OpenOffice.org now to be LGPL only

The OpenOffice.org suite has previously been available under dual
licences - the GNU LGPL favoured by most contributors, and the Sun
Industry Standards Source License, which did not require all changes
to source code to be published. In the interests of limiting licence
proliferation, Sun has now announced that it is retiring the SISSL,
and OpenOffice.org will in the future only be licensed under the
LGPL. The change makes little practical difference to users of the
suite, but the developers who previously used the SISSL are being
asked to switch to the LGPL.

Gnome 2.12 desktop released

The Gnome Foundation has released the latest version of its free
software desktop and development platform. Version 2.12 is said to
incorporate thousands of refinements, including an updated default
theme, easier file management, intuitive clipboard behaviour, a
unified document viewer and an About Me control panel. There is also
a new services control panel and menu editor, and improvements to the
GTK+ toolkit include the integration of the Cairo drawing technology
from freedesktop.org.

GNU GPL v.3 project launched

The Free Software Foundation has announced the GPL Version 3
Development and Publicity Project. This effort aims to bring together
thousands of organisations, software developers and users during 2006
to update the widely used free software licence. The current version
of the GNU GPL was written in 1991, since when it has been adopted
for the Linux kernel and many thousands of other programs, in
addition to the work of the GNU Project. Funding of 150,000 euro will
support the GPL revision project, which will be overseen by the FSF
in the US and Europe with support from the Software Freedom Law
Centre.

THP

No improvements with SpeedyAds

Current stats as of today are 60 views and 0 clicks!!! I have $15 of
credit waiting to be spent... I don't entireweb quite get the picture.

My keywords include: hosting, web hosting, cheap hosting, cheap PHP
hosting... I have 8 in total. So far only "hosting" and "web hosting"
have triggered the views... I guess one problem is that the top bid
for those is over $1 and I haven't bid that high.

Even so I have found another advertising service (oher than google)
and I have had lots of traffic from them without having to bid $1 per
click!!!

THP

Don't use SpeedyAds from entireweb.com

I am using SpeedyAds and I am very disappointed in their service. I have over $15 deposited in my account but yet I am not getting any advert views/impressions. I am NOT talking click-thrus here, I am talking views.

The ad has been running for 1 week and I have had 8 advert impressions for keywords like web hosting, hosting etc. Can you believe it? I can't. I have written them two emails asking for explanations and soon I will go on the war path writing anti entireweb articles.

Are they really an advertising company?

THP

New business venture

I have started a new business venture... of course using Linux! I have finally decided to start my own Linux hosting company. Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 we have PHP, MySQL, CGI/Perl and of course Apache.

You can find the site here.

Thanks,

THP

Microsoft files XML doc patent in NZ

According to the New Zealand Herald Microsoft has applied for a patent where they claim they invented and own the process whereby a word-processing document stored in a single XML file may be manipulated by applications that understand XML.

The New Zealand Open Source Society president Peter Harrison said "It means if you write a document in Word and save it in an XML format, you have to have Microsoft's permission to read it or change it."

Errrmmmm... I thought the whole point of XML was interoperability. What next Microsoft invented e-mail!!! Obviously prior art should stop this patent being accepted.

I could make lots of comments now about Microsoft and their underhanded business tactics... I see today from the BBC that Microsoft seems to be falling short in its compliance with the EU anti-trust punishment.

For those of you familiar with Star Trek, one quote comes to mind "Resistance if futile".

We will see!

THP

What is Open Source?

Open Source is a concept and license for publishing software along with it's sourcecode. Under Open Source, software is licensed in a certain way which allows anyone to redistributable it at will and without cost. The source code is freely available, and it is modifiable by anyone sufficiently experienced in programming.

An example of a Open Source license is the GPL (General Public License). The GPL comes from the Free Software Foundation and is the main license of the GNU project which was Richard Stallman in the 1980's.

The GNU project provides many of the key tools and components for what we call the Linux operating system. For example the C compiler which is used to build Linux is itself a free software project. Linux is licensed under the GPL.

The Free Software Foundation say that "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think offree as in ree speech not as in free beer."

Also they say "Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software."

Another important project is the Open Source Initiative (OSI). They say "the basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing."

You can read more at my site

What is Linux

Every computer needs a core piece of software which is called an "Operating System". Many computers today use Microsoft Windows as their operating system or if you are using an Apple machine, Mac OS X. Linux is an alternative operating system for both Personal Computers (PCs) and Apple Macs.

Linux is a free operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the help of many developers (hackers) around the world. Linux is developed and released under the GNU General Public License which makes the source code for Linux freely available to everyone.

A Linux distribution (a package of Linux and Linux related programs) comes with everything a modern computer user need including an advanced GUI (Graphical User Interface), full Internet capabilities including e-mail, web browsing and FTP. Office applications like word processors and spreadsheets (often with a high level of compatibility with other programs like Microsoft Office), photo editing, full development suites, games and much more.

Linux is also very apt at running on a server. Linux is often used as an email and web server. If fact the computer which sent you this page is running Linux.

Linux runs on many different hardware platforms including Intel, Sparc, PowerPC, and Alpha Processors.

You can read more about Linux on my site

Thanks,

THP