Keep your data free. Free from vendor lock-in. Support Document Freedom Day on March 26. Activities and events will be held around the world to promote awareness of free document formats such as ODF.
It is great to see that India voted NO for OOXML yesterday. According to Venky Hariharan, 13 members voted “No”, 5 members voted “Yes” (including Microsoft India, Infosys, TCS, Wipro and NASSCOM), 1 member abstained and 3 members did not attend.
It appears that revenue partners and their special interests take precedence for India’s software export companies over preserving freedom of knowledge and rights of users to share data using open formats. Can money buy standards?
Take a stand and just say no! Support free document formats next week on March 26th. Organize awareness programs in your community, work with your favorite Linux Users Group and support Document Freedom Day.
Posted in India, ODF, OpenSource, OpenStandards.
Tagged with DocumentFreedomDay, India, ODF, OpenSource, OpenStandards.
Sun Microsystems announced today that it will buy MySQL for a billion dollars, paying off the MySQL founders and investors.
For only a billion dollars… Now, that’s a steal, don’t you think? If MySQL had gone IPO perhaps they could’ve raised 5 billion dollars or more - I believe they could have because the open source market is only growing stronger. On the same day, Oracle announced its acquisition of BEA for 8.5 billion dollars - just for acquiring market share. So a billion dollars for MySQL seems cheap.
How does this affect Linux? Sun has marketed open source initiatives such as OpenSolaris, Netbeans, GlassFish and OpenOffice. Now MySQL joins that list. MySQL is a key player in the Linux solution set. Linux could benefit if MySQL is provided with more resources to help build more powerful open source solutions. Linux could be hurt if MySQL becomes more encumbered and less free.
2008 promises to be an interesting year for open source. Let’s hope Sun will play to its strengths of great engineering and innovation and support the entire open source community. This means Linux too.
Some interesting comments on this acquisition:
1) Glyn Moody
2) Groklaw
3) Matt Asay
4) Motley Fool
Posted in Linux, MySQL, OpenSource.
Tagged with Linux, MySQL, OpenSource.
Participating at PLUG’s mashup camp in October was an exciting opportunity for me to be among friends and Pluggies again.The PLUG Mash organized by the Pune Linux User’s Group and its friends and supporters was a resounding success. The 2-day camp had a combination of formal talks as well as a hack-a-thon for FOSS hackers to gather together and code. Major sponsors including Thoughtworks and Zmanda did an outstanding job of participating in the sessions. I found the talks by various open source contributors - Chris Stevenson (of Thoughtworks), Ramki (of Red Hat), Friji (of Radio Schizoid), Satish (of Red Hat), Valsa (of Intel), KK George (of Zmanda), Niyam (creative guru), and Karunakar (of Indlinux.org) - led to a valuable discussion of how developers, users and FOSS advocates are doing their part in making open source contributions possible from India. I presented about the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and its global initiatives and enjoyed the discussion thereafter about how OSI could become more pertinent in India’s ecosystem.
Many thanks to my friends for putting in a lot of hard work, for being such fantastic hosts and making this 2-day camp in Pune memorable and successful for me. The great conversations, wonderful food, and the “coffee” added just the right touch. And reminded me of what makes Pune’s community so enjoyable to be part of.
Posted in FOSS, India, Mashup.
Tagged with FOSS, India, Mashup.
In January 2006, India’s Patent Office rejected a patent application for Gleevec, a leukemia cancer drug by Swiss pharmaceutical Novartis. Now, in August 2007, the Chennai High Court has rejected Novartis’ appeal to overturn this rejection.
Novartis claims that India’s ruling will stunt R&D and innovation in pharmaceuticals and violates WTO intellectual property agreements. But the Indian government sees this decision as helping ensure that affordable medicines continue to be available for her people and those of other developing countries. Such medicines are essential to combat killer diseases like AIDS and cancer. Indian companies manufacture generic Gleevec (known as Glivec in India) for one-tenth the price offered by Novartis.
Why does this matter?
India’s ruling will deter international pharma giants from trying to extend their monopolies by patenting newer versions of existing medicines. This ruling allows India to continue manufacturing inexpensive generic drugs. For example, 85% of AIDS generics to Africa are provided by India’s pharmaceuticals. That’s significant.
This precedent also establishes a model for rejecting software patents in India. The arguments that favor availability of generic medicines equally apply to free and open source software (FOSS). India cannot afford the monopolies and high prices brought about by software patents. FOSS is the only practical way developing nations can afford long-term, large-scale IT automation. Without automation, India and others cannot scale to provide the infrastructure and banking, education and health care needed to ensure prosperity for billions of people across the globe.
Posted in FreeSoftware, India, OpenSource, WIPO, WTO.
Tagged with FreeSoftware, India, OpenSource, WIPO, WTO.
An intriguing article by Fortune Magazine on Microsoft’s China strategy reveals how Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy officer was deployed by Bill Gates in 1999 to fix the company’s problems with the Chinese market and its government. Mundie turned around Microsoft’s strategy from short-term to long-term engagement - one from antagonism to partnership. Mundie even hired famous China lobbyist Henry Kissinger as advisor.
Bill Gates is quoted in the article, “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not… You can get the real thing, and you get the same price.” After walking hand in hand with China’s leadership, Microsoft’s alliance with officialdom is but a short term gain. Arrogance, Microsoft’s true partner, is the enemy of progress. In the long run it will only blind Microsoft to the paradigm shift that open source signifies.
Posted in China, Linux, Piracy.
Tagged with China, Linux, Piracy.
The world has changed.
We’ve all been hearing about the iPhone for months now and its finally out. And unexpectedly, while watching the waves of eager customers line up to enter the Apple Store along Palo Alto’s University Blvd., my friends and I got bitten by the iPhone bug too. So there I found myself standing on opening day (June 29), in a line that was surprisingly fast moving, and got myself an iPhone. The gadget is sleek. It’s glamorous and it’s just plain cool. What a beautiful user interface. Very easy. Very, very intuitive. It’s got maps, music, movies, email, weather, stocks, wi-fi, camera, and a quad-band phone - everything a professional needs. The integration of Google maps, YouTube, Yahoo weather, iTunes music and movies is fantastic. This gadget sets new standards for convergence and raises the bar for all handheld devices to aspire to.
The only thing I don’t like is the bundling of a 2 year mandatory phone service contract from AT&T. The user should be able to select their own voice carrier and have more flexible monthly plans available. But, on the positive side, the bundled data service is unmetered. That’s a revolution for the US market. Unrestricted data connectivity will assure iPhone’s success because the network apps and features can be accessed at any and all times without being nickle and dimed to death.
But the iPhone whets my appetite and expands my wish-list for a comparable open source software solution. I want to see an ‘openPhone’ with the same level of integration from the OS to the GUI. Perhaps Red Hat with its ‘mugshot.org‘ will aim to achieve the samelevel of integration from the OS to the GUI. Perhaps Red Hat with its ‘mugshot.org‘ will aim to achieve the same standard of integration and do a ‘Fedora Fone’.
Posted in Apple, iPhone.
Tagged with Apple, iPhone.
Harshad and his organizing team did a phenomenal job of covering an excellent range of topics in the conference program - from Mozilla Prism, Ruby on Rails, PHP, MySQL, Erlang, Django to visual design tips, network management and security. Every room was packed with spillover seating on the speaker dais. BOFs on 
There were a lot of talks I wanted to attend but could only manage to squeeze into 
I ended up helping out for the Ruby on Rails workshop by 
and better every time! Let’s keep it going like the 
