application that usually runs well even on netbooks, but may not be the best tailored tool for specific uses envisioned for netbook users. There is nothing surprising in this, and several Linux distributions have actually never included OpenOffice.org by default because of size constraints and simplicity.
Second, even if Ubuntu were to drop OpenOffice.org from its specific netbook edition it does not mean that the software would be unavailable from the very same Ubuntu repositories. In fact it would be readily available, but it just would not be included in the default installation. How many computers shipped with Windows only include a trial version of Microsoft Word and not a coherent MS Office stack? Almost all of them don’t ship with the full copy of MS Office.
Third, we recently got hold of the first reliable statistics, aside our own count of downloads, of the actual market share of OpenOffice.org on a worldwide scale. And guess what? With these numbers, we won’t be exactly hampered by whatever decision not to ship OpenOffice.org in the default install set of Ubuntu netbook edition.

What is now needed is some sort of acknowledgment by the broader community of analysts that these stats are reliable. This would cause some real problems to Microsoft, as these statistics usually only count the shipments or the default installation images of MS Windows that come preloaded with one trial version of MS Word. Unless Microsoft patents some new market share analysis method, that is.

Alan Lord : Is Canonical Becoming The New Microsoft?

Whoah! Hold on everyone. Let me don my asbestos suit first will you.

Thanks.

Right then. I have been thinking about this post for some time and I think the time is probably right for pressing the old “publish” button.

I am not trying to incite riots or wars in the halls of residence or corridors of power but Canonical/Ubuntu is starting to catch more “bad karma” than is healthy for it IMHO.

Let’s start with Mono. Yep. It’s been a prickly thorn for many and the concerns expressed are not going away. There’s no point in raking over the old ground; it is just one of the bad-karma attractants in a growing list.
Then we have Ubuntu One. Proprietary, closed, caused much debate and friction when announced and now the possibility of a Windows version too.
Next comes dumping GIMP, OOo and other much-loved applications from the default installation of versions of the forthcoming distribution.
Then the discussion about what closed/proprietary applications should be made available in the Ubuntu repositories.
Then we have the change of the default search engine from Google to ~~Microsoft~~ Yahoo.
Then Matt Asay joins as COO which should be, and probably is, good news. Matt is well known, respected and experienced, yet some of his prodigious public commentary tugs at the heartstrings of many a Freedom Fighter.

I don’t really want to comment on the individual points above; the point is that this list is growing…

I really like Ubuntu. I use it everywhere, I help in the Ubuntu-uk irc channel when I can and we [our company] promote Ubuntu to our customers and I [as an individual] to friends and family.

What concerns me is not any particular item in the list above: some I care about, others I do not; as I am sure many of you will do too. It is the increasing volume of criticism and vitriol as a whole. It is getting louder. This, I believe, is indicative of a turning tide that, if we are not careful, will result in Ubuntu losing popularity and more of the FOSS community exercising it’s freedom.

I’m pretty thick-skinned (I think I will need to be with this post!) so if you think I am barking up the wrong tree, or just plain barking, then say so. But I am noticing increasing criticism and anti-Ubuntu rhetoric which is not just because it is becoming more popular, although that is certainly one factor.

Something is changing and I am not sure it is for the good of Ubuntu or our community.

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by Alan Lord at February 09, 2010 12:03 PM CET

Italo Vignoli : Has the Irresistible Rise of OpenOffice.org Begun?

by italovignoli at February 09, 2010 08:21 AM CET

Italo Vignoli : The Multiple Meanings of the Term “Open”

by italovignoli at February 09, 2010 12:56 AM CET

February 06, 2010

Italo Vignoli : Open Source Veteran Matt Asay Joins Canonical (Developer.com)

by italovignoli at February 06, 2010 08:44 AM CET

Italo Vignoli : What we know about Oracle Cloud Office, OpenOffice.org (Network World)

by italovignoli at February 06, 2010 08:42 AM CET

Italo Vignoli : Life without Windows

by italovignoli at February 06, 2010 08:40 AM CET

Louis Suarez-Potts : fosdem 2010

I missed last year's but was here two years ago, in Brussels, during winter, only without the broken hip. Fosdem is intense, exciting, great. The focus is on presentations, dsicussions that have an effect, that are not just speeches. In our case, this means the OOo developers present (and there are a lot) are going around meeting others and discussing OOo's technology and file format (the ODF) and how to contribute. (Today there is also a meeting of the ODF crew at 14:00, which I will be participating in. And that field--the ODF--is also immensely interesting.)

More later.....

Oh, cool data--so cool I wonder how much we can believe it.

See: http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-openoffice-market-shares.html

by oulipo (noreply@blogger.com) at February 06, 2010 06:54 AM CET

February 05, 2010

GullFOSS : New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m71) available

Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m71 is available for download.

DEV300 is the development codeline for the upcoming OOo 3.x releases.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following download page:
http://download.openoffice.org/next

Release Notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/DEV300_m71_snapshot.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/DEV300_m71_md5sums.txt

by Marcus Lange at February 05, 2010 08:52 AM CET

February 04, 2010

John McCreesh : 3 weeks in Coventry

One of the evil tricks we used to play as kids was “sending someone to Coventry” – refusing to speak to them – a juvenile form of solitary confinement. Since moving house three weeks ago, I have been without broadband, and feel as if I have been “sent to Coventry” as far as taking part in OpenOffice.org activities is concerned. The Oracle / Sun acquisition has gone through and I haven’t seen a single one of the key webcasts … various release candidates have been issued and superceded and I haven’t been able to download one of them … I’m in a vacuum!

So today I find myself in a hotel in Hamburg enjoying free wifi access, after a day in a real (not just virtual) Community Council meeting. More on that tomorrow (it’s past my bedtime now ) but I would just like to pay tribute to the large number of OpenOffice.org volunteers who do not have broadband access at all, but who pay such a vital part in the Community. How they manage to do localisations, QA new releases, man support forums etc without broadband – I just can’t imagine it. You are amazing – I salute you!

by John at February 04, 2010 09:41 PM CET

GullFOSS : New: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 5 (build OOO320_m12) available

OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 5 is now available on the download website.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker:

Download website:
http://download.openoffice.org/all_rc.html

Release notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/3.2.0rc5.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/3.2.0rc5_md5sums.txt

by Marcus Lange at February 04, 2010 12:16 PM CET

Italo Vignoli : OpenOffice Tops 21% Market Share In Germany

by italovignoli at February 04, 2010 12:16 AM CET

Italo Vignoli : Study: > 21% of German PCs run OpenOffice

by italovignoli at February 04, 2010 12:16 AM CET

February 03, 2010

Italo Vignoli : Multisave: uno strumento, tre formati

by italovignoli at February 03, 2010 11:56 PM CET

Italo Vignoli : Migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org or StarOffice 9 (Developer.com)

by italovignoli at February 03, 2010 12:52 AM CET

Italo Vignoli : Oracle will boost MySQL, release Cloud Office suite (CIO)

by italovignoli at February 03, 2010 12:51 AM CET

Italo Vignoli : Oracle looks to reassure free software movement (iTNews)