Top 10 Free Software Daily stories this week!

Top 10 Free Software Daily stories this week!


Sun, 2008-01-13 04:25 -- 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. Don't Upgrade to Vista, UK Government Agency Tells Schools --A UK government agency has advised schools to avoid upgrading to Microsoft's Vista and Office 2007 software, saying that upgrade costs would not be offset by "appropriate benefit." It also recommends that open-source alternatives be explored. Read more...

  2. TAT&T and Other ISPs May Be Getting Ready to Filter --"The New York Times is reporting that NBC, Microsoft, AT&T, digital filtering companies, and other assorted spooks were all abuzz at the Consumer Electronics Show over the prospects for spying on and preventing -- oops, I mean "filtering" -- of Internet content at the network level, as demanded by the RIAA, MPAA, and, well, you know the drill." -- VIA Lauren Weinstein: Read more...

  3. You can support software freedom in 2008! --Dear free software supporter, At the 2007 annual Associate Members meeting held in March at MIT in Cambridge, the FSF board and staff gathered with members from around the world to discuss our activities and the tremendous successes we have had together in the past year. Read more...

  4. DRM Officially Dead: Last Major Label Sony BMG Plans to Finally Drop DRM --It's over. The last major label to hold out on selling DRM-free MP3s, Sony BMG, is "finalizing plans" to sell music not locked down with DRM. Read more...

  5. Countries adopting ODF (OpenDocument Format) Annual Report and Future Outlook --The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance) is an organization of governments, academic institutions, associations and industry dedicated to educating policy makers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of ODF. Launched in March 2006, the ODF Alliance now has over 480 member organizations in 53 countries. Read more...

  6. Microsoft Keeps Its Enemy Closer (and Away from GNU/Linux) --"We occasionally discuss Microsoft’s very clear plan to ’steal’ free software projects from GNU/Linux and bring them over to Windows. The OSI ‘invasion’ was merely a first step. At the moment, Microsoft is trying to grab Apache..." Read more...

  7. Negroponte turns up the heat on Intel --Intel has denied claims made by One Laptop per Child that it broke a "non-disparagement" agreement and hit back at suggestions that it did not even contribute "a single line of code" to the project. Read more...

  8. Shuttle to release sub-$200 Linux box --One of the potentially biggest announcements at CES will probably go unnoticed by most, a Linux box from Shuttle. Get ready for a low priced machine from a big name, a first that I am aware of. Read more...

  9. Flipping the Linux switch: 5 tips every new Linux user should know --Linux is a powerful operating system, but chances are it's a very different operating system than any you've used before. The dizzying number of choices in distributions alone is enough to make your head spin, but it also means there's something out there that really suits your computing style. Read more...

  10. TOLPC's SimCity released as Micropolis --EA released SimCity under the GPL3, so it could be included in OLPC's XO. Read more...

Thanks to estherschindler, can.axis, asterisk, C733tus, bridget, bluecheese and ubodup 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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