Patents are once again in the focus, courtesy Apple’s suit on HTC. There is a lot of talk about right and wrong, and this time even the Apple fans seem to dislike Apple’s step. I think John Gruber has it right when he says that ,this is not about patents, but about poaching the idea – the grand revolution of the mobile phone. [Continue]
Countries which recommend open source software are to go under scanner for being anti-capitalist. Why? Because this recommendation creates a bias against the proprietary non-open source companies. [Continue]
Though Android is an open source platform, Google adds its proprietary applications when it is rolled out. This is where some of the open source contributors who wanted to provide modified distributions are facing hurdles. So a new alliance has been put together – Open Android Alliance – with an aim to replace all the proprietary applications with open source equivalents. [Continue]
I am glad that the mainstream media says Open source software can save India $2 bn. The figure is not surprising! In fact it is an insufficient representation of benefits of using open source, especially the intangible ones that control the success of software adoption. [Continue]
Microsoft has established CodePlex foundation – a non-profit foundation to promote open source. Unlike the previous open source attempts, this time Microsoft has explicitly talked about collaboration with other open source foundations and communities. I see this as first step by Microsoft to acknowledge good Windows open source work happening outside Microsoft. [Continue]
As a fresh software engineer, I had always wished if we could do away with software licensing altogether. It was one way for me, as a software programmer, to avoid knowing and understanding the legal binding. The programming language is a lot better than the legal one any given day! [Continue]
There is more than new versions and acquisitions happening in the MySQL world. A vendor-neutral consortium, Open Database Alliance, has been formed to become a hub for all activity related to MySQL. The open source community has been anxious about future of MySQL since Oracle’s aquisition of Sun was announced. [Continue]
The Oracle-Sun deal seems to be the new weapon in the hands of advocates of proprietary software. It was recently used in a presentation at a friend’s company, to prove that even the open source software was prone to lock-ins. The logic was that, just like proprietary products, MySQL’s future was in danger because of its company. [Continue]
Oracle buying Sun Microsystems is already stale news. However, this merger news will keep ringing for a while. It is not only products that are changing hands here, they are huge and deep ecosystems which have impacted most of the programming world, across products, corporates and competitions. [Continue]
Microsoft has open sourced the Common Compiler Infrastructure (CCI) via CCI: Metadata and CCI: Code and AST components. Like other Microsoft’s open source entries, these two are offered under the Microsoft Public License. The metadata and code components together can write CLR assemblies and debug (PDB) files. [Continue]