Top 10 Free Software Daily stories this week!

Top 10 Free Software Daily stories this week!


Mon, 2008-06-09 06:15 -- admin

You get the best free software news at FSDaily... because YOU decide what's important. Here are the top 10 FSDaily stories from the last week as voted by the members. Don't like 'em? Think something's missing? Want to know more? Head to FSDaily and get voting!

Top 10 stories:

  1. Countries Line Up Against OOXML as Global Standard --Venezuela became the latest in a string of countries to appeal the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as an international standard. The format was approved in an international vote after a fast-track process that several participating countries say was flawed. Read more...

  2. KDE 4.1 Beta 1 for Hardy Heron Now Available --You now have the chance to test out KDE 4.1 Beta 1 in Kubuntu and Ubuntu Hardy Heron. To top it off KDE 4 PIM packages that contain applications such as Kontact, KMail, KOrganizer, and Akregator are also included. Read more...

  3. Xen is (Almost) Microsoft --Xen seems to be moving further and further in Microsoft's direction, unsurprisingly. Read more...

  4. Dr. Phatak speaks...and the world learns --Dr. Phatak's anguish and his vigorous defense of IIT Bombay reminds all of us that none of our freedoms were easily won, and that if we do not protect them, they may be easily lost or traded for small money that will cost us dearly in the long run. Read more...

  5. Finally, My open letter on OOXML happenings in India --With reference to the recent happenings in connection with the ISO standardization process of OOXML, actions by or on behalf of Microsoft have caused me deep pain and hurt. Apart from the personal anguish, these actions have tarnished the name of my Institute along with that of several other organizations represented on our committee. Read more...

  6. Fedora Forbids Moonlight --Fedora considers Moonlight to be too much of a risk to Fedora. Read more...

  7. Manage Ogg audio streams with OGMtools --When I make videos, I almost always use Ogg to encode the audio. Storing the audio in Ogg saves space on my machine without sacrificing quality. However, I invariably need to loop, concatenate, or change the audio in some way, which can be difficult. For many of these tasks I turn to the OGMtools suite to make the process easier. Read more...

  8. Bringing Free Software Values Back: Please Welcome Equitable Open Source --A new project in the making will keep track of moochers and fakers on the face of it. Read more...

  9. Do Open Source Robots Dream of Electric Sheep? --We don't yet have robots quite as advanced as Star Wars' C3PO or some of the robots seen in the sci-fi flick Blade Runner, but did you know that there is an open source effort underway to produce them? Well, sort of. RobotCub is a site that houses an open source software repository and many other resources that open source developers are using to advance a humanoid baby robot, dubbed iCub. Read more...

  10. MS (Mark Shuttleworth) Buys Codecs from MS (Microsoft) --The mobile version of Ubuntu appears to be passing money to Microsoft, which has an effect on redistribution rights as well. Read more...

Thanks to lozz, JRepin, komrad, pravi, electronichouse, and bobamarocks for these stories!

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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.

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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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