Libre Office turns six

On September 28th, 2010, The Document Foundation was announced. The last six months, it feels, have just passed within a short glimpse of time. Not only did we release three LibreOffice versions within three months, have created the LibreOffice-Box DVD image, and brought LibreOffice Portable on its way. We also have announced the LibreOffice Conference for October 2011 and have taken part in lots of events worldwide, with FOSDEM and CeBIT being the most prominent ones.

People follow us at Twitter, Identi.ca, XING, LinkedIn and a Facebook group and fan page, they discuss on our mailing lists with more than 6.000 subscriptions, collaborate in our wiki, get insight on our daily work in our blog, and post and blog themselves. From the very first day, openness, transparency and meritocracy have been shaping the framework we want to work in. Our discussions and decisions take place on a public mailing list, and regularly, we hold phone conferences for the Steering Committee and for the marketing teams, where everyone is invited to join. Our ideas and visions have made their way into our Next Decade Manifesto.

We have joined the Open Invention Network as well as the OpenDoc Society, and just last week have become an SPI-associated project, and we see a wide range of support from all over the world. Not only do Novell and Red Hat support our efforts with developers, but just recently, Canonical, creators of Ubuntu, joined as well. All major Linux distributions deliver LibreOffice with their operating systems, and more follow every day.

One of the most stunning contributions, that still leaves us speechless, is the support that we receive from the community. When we asked for 50,000 € capital stock for a German-based foundation, the community showed their support, appreciation and their power, and not only donated it in just eight days, but up to now has supported us with close to 100,000 €! Another one is that driven by our open, vendor neutral approach, combined with our easy hacks, we have included code contributions from over 150 entirely new developers to the project, alongside localisations from over 50 localizers. The community has developed itself better than we could ever dream of, and first meetings like the project’s weekend or the QA meeting of the Germanophone group are already being organized.

What we have seen now is just the beginning of something very big. The Document Foundation has a vision, and the creation of the foundation in Germany is about to happen soon. LibreOffice has been downloaded over 350,000 times within the first week, and we just counted more than 1,3 million downloads just from our download system — not counting packages directly delivered by Linux distributors, other download sites or DVDs included in magazines and newspapers — supported by 65 mirrors from all over the world, and millions already use and contribute to it worldwide. With our participation in the Google Summer of Code, we will engage more students and young developers to be part of our community. Our improved release schedule will ensure that new features and improvements will make their way to end-users soon, and for testers, we even provide daily builds.

We are so excited by what has been achieved over the last six months, and we are immensely grateful to all those who have supported the project in whatever ways they can. It is an honour to be working with you, to be part of one united community! The future as we are shaping it has just begun, and it will be bright and excellent.

 

from-

List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/announce/

iTunes finally gets some competition ?- Amazon Cloud Player

 

An interesting development is Amazon’s Cloud Player (though Cannonical may be credited for thinking of the idea first for Ubuntu One). Since Ubuntu One is dependent on the OS (and not the browser) this makes Amazon \s version more of a  mobile Cloud Player (as it seems to be an Android app and not an app that is independent of any platform, os or browser.

Since Android and Ubuntu are both Linux flavors, I am not sure if Cannonical has an exiting mobile app for Ubuntu One. Apple’s cloud plans also seems kind of ambiguous compared to Microsoft (Azure et al)

I guess we will have to wait for a true Cloud player.

 

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=tsm_1_tw_s_dm_liujd5?node=2658409011&tag=cloudplayer-20

How to Get Started with Cloud Drive and Cloud Player

 

Step 1. Add music to Cloud Drive

Purchase a song or album from the Amazon MP3 Store and click the Save to Amazon Cloud Drive button when your purchase is complete. Your purchase will be saved for free.

 

Step 2. Play your music in Cloud Player for Web

Click the Launch Amazon Cloud Player button to start listening to your purchase. Add more music from your library by clicking theUpload to Cloud Drive button from the Cloud Player screen. Start with 5 GB of free Cloud Drive storage. Upgrade to 20 GB with an MP3 album purchase (see details). Use Cloud Player to browse and search your library, create playlists, and download to your computer.

 

Step 3. Enjoy your music on the go with Cloud Player for Android

Install the Amazon MP3 for Android app to use Cloud Player on your Android device. Shop the full Amazon MP3 store, save your purchases to Cloud Drive, stream your Cloud Player library, and download to your device right from your Android phone or tablet.

compare this with

https://one.ubuntu.com/music/

A cloud-enabled music store

The Ubuntu One Music Store is integrated with the Ubuntu One service making it a cloud-enabled digital music store. All purchases are transferred to your Ubuntu One personal cloud for safe storage and then conveniently downloaded to your synchronizing computers. And don’t worry aboutgoing over your storage quota with music purchases. You won’t need to pay more for personal cloud storage of music purchased from the Ubuntu One Music Store.

An Ubuntu One subscription is required to purchase music from the Ubuntu One Music Store. Choose from either the free 2 GB option or the 50 GB plan for $10 (USD) per month to synchronize more of your digital life.

5 regional stores and more in the works

  • The Ubuntu One Music requires Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and offers digital music through five regional stores.
  • The US, UK, and Germany stores offer music from all major and independent labels.
  • The EU store serves most of the EU member countries (2) and offers music from fewer major label artists.
  • The World store offers only independent label music and serves the countries not covered by the other regional stores.

 

 

What to do if you see a possible GPL violation

GNU Lesser General Public License
Image via Wikipedia

Well I have played with software (mostly but not exclusively) analytical, and I admire the zeal and energy of both open source and closed source practioners- all having relatively decent people executing strategies their investors or owners tell them to do (closed source) or motivated by their own self sense of cool-change the world-openness (open source)

What I dont get is people stealing open source code- repackaging without adding major contributions- claiming patent pending stuff- and basically making money by creating CLOSED source from the open source software-(as open source is yet to break the enterprise glass cieling)

you are either open source or you arent.

bi- sexuality is okay. bi-codability is not.

Next time you see someone stealing some community’s open source code- refer to this excellent link.

 

But, we cannot act on our own if we do not hold copyright. Thus, be sure to find out who the copyright holders of the software are before reporting a violation.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html

Violations of the GNU Licenses

If you think you see a violation of the GNU GPLLGPLAGPL, or FDL, the first thing you should do is double-check the facts:

  • Does the distribution contain a copy of the License?
  • Does it clearly state which software is covered by the License? Does it say anything misleading, perhaps giving the impression that something is covered by the License when in fact it is not?
  • Is source code included in the distribution?
  • Is a written offer for source code included with a distribution of just binaries?
  • Is the available source code complete, or is it designed for linking in other non-free modules?

If there seems to be a real violation, the next thing you need to do is record the details carefully:

  • the precise name of the product
  • the name of the person or organization distributing it
  • email addresses, postal addresses and phone numbers for how to contact the distributor(s)
  • the exact name of the package whose license is violated
  • how the license was violated:
    • Is the copyright notice of the copyright holder included?
    • Is the source code completely missing?
    • Is there a written offer for source that’s incomplete in some way? This could happen if it provides a contact address or network URL that’s somehow incorrect.
    • Is there a copy of the license included in the distribution?
    • Is some of the source available, but not all? If so, what parts are missing?

The more of these details that you have, the easier it is for the copyright holder to pursue the matter.

Once you have collected the details, you should send a precise report to the copyright holder of the packages that are being misused. The copyright holder is the one who is legally authorized to take action to enforce the license.

If the copyright holder is the Free Software Foundation, please send the report to <license-violation@gnu.org>. It’s important that we be able to write back to you to get more information about the violation or product. So, if you use an anonymous remailer, please provide a return path of some sort. If you’d like to encrypt your correspondence, just send a brief mail saying so, and we’ll make appropriate arrangements.

Note that the GPL, and other copyleft licenses, are copyright licenses. This means that only the copyright holders are empowered to act against violations. The FSF acts on all GPL violations reported on FSF copyrighted code, and we offer assistance to any other copyright holder who wishes to do the same.

But, we cannot act on our own if we do not hold copyright. Thus, be sure to find out who the copyright holders of the software are before reporting a violation.

 

Google Cloud Print -print documents from the internet

Print Jobs just got easier- especially if you prefer one printer, use Google Chrome, and can take 2 minutes to set up your printer to print from anywhere in the world through the internet.

It’s called Google Cloud Print– and it makes my life a lot easier when I travel and need to give to printer at home some documents to print rather than rely on external printers. See screenshots below and check out http://www.google.com/cloudprint/ for more

Top ten RRReasons R is bad for you ?

This is the original symbol of the Perl progra...
Image via Wikipedia

R stands for programming language based out of www.r-project.org

R is bad for you because –

1) It is slower with bigger datasets than SPSS language and SAS language .If you use bigger datasets, then you should either consider more hardware , or try and wait for some of the ODBC connect packages.

2) It needs more time to learn than SAS language .Much more time to learn how to do much more.

3) R programmers are lesser paid than SAS programmers.They prefer it that way.It equates the satisfaction of creating a package in development with a world wide community with the satisfaction of using a package and earning much more money per hour.

4) It forces you to learn the exact details of what you are doing due to its object oriented structure. Thus you either get no answer or get an exact answer. Your customer pays you by the hour not by the correct answers.

5) You can not push a couple of buttons or refer to a list of top ten most commonly used commands to finish the project.

6) It is free. And open for all. It is socialism expressed in code. Some of the packages are built by university professors. It is free.Free is bad. Who pays for the mortgage of the software programmers if all softwares were free ? Who pays for the Friday picnics. Who pays for the Good Night cruises?

7) It is free. Your organization will not commend you for saving them money- they will question why you did not recommend this before. And why did you approve all those packages that expire in 2011.R is fReeeeee. Customers feel good while spending money.The more software budgets you approve the more your salary is. R thReatens all that.

8) It is impossible to install a package you do not need or want. There is no one calling you on the phone to consider one more package or solution. R can make you lonely.

9) R uses mostly Command line. Command line is from the Seventies. Or the Eighties. The GUI’s RCmdr and Rattle are there but still…..

10) R forces you to learn new stuff by the month. You prefer to only earn by the month. Till the day your job got offshored…

Written by a R user in English language

( which fortunately was not copyrighted otherwise we would be paying Britain for each word)

Ajay- The above post was reprinted by personal request. It was written on Jan 2009- and may not be truly valid now. It is meant to be taken in good humor-not so seriously.

Microsoft Online Games

No, this is not about the X Box kind of games. It is about Microsoft ‘s tactical shift in the online space from going it alone, and building stuff itself, –to partnering, and sometimes investing and exiting business.

In Blogs- It recently announced a migration of MS Live Spaces to WordPress.com – It gives Automattic 30 million more users- no small change consider there were 26 million existing WP users.

Microsoft Messenger, which is the oldest online app in the suite, now provides instant messaging services to about 350 million users, and from now on Windows Live Writer works specifically with the WordPress.com blog service by default. Hopefully Skype, and Google Voice will show MS the way to monitize that business app yet.

Google buying blogger-blogspot seems to have done little, but given Biz Stone room to create another content disruption-Twitter.

With the round of lawsuits by proxy, in Android -Motorola, or for acquisitions – MS is just doing what Marc Anderseen (who’s apparently a better VC than Paul Allen was), Sun and co did to it in the nineties.

Google seems to be regretting putting a spade in the Yahoo acquisition- that would have tied up a big chunk of Idle MS cash- leaving it little room for niche investments (like the 250 mill that helped Facebook ramp up in time).

The real surprise here could be Apple- it has shown little interest in cloud computing- and it seems to be testing the waters with Ping. But Apple sure smells competition- and Android is doing to Iphone what Windows did to the Mac in the early 1990’s.

Google lacks presence in online gaming (despite it’s own Zynga investment)- and needs to start monetizing properties like Android OS (say 10$ for every phone license ??), Google Maps (as an app for GPS) and Google Voice. Indeed it may be time for the big G to start thinking of spinning off atleast some products- earning better returns, while retaining control (dual stock splits) and killing those anti trust lawyer fees forever.

As the Ancient Chinese said, May you live in interesting times. Fun to watch the online games people play.

 

 

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