Category: Open Source

Overcoming the Top 5 Objections to Open-Source Adoption

There are significant objections to overcome before open-source software can be broadly adopted across an enterprise. These issues aren’t insurmountable, but they need to be adequately addressed before open-source can go head to head with proprietary software. Let’s explore the major objections: Support Availability Functional Limitations Software License Terms Rapid Software Release Cycles Package Roadmaps […]

Ubuntu Tries a New Look — Unity

Canonical deserves a lot of credit for releasing Ubuntu 11.04 with the Unity desktop interface. For Linux to be more successful on the desktop, it needs a new look. The Gnome and KDE desktops have dominated Linux for years — many years. They are are old and dated. Even recent revamps to both desktops have […]

Android Fragmentation Is Real and Damaging

There’s a lot of talk about Android fragmentation. Google decided to restrict access to the Honeycomb (Android 3.0) source code thus adding fuel to the discussion. Is fragmentation really a problem or could it actually benefit Google? What is fragmentation? Software fragmentation occurs when multiple parties take software source code, customize it as they like, […]

Mozilla Wants to Be Agile. Can They Do It?

The Mozilla Foundation is exploring moving from a long, browser development cycle to a much shorter one. If you’ve followed the life cycle of the original Mozilla browser which evolved into Firefox you know that the release cycles have been unbearably long at times. For example, Firefox 4.0 has been in development for over a […]

Apple’s App Store Is an Old Concept

Apple takes all the credit for inventing the concept of an “app store”. They even want to copyright the name. Copyright aside, Apple did not invent the concept, the open source community did — over a decade ago. Linux distributions (aka distros) use the concept of ‘packages’. A package can contain any software that runs […]

LibreOffice Is an Important Open-Source Project

When Oracle bought Sun Microsystems they acquired the rights to OpenOffice, an open source equivalent to Microsoft Office. Sadly, Oracle is not known for its openness or contributions to open source projects. It began to look like OpenOffice would become OracleOffice. Thankfully, some of the OpenOffice contributors decided to fork the code and create LibreOffice. […]