OStatic

A letter and petition from well-known open source activist Bruce Perens raises questions about how the open source world is governed, and how the decade-long movement can keep potentially hostile forces from changing its direction. Open source software has existed for many years. But we have only had a common definition and term for 10 years. We know this, because it was only in April 1998 that publisher Tim O'Reilly hosted a summit for the authors of several well-known software packages -- including GNU founder Richard Stallman, Perl author Larry Wall, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and Python author Guido van Rossum.

ZDNet U.K. is reporting that efforts to increase the adoption of open source software are being derailed by the efforts of a loud minority who have made personal attacks on individuals.....Appcelerator, a player in open source rich Internet application (RIA) development, today announced the launch of its new developer community, the Appcelerator Developer Network.....Is Google playing politics with open source?...Linux.com covers clients for three top P2P networks.....

Google is opening part of its Google Docs suite and introducing a new Visualization API, so that users can make use of third party gadgets and developers can customize applications. Anyone can write a gadget via a Google API, and publish gadgets to an iGoogle page or other web page.

You can select data or text in an application, and make a gadget that incorporates it. Change the underlying data, and the gadget updates. The Visualization API lets developers share apps based on structured data. See Google's post and Webworkerdaily.com's story.

Late last month Microsoft received a tentative slap in the face when the ISO\IEC didnﾒt approve Microsoftﾒs OOXML (Open Office XML) format as an ISO standard. This came as a bit of a surprise to industry analysts as Microsoft has been lobbying hard to get its Office file format approved.

Late last year the head of the working group handling Microsoftﾒs application at the ISO accused the company of stacking his group and interfering in ISO business.

At the AjaxWorld conference, companies are demonstrating web applications to run on the iPhone, and open source tools for developing them.....

Linux and open source applications are gaining increasing traction among Brazilian companies, according to CRN Brazil.....

The WirelessMoves blog has an interesting discussion and a link to a podcast from Ari Jaaksi, Nokia's open source guru.....

There have been several recent examples of convergence between the telecom industry and the open source world, as we documented in a recent post. Today, Volantis Systems, which provides mobile content delivery software, is out with an interesting development: an open source version of its Mobility Server application, released under the GNU Public License, version three. The code being opened was under development for seven years according to company officials, and is available now. It reaches out to thousands of mobile device types.

The Software Freedom Law Center just announced its fourth victory over a software company that incorporated GPL-licensed software in its proprietary product. What happens when the SFLC sues a software company, and how can proprietary software vendors best work with the open-source world? The answer depends, as always, on the license.

Fellow OStatic blogger Joe Brockmeier took an insightful look yesterday at why open source is growing at an amazing pace. He posits that the open source model allows agile development by disperse groups of people that can build on the already massive foundation of open source libraries and applications. While I agree that open source projects are springing up in record numbers, I hope it also remains a community that can sustain itself and ultimately deliver what it promises.

One of the biggest problems in delivering open source software solutions comes after you've made an application available. How do you support it? Support is a huge cost center for commercial software companies that provide it, and is often prohibitive for open source developers. That leaves end users figuring out how to support themselves.

Could automated software support solutions help? The jury's still out, but I was interested in today's announcement from SourceLabs regarding new Linux and Java self-support tools. They're aimed at getting people who use open source software tools to share information within a software environment so that known problems can be identified and solved.