Linux in the 1920's
Warning, my sense of humor follows. From the experimental labs at Google an interesting timeline of Linux.
And we thought Linus was a lot younger than this.
« September 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
October 24, 2007
October 18, 2007
Flex Builder on Linux. Post Max
October 16, 2007
What's the one open source conference you can't miss?
So a simple question?
To you, what's the most important open source conference around? And why?
Is it OSCON, GOSCON, Linuxworld, OSBC, OLS? or does it no longer matter (shades of Uniforum, and the old X11 conference in the 80's)?
What is a word? and what's it to you?
Again, Jay of The Mows has succinctly expressed an issue in the open world of source and standards.
And there are some real issues here.
I was reading Consortiuminfo.org (as I always do when it updates). Andy Updegrove, who kept many of us informed on the machinations with OOXML, posted "Words, Standards and Torture: What's in a Name", which I highly recommend you read. No, it's not about how standards meetings are torture, but it is about how words are the tools we use to define standards. And sometimes those words mean different things to us all. Or get redefined. Or as best put by Indigo Montoya in "The Princess Bride"; " "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means." Too often we honestly or deliberately choose to redefine meanings of words, like open or free.
Now, I have my opinions, and so do thousands (millions?) of others. We hear high visibility types like Richard Stallman talk about open versus free. We hear Jim Zemlin discuss the multidimensional intertwinings of open and free. And you know what? It only means what you think it means.
Words do have power. They have the power you give them (or society gives them, in the form of laws or cultural pressures). I favor open source, and it should be my freedom to choose such. Yes, open source doesn't mean necessarily free (as in beer) nor necessarily free (as in speech), but I do expect to be free to make up my own mind.
To me, free is the ability to implement what I want when I want. (and yes, anarchy is the only form of government that works the way it was designed... extra credit to the first person identifying the source of that paraphrase). To me, my freedom should not impinge on yours, but yours shouldn't impinge on mine. I don't like people saying " Ooo, your's is cool, give it to me". I do like saying "Here, try this".
Open standards should be about the freedom to implement. It shouldn't be about me giving you my implementation for free. While that can lead us into the messy area of patents, copyrights, the new "hate phrase" of intellectual property, I should be able to build to a truly open standard without impact.
There should be no winners or losers in the openness game. Not knowing the meaning isn't a path to winning.
Asking questions until we reach a mutual, freely derived agreement is winning for both sides.
October 04, 2007
Flex your Linux!
As you should know by now, Adobe released the Flex SDK off to open source. And now, you can get the Flex Builder on Linux.
Available on labs , this is the first release (Public Alpha) of a tool to let you build apps with Flex on and for Linux. It's not the full blown Flex Builder (yet) but we wanted to let you get an early look so you can tell us what you think and what you want.
So go get it, drop by the forums, and tell us what you think.
Good standards
As a follow up to the document authoring wars (reminiscent of the old emacs versus vi battles), I thought it worth pointing out the FII award to Microsoft for their efforts on behalf of the "no ooxml efforts".
The key phrase for an open standard really is: "Good standards just don't need that kind of pressure. "
As some of you know, Adobe presented PDF for consideration as a ISO specification during the last year (see here, and here). Or check out Jim King's blog for a lot deeper view.
Now, the PDF specification has been available since 1993. It's gone through a number of updates, with new versions released, also all freely available. The ISO DIS for PDF, based on Adobe PDF 1.7 and errata, is a well understood and tested specification, with lots of independent implementations (including open source ones) and hundreds of millions of existent, compliant files.
The Adobe PDF 1.7 reference is a good specification. The ISO 32000 DIS for PDF is a good standard. It's certainly open to review, it's absolutely certain that other people will have ideas for future versions of the standard. And if any national body would like us to clear up anything, just ask. We're willing to answer questions, discuss views, clarify positions.
But we won't be "in your face" to the national bodies.
After all, it's a good standard.
It can stand on its own.