FSM Newsletter 10 September 2007

FSM Newsletter 10 September 2007


Sun, 2007-09-09 21:42 -- admin

Hello everybody, and welcome once again to the fortnightly newsletter of Free Software Magazine: keeping you well informed about the realm of free software... AND the top 10 FSDaily announcements for this week! Happy reading!

General announcements

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Top ten Free Software Daily stories this week

  1. ISO confirms negative voting on Open XML - It is final! ISO confirms the voting on Open XML. No open standard yet for Microsoft. Read more...

  2. ISO Will Announce on Tuesday that OOXML Approval has Failed - With the polls now closed and the early results in (some public, some not)... Read more...

  3. FSFE To Launch Free Software in Education Program for Teachers - A milestone for education on Free Software and Open Standards has been reached. Read more...

  4. Libregamewiki - The Free Software Game Wiki - The Libregamewiki is a new encyclopedia-wiki for free software games. Read more...

  5. ODF vs. OOXML: Microsoft Has Mastered the Art of Unfair Play - There is no doubt that the stakes in the Open Document Format (ODF) vs. Open XML standardization process are high. Read more...

  6. WGA - chained to the oar of a sinking ship (cartoon) - A funny cartoon about the WGA servers going down and causing XP and Vista users to be treated as pirates. Read more...

  7. The Linux Vault, "The Linux Wikipedia" - The Linux Vault is a new wiki project founded with the mission of creating a centralized GNU/Linux information website. Read more...

  8. AMD opens up to Linux with ATI - AMD just announced that its upcoming Catalyst 7.9 drivers for Linux will not only finally provide support to HD 2000 series on the OS, but it is also claimed to host the most significant series of enhancements ever for Linux users. Read more...

  9. Linux Goes Native in Bhutan - Bhutan has come up with an operating system called the "Dzongkha Debain Linux," an updated version of the Dzongka Linux developed in June 2006. Read more...

  10. Conky: highly configurable system monitor for X - Conky is one of my favorite applications for all of my Linux distros. Read more...

Thanks to Kletskous, can.axis, tony, kiba, greengrass, knithx, waleed.saud, and extra for these stories!

Latest content

Stretching your instant messaging wings with Pidgin - How to connect to virtually any instant messenger network using Pidgin. By Andrew Min. Read more...

How to take screenshots with Scrot - Screenshots. Where would the internet be without them? By Gary Richmond. Read more...

No budget learning with free software - The Guus Kieft School. By Alan Berg. Read more...

Something rotten in the State of Sweden - This entire OOXML campaign stinks! By Laurie Langham. Read more...

Delve deep into drives - I recently read a doctorate's thesis on file system robustness by Vijayan Prabhakaran from the University of Wisconsin. By Mitch Meyran. Read more...

SPIP: Content management for publishers and writers - A powerful tool to manage online publications. By Dmitri Popov. Read more...

No news, but no snooze - Two things piqued my interest recently. By Steven Goodwin. Read more...

Tips and Tricks - This is a collection of tips&tricks written by Gary Richmond and Andrew Min. Read more...

Reminders

Comments

Your comments on articles, issues, and blog entries are very welcome. They provide other readers with insightful suggestions, further information, and the feeling that they are not alone. They also provide our authors with the feeling that they are being heard.

Avatars

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Invite a friend

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Subscriptions

Ever wanted to follow that story, or blogger, or be informed when a change appears to some content that you want to keep up with? Now you can. Using our new "Subscribe" feature, you can receive an email update every time a blog or page is updated or when a comment is added, so you can keep up with all the latest changes. You can manage your subscriptions by logging in and going here.

Donate

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Contacting us

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Thanks

Thank you for subscribing to Free Software Magazine. You are a part of a growing community who help to raise the awareness of, and educate new users in, the joys of free software. Without you we would not have this community and without you we would not have a magazine. Happy reading!

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Author information

admin's picture

Most forwarded

Interview with Dave Mohyla, of DTIDATA

Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.

TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.

Anybody up to writing good directory software?

Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.

Is better education the key to finding better software?

I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.

Most emailed

Free Open Document label templates

If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels

Creating a user-centric site in Drupal

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.

Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!

So, why, why do people and companies develop free software?

More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.

When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.

Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?

Fun articles

Santa Claus - the most successful open source project

It dawned on me the other day, as I was shopping for the dozens of gifts it seems I have to buy every December, that Santa Claus is the most successful open source project in history. (Bridget @ Illiterarty would agree with that). Santa Claus is essentially a marketing development that is embodied by everyone who stuffs a sock, gives a gift, hosts a dinner or wishes Merry Christmas over the holiday season.

Most emailed

Editorial

When I first started thinking about Free Software Magazine, I was feeling enthusiastic about the dream. I had Dave, Gianluca, and Alan willing to help me, I had established members of the free software community willing to help me out, I had writers volunteering their time and energy for free, and I had a generous offer from OpenHosting for servers, all before I'd proved myself. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could make this work.

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