Open Source Action (and more): 2010/06

2010-06-15

ACTA restricts developing economies, India tells WTO • The Register

The effects of ACTA are not limited to developed countries; indeed, the point of something like the WTO and thus of ACTA is precisely to put into play an encompassing map for developing countries now and in the future. And this affects not just the generics (meds) described in the Reg article but all things having to do with local circumstances.

2010-06-11

Ec comes out for open source - The Inquirer

Kroes: "I am still a big fan of open standards. I believe in openness, and I believe in practising what one preaches," she said. "Some observers think 'open standards' is a tainted term that should not to be used in the absence of a generally recognised definition. Whatever the labels, what matters is the substance. I would urge all stakeholders to focus on the content of the package rather than the wrapping."

The question is: why is not Canada or other North American polities voicing similar positions?

2010-06-08

Malta: Open source preferred - The H Open Source: News and Features

The state of Foss in Malta has always been interesting and often progressive, and OOo numbers among its staunchest supporters Maltese activists. We owe them a thanks, to be sure, and I also look forward to seeing what more can be done.

2010-06-05

CBC News - Technology & Science - Quebec broke law in buying Microsoft software

The question is not really, Why is Québec in the lead here? The socio-political-economic dynamic that is Québec mandates an independence that other Canadian provinces seem unable to adopt. I think of Ontario, which has, as far as I can tell, dithered about Foss and OpenOffice.org and has, repeatedly, introduced points that are simply immaterial and at best distracting.

Meanwhile, the provinces suffer the heavy penalty exacted by their systematic refusal to consider Foss; and the residents suffer even more. All this at a time when the economics should demand economic sense and foresight, not legacy nonsense.

2010-06-04

OpenOffice 3.2.1 fixes bugs, updates logo - The H Open Source: News and Features

Of course this is a rather recondite way for me to inform the interested of the latest stable release.... but I also like H-Online. In my own case, I run OOo 3.3 (yes, that's right) on Mac OS X. Latest build courtesy of Nakata-san and Good-Day hosting, is M79. And I then lard the meat with lots of extensions. I confess I love downloading extensions and playing with them---same with my Firefox, Thunderbird, Chrome, and look forward, of course, for Safari's adoption of the model.

One thing I'm involved in is the ODF: I'm a member of the two public advocacy TCs there, the Adoption and OIC (interoperability) committees, and strive there to promote ODF among developers. The interesting there is cultivating such a developer cadre: the group so interested would not be quite the same as a classic developer. What's more, it's position within the Foss firmament is shaded, even more so than the usual. But the technology is not difficult and the payoff, especially now, as OOo gains tens of millions of users monthly (we have more than 350M downloads, at the least), there is more of an apparent market.

Indeed, the market for ODF implementations is huge. ODF is a file format, by the way; it cannot really exist as anything useful independent of the implementation which makes it usable and thus useful. OOo is an implementation, and in fact it is the best one.

Others are to a degree based on the OOo technology. But their degree of departure from the basic code does affect their fluid usage of extensions and the like.

Open Source Action (and more)