OStatic

I previously introduced you to BitNami, which is doing an excellent job of packaging popular open-source applications for turnkey installation. They've not been idle in the past few months. In addition to adding ever more applications to install, they've now taken the next step and modularized the process.

Most people think software when they hear open source - but there are plenty of other things using open source principles to distribute their intellectual property. We've covered some of these: the OpenMoko phone, the Open Graphics Project, VIA's OpenNote, and even the RepRap self-duplicating machine. But they're just the tip of the iceberg. Here are five more projects that show how healthy open source is beyond the software arena.

I've seen a certain amount of gloating recently in the open source press about a memo from Bill Gates that the Seattle PI recently dug up. You know the one, probably: Bill tries to install some software from the net, and ends up flaming his people for a couple of pages with choice bits like The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. But so what?

Every once in a while you run across an open source project that has the potential to make a lot of lives easier - without making anyone richer. Open source is a good fit for this sort of altruistic project: giving stuff away and reaching out in practical ways just seem to go well together. One such project is WebAnywhere, a new take on the speech-enabled (and thus accessible to people with limited or no sight) browser.

There's an uneasy relationship between Linux and some of the bits that make it work on many computers - closed-source kernel modules. These modules - NVidia video card drivers are the most notorious example - add substantial, and sometimes critical, functionality to Linux without themselves being open source. Now a group of kernel developers are on the record with their opposition to these modules.

As we've written before, the use of the Subversion source code management system is slowly declining in the open source community, as new alternative git gains ever more attention. But that doesn't mean the Subversion folks have given up - far from it. In fact, they recently released version 1.5, chock-full of new features on both client and server.

As virtualization technology becomes more pervasive and starts to make its way into the operating system, it seems that more and more vendors want to get their slice of this particular pie. Now Linux vendor Red Hat has joined the fray, announcing its own embedded hypervisor at its annual user conference.

Social news site reddit has joined the ranks of open source projects today, releasing nearly all of its source code on a new developers' site. Reddit isn't the largest of the social news sites, but thanks to its structure (with strong coverage of software news) it has a strong following of software developers.

Via the Lawrence Journal-World and a short piece on the project's web site comes the news that Django now has its own non-profit foundation to oversee future development. Details about the Django Software Foundation's plans are sketchy so far, but they intend to engage in the traditional support and promotion activities. The Foundation is now the owner of the IP inherent in Django as well.

Today's official release of Firefox 3 was widely anticipated. The Mozilla folks spent considerable time promoting Download Day - we covered it, as well as a host of other outlets up to and including Time magazine. Unfortunately, someone apparently didn't do enough load planning: as of right now, around an hour after the software was released, all of the official download sites seem to be down from sheer overload.