Stephen Fry on Linux

In his review of the Asus Eee, Stephen Fry makes the claim:

The two great pillars of Open Source are the GNU project and Linux. I shan’t burden you with too much detail, I’ll just make the outrageous claim that your computer will be running some descendant of those two within the next five years and that your life will be better and happier as a result.

He bases this claim on the Asus Eee, and future systems like it, which will replace the bloated Microsoft operating system with something simple that can run on cheap and small hardware devices:

The Asus EEE PC perched on my knee combines GNU software with a Linux kernel powered by an Intel Celeron Mobile Processor to produce a very extraordinary little laptop. It weighs less than a kilogram, starts up from cold in about 12 seconds and shuts down in five. It has no internal hard disk and no CD drive. It offers 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a seven-inch display; wireless, dial-out modem and ethernet adaptors are available for networking and internet connections, three USB ports, mini-jack sockets for headphones and microphone, a VGA out, an SD card slot and a built-in webcam. All for about £200 - less than the price of a show, dinner and taxi for two in London’s West End.

When you press the EEE’s power button, the lightning speed and quietness of boot-up tell you that you are in the hands of a solid state flash drive: no vulnerable moving parts and buzzing platters here. Within seconds a tabbed screen will appear on your display: the tabs are labelled Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings and Favourites. A click on each reveals a page containing bright, clear icons that relate to 40 separate applications and half a dozen or so selected web links. The applications include Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird (the Mozilla mail client) and OpenOffice.org, an Open Source suite of applications that allows you to create and edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents.

Is Fry right? Maybe. Microsoft are more and more being seen as irrelevant.

Eee, that’s good

The Asus Eee will speed Linux takeup:

Dirk Hohndel, Intel’s chief technologist for open source, believes the install base of Linux-based desktops could potentially double this year, based just on Eee PC sales. Speaking at open source conference Linux.conf.au in Melbourne, Hohndel said commercial pressure will be the incentive for traditionally Windows-centric hardware vendors to begin offering open source drivers and Linux-based systems to their customers.

Yay!

Bug Labs

Bug labs seems (potentially, at least) to be very interesting and useful. Think of it as lego for electronic gadgets. Their software is all open source (not sure about their hardware — but I’ve emailed them a query).

They have a store open.

Connect this with fabricators (such as RepRap or Fab Lab) and you have the engine of growth for the 21st century.

Job offer

I am starting up a company that will produce an inclusionist fork of Wikipedia. Over time it will also collect and integrate data from other sources. I’m looking for a person or persons to work as programmers on the website.

Job title: MediaWiki hacker

Essential skills that you will have:

* PHP
* MySQL
* Linux
* familiarity with wikis and Wikipedia

Desirable skills:

* ideally you are an experienced MediaWiki hacker who has written MediaWiki extensions
* Python
* experience contributing to open source projects
* experience as a website sysadmin, particularly running Ubuntu and Apache.

Pay: negotiable. Initially on a contract basis. Eventually I hope to offer a full-time job and stock options to a person or persons who is/are competent and efficient. This is your chance to get in at the start of what may be the next big thing. Ideally I’d like someone based in Edinburgh, if not that then in the UK, if not that then anywhere in the world.

If you are interested write to me at cabalamat@googlemail.com

Give Stallman a Nobel Prize

Michael Tiemann thinks Richard Stallman deserves a Nobel Prize:

If Al Gore can win the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing the findings of the scientific community to the political forefront, perhaps Richard Stallman should be next in line for his early and tireless advocacy against Software Patents. And the sooner, the better.

By awarding the Nobel Prize for Economics to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson for their work on Mechanism Design Theory, they endorsed the fundamental thinking behind another inconvenient truth. Namely, that software patents may be greater deterrents to innovation than they are incentives, as they summarize in this paper:

…when discoveries are “sequential” (so that each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors) patent protection is not as useful for encouraging innovation as in a static setting. Indeed, society and even inventors themselves may be better off without such protection. Furthermore, an inventor’s prospective profit may actually be enhanced by competition and imitation.

Which brings us now to a pressing question about today’s legal climate: as the concentration of software patents continues to rise, to the point where these patents now threaten the single most important innovation model known in the software world today–open source software–is it time for us to pay attention and do something about putting caps on these hazardous discharges?

Not only do software patents not help innovation, they actively harm it:

One thing is sure: when it comes to innovation the Linux community had been there and done that with the tux2 filesystem back in 2000, but fears over patent infringement led to abandonment of the that project in 2002. [...] what is perfectly clear in 2007 is that a potentially more innovative file system, tux2, never saw commercial use because of the fundamental dangers of any use of software patents. In this way, Stallman got it exactly right when he likened software patents to land mines — they do harm long after they are put into place.

Uruguay and Peru buy OLPC computers

Uruguay is buying 100,000 OLPC XO-1 computers. And Peru is buying 40,000.

OLPC: give 1 get 1

From November, you’ll be able to get an XO laptop…

The One Laptop Per Child organisation are announcing a “give 1 get 1″ initiative:

Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home. If you’re interested in Give 1 Get 1, we’ll be happy to send you a reminder email. Just sign up in the box to the left and you’ll receive your reminder prior to the November 12 launch date.

(Link from Boing Boing)

Open source graphics drivers for ATI chips

One problem people using GNU/Linux systems often face is the non-availability of drivers for some hardware. This problem is made worse because some hardware companies want to keep the specs of their kits secret, which makes it harder to write open source drivers.

So the news that AMD will release the specs for their ATI graphics chips is especially welcome:

AMD has announced they are releasing the specs for all new Radeon chipsets, and will be working with the open source community to develop a fully functional 2D and 3D graphics driver.

For Microsoft, saying “Linux” is obscenity

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console allows Internet-based gaming where users identify themselves by an online name. Naturally the system disallows people from using obscene words are their screen names. But it also prevents them from using such screen names as “Linux”, “Unix” and variants such as “L I N U X” ans “L inux”.

Details here:

Okay, what happens when you like Linux, and decide to change your Xbox Live gamertag motto to “Linux rules”? Well, Microsoft black flags you, that’s what. According to xbox-scene.com, Linux and Unix prompt the following response:

I can confirm this as I just tried it myself. Also, according to some xbox-scene.com forum-goers, variations on Linux such as “L I N U X” or “L inux” also are banned.

As Jack Loftus reports, “This is just lame. It’s not even worthy of being called “childish” as that would be an insult to even the most insipid of today’s youth.”

(Link from Slashdot)