The BBC has an article and an interview extolling the virtues of the Free and Open Source Alternative Christian Einfeldt of the Digital Tipping Point calls it a mini tipping point in itself.

 

From the article:

...and we beat them to it by three years :-)

We started teaching a course called "managing Open Source" offered both in the undergraduate and graduate programs as a MIS elective a good three years ago. Here's a link to the first announcement.

From the article:

"It's about time that United States elite academic institutions finally got around to not only using open-source software, but also teaching it. In the April 2008 edition of Harvard Business Review, Harvard gives its MBA students a taste of the decision facing every company that leverages technology as part of its business (namely, everyone):

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Yes, its not over as yet. Not by a long shot. What is even more painful is the politics behind the approval of a standard that will benefit -one- company. Slashdot has its usual coverage, and so does Groklaw. Requisite grain of salt and other garnishes suggested. The following is a list of items (with links, except for #10) on the possible manipulations of the ISO voting and approval process. If you don't vote, its counted as a Yes (go Poland!), if you vote No, then your vote gets counted as a Yes (speak up, Cuba!), and other fun voting semantics. In true computing fashion, the list begins at zero. I say, vote with your file formats! Here's the list as seen on Slashdot:

I recently came across OpenNMS, a network management system, similar to Nagios. Their site is at http://www.opennms.org/index.php/Main_Page with a demo site that shows you how it works. From their web site:

OpenNMS is the world's first enterprise grade network management platform developed under the open source model. It consists of a community supported open-source project as well as a commercial services, training, and support organization.

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As seen on Slashdot a few minutes ago:

"The multiplatform, multilingual office suite OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.4. New features include 5 PDF export enhancements, text to columns in Calc, rectangular selection in Writer, bug fixes, performance improvements, improvements supporting the growing library of extensions such as 3D OpenGL transitions in Impress, and much more. Downloads are available either direct or P2P. In September, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will add PDF import, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, and ODF 1.2."

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The second OLPC meet at SF State was interesting. We now have a momentum that is reassuring. Initially I was not sure about attendance. Many people tend to lose interest in their XO laptops after two to three weeks. However, we had a little over 20 people who attended the get-together.

 

We managed to update some XOs to build 656, which is labeled Ship2.2. This build is considered stable and is being pushed by OLPC automatically in batches to different laptops (See item # 9 at http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news/2008-February/000098.html). You can either wait for the push from OLPC or ask one of us to help you update it. For instructions, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Update_paths . Also see helpful instructions from Doug Jones at http://frombob.to/XO/

Long time FOSS activist, retired president of the Apache Software Foundation and co-founder of CollabNet, Brian Behlendorf has taken off to Davos once again. His last visit was in 2006 at the World Economic Forum. He posts about his days at the meeting. Here are some excerpts:

Here's a town that's essentially stuck in Lake Tahoe in the 70's, turned upside down once a year by a massive operation resembling a temporary convening of the UN. It's like the opposite of Burning Man - where once a year a barren dry lake bed two-hours' drive from Reno is turned into a Rorschach-like fantasyland. Instead of a dry lake bed, we have a cozy ski hamlet; instead of trying desperately to stay hydrated, you try desperately to stay warm and upright while skating the road ice between hotels and sessions; and instead of a ban on commercial activity (except the sale of ice and coffee at Center Camp), you have the biggest industrialists in the world coming to proclaim both the triumph of and the end of traditional capitalism, and the coffee, wine, and champagne are free.

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Calling all San Francisco Bay Area OLPC enthusiasts! If you have an XO laptop, or are just interested in seeing how they work, come on down to SF State campus for a get together on Feb 9, 2008. If you have an XO or two (or ten), bring them! If not, bring your enthusiasm.

What: OLPC meet at San Francisco State University

Why: Curiosity, strength in numbers, plain fun! Build a mesh network, share activities, pictures, measure distances with acoustic tape measure!

When: Saturday, February 9, 2008 from 10am to 2pm

A long time ago in a far away land there was Jabber. In the same era in a strange land (SF State) we installed Jabber and had fun with it. This was a time when PDAs ruled and Handspring was king. Remember that time? It was a long time ago indeed.

I had a Handspring that had a modem powered by two AAA batteries. I was tinkering with messaging protocols, but the problem with most IM protocols was that they were proprietary, so there were no apps for Handspring. That led me to Jabber. First, I signed up for an account on their server and got the IM going on two different computers. It was fun to watch the XML stream going between the two ends. Next, I downloaded the code and got it running on a server at home. I remember that just like everything else back then, there were several attempts at the "three steps to nirvana": ./configure, make, make install

OLPIC - One Laptop per Indian Child. Has a nice ring to it

In the early days of the OLPC proposal, the Human Resources and Development Ministry in India had declined participation in the OLPC project. Their reasons were related to suspect pedagogy, lack of interest, and appropriate use of funds. Here's an excerpt from an article on the Register: