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Wednesday, March 08, 20061141836300
Free, Open Source, and Microsoft
I used free and open source software in my thesis and my blog. Currently I heavily use the Firefox web browser and OpenOffice.org office suite. My post on the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, which was picked up by such blogs as Freakonomics and Live from the FDNF, also used Inkscape and OpenClipart. However, I also use the kinda open source Paint.net, co-developed with Microsoft, as well as the non-free non-open Microsoft Windows XP operating system.
Therefore, a collection of Slashdot stories as particularly interesting to me...
About the same time that Microsoft said OpenOffice was ten years behind, a collection of organizations called the OpenDocument Foundation Alliance began to education government about the benefit of open document formats (such as those provided by OOo). Consortium Standards Blog reports that one of the members of the ODF Alliance is IBM, which also will not upgrade to the next version of Windows.
Free and open source software allow increased productivity, by removing a costly "barrier to entry" into business. It empowers individuals to do more, just as blogs do.
Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are great products, but they keep too many out of our interconnected world. Let's hope they are replaced soon by free and open source alternatives.
10:45 Posted by Dan tdaxp in Software | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this
Comments
Wow, now that is some link-whoring!
Posted by: aaron | Wednesday, March 08, 2006
at least you could have linked groundrocket in the post... somewhere
Posted by: peoples's dan | Wednesday, March 08, 2006
People's Dan,
Well, I try to only link to site's that are up more than, you know, one day a month ;-) [1]
PS: Your site is down [2] -- but you're the trusty one. Tech problems?
[1] http://aaron.groundrocket.org/
[2] http://daniverson.com/
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | Thursday, March 09, 2006
Will you use Live Clipboard licensed through Creative Commons? It's a big step for them, but not without reason of course (http://microsoft.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/08/ray-ozzie-introduces-live-clipboard-concept/ -- be sure to read the first comment). I think I have a contact in India that can get you Simputer if you want to replace your Wintel machine...
Posted by: Matt | Thursday, March 09, 2006
Matt,
At the risk of revealing myself to be a geek....
I am much closer in philosophy to Open Source than Free Software. OpenSource software has organizational and production structures that works well. OpenSource works by "out Microsofting Microsoft," doing pretty good work quickly, and forces MS into an interesting position.
Microsoft is forced to compete by rapid innovation (see all the gizmos in the new Office, the new IE coming out, even LiveClipboard) and opensource eats MS's old market of "it's cheap/it works/it's standard" software.
I use closed source software when it works. The "killer app" that keeps me on XP is the iPod/iTunes combo, while Google's web services don't share their code with others.
So I'd use liveclipboard. if it works well in the domain I use it (web => blogspirit, firefox, desktop => openoffice). If not, I won't.
Thank you very much for the offer of the simputer. However, the overworked grad student in me must decline, and the underused MA/CS in me can install linux on his own :-)
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | Sunday, March 12, 2006