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On the Front Lines with Richard Stallman

Jerry Gartner — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:21:00 +0000

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and The GNU Project, has had a consistent message about freedom for computer users for over 23 years. His first experiences with computers predate his work with the MIT AI Lab, which began in 1972. When I began researching for this interview, I had a different [...]

Linspire: Punked by Microsoft

Jerry Gartner — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:38:49 +0000

Microsoft, thanks to their deep pockets and scary lawyers, is still doing today what it has done for years to anyone that threatens it’s market position. The difference now though, is that Open Source is not one single company that they can buy or push around. They are, however, finding some sheep that will roll [...]

It’s all about community

Jerry Gartner — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:53:40 +0000

Everyone knows that the obvious difference between proprietary software and free software is the licensing model. What few people know is that free software's biggest strength is the people that are drawn together to make up a community that is incredibly powerful. I saw this power first-hand in Mountain View, CA, USA at the KDE 4.0 release event. If you use Gnome, XFCE, or even Microsoft Windows, put your bias aside. This is about the community of free software, and to a lesser extent, some of the individuals that make free software what it is - not just KDE.

KDE 4.0 – The Official Release

Jerry Gartner — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:30:55 +0000

I've been using Kubuntu Linux on my laptop for about three months now. I figured that a really slick GUI and a good package manager would be nice. We've been using KDE, Gnome, and XFCE on several computers at home and in the office for a couple of years now, and I've always had an affinity for KDE - probably since 2.0 in the late nineties. Even 10 years ago KDE had the cleanest look of all of the available window managers. Graphics hardware has really made advances since then, particularly in the area of dedicated graphics processing. It's about time that this technology is finally being widely adopted on pc hardware.

Code is prose: of open source and revolution

Jerry Gartner — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:45:13 +0000

Chris DiBona, Google's Open Source Program Manager, announced some time back that it (Google) is now a licensee of the Open Invention Network, an organization that wants open source developers to be able to focus on their craft without having to worry about getting sued. The OIN does this by acquiring patents, and then making them available, royalty free, to any entity; individual, institutional, or corporate, that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux system. This, in stark contrast to Microsoft's recent approach to patent infringement deals with the likes of Novell and Linspire, the latter of which sealed it's alienation from the Linux community for it's seeming utter lack of backbone.

Vista Revisited

Jerry Gartner — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:13:10 +0000

I have a confession: I use Microsoft products. There. It's out. Considering the tone and content of this site, I think I would do well to explain myself: Our company provides web development services - plenty of FLOSS applications in this respect, from development tools and web servers to complete API's. We also provide consulting and network administration services and it is, like it, or not, a Windows dominated world. I need to be able to provide support that requires very little "research" when a customer calls because Outlook won't send mail anymore. I need to be able to tell them to go to the File menu and make sure that the "Work Offline" option is not ticked.