Open Source Today

Two disparate charities have successfully implemented open source software, saving money and creating happier users in the process. Jane Dudman looks at how open source can give smaller organisations greater control at minimum expense

Posted in Adoption | No Comments »

Having the latest computer technology is great. But what e-government users from the public sector as well as citizens really want is software interoperability. Unfortunately IT managers still only pay lip service to such interoperability, concludes a European project assessing today’s open-source movement. So reads the lead paragraph of an ...

Posted in Adoption | No Comments »

When Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985, it was organised around a radical idea: software should be free, not just as in free of charge, but free as in the concept of liberty. During the next 20 years, this idea turned out to be not just ...

Posted in Adoption | No Comments »

Some of the most puzzling aspects of open source software – that is, software for which there is no licensing fee charged to the user by the creators – are those related not to the technologies but rather to the underlying economics involved. I've written before about some of the ...

Posted in Adoption | No Comments »

Parvus will demonstrate a new Linux-ready in-vehicle computer on June 13, at the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Rail Conference in New York City. The DuraCOR 1100 is a rugged, Intel Celeron-based "vehicle logic unit" (VLU) that targets "information-level applications" in road and rail transit vehicles.

Posted in Applications | No Comments »

Software companies, big and small, have failed to deliver on the promise to make life easier for users, said the 21-year-old inventor of the Firefox Internet browser during a speech today at the City Club of Cleveland. Blake Ross, who draped his suit coat over a nearby chair and sported an ...

Posted in Applications | No Comments »

Virtual private networks (VPN) let remote users connect back to corporate networks over encrypted links. Many VPNs are built with proprietary technology and can be tricky and expensive to set up. For a small business or an individual who needs a simple way to securely access remote networks, setting up ...

Posted in Applications | No Comments »

For years, the Web browser was a technology that seemed frozen in time. While the Web itself exploded with new types of content and virtual communities, the way users accessed that material changed hardly at all from 1997 to 2004 (not coincidentally, the years when Microsoft's Internet Explorer had a ...

Posted in Applications | No Comments »

AOL was set to announce on Monday that it is opening up its AIM Software Development Kit to Linux, Mac OS X and Pocket PC developers. In addition, the company is providing the ability for developers to build customized plug-ins and other software that work with AOL's location-based services, PC-to-PC ...

Posted in Applications | No Comments »

Open-source VoIP PBXes (Private Branch Exchanges) offer small to medium-sized enterprises a cost-effective entry point into deploying a VoIP PBX within their enterprise. Such PBXes could especially be an attractive option if you don’t want to outsource your VoIP PBX to a third-party provider. Open-source PBXes such as Asterisk 1.2.7.1 (www.asterisk.org), ...

Posted in Adoption | No Comments »