Sweetdreams is worth 150.000 $

Google inc., the enterprise behind the well-known search robot, has selected the 3 winners of their latest Developer Challenge. The competition was called “the Android Developer Challenge”. The participants had to make a handy application for Google’s open source software program “Android” for mobile phones. The winner was the program “sweetdreams”. The program manages the different utility’s (such as Wi-fi, Bluetooth..) on a cell phone to expand the lifespan of your battery as long as possible. Google started this competition to boost the mobile application developer numbers and to raise the standards of applications designed for the open-sourced Android platform. This year the winner earned 150.000 $.

Karel Supré

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/android-developer-challenge-winners-announced-1832052.html

Belgian open source software is taking over

Drupal-founder, Dries Buyaert has announced that the new website of the White House will run on Drupal. Drupal is a Belgian open source software program designed for web content management. Popular and important websites as www.navo.com, www.nasa.com and the personal websites of Hillary Clinton and Jennifer Lopez are already running on it.  The fact that also the government of a world leading country as the United States of America is, is giving their trust and believe in open source software is a new highlight for the sector. President Obama and his new “partner”, Drupal are a perfect match. Just like president Obama’s policy, Drupal stands for an open, transparent, low cost and efficient way of working.

Karel Supré

Source:

http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=20091026109459&word=open+source

Open source software, a new threat to human workforces

Since years The Tokyo International Robot Exhibition has been a showcase for Japan’s craziest robots. With the recession of 2009 this exhibition received a more serious tone. This edition the practical and commercial side of robots stood in the spotlights. The exhibition of 2009 showed among others that the list of human jobs that robots can  do quicker and better, is very fast growing. This could be disturbing for workforces around the world. One of the reasons of thisevolution is the fact that many robots nowadays are built with open software codes. This encourages many outside programmers to come up with ideas to make them even more useful. This increases the industrial automation tremendously.

Karel Supré

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6931585.ece

Microsoft wants to rule Facebook

Microsoft, the manufacturer of the operating system Windows, has developed a new web-based program “Silverlight”, which is comparable to the Adobe Flash Player. A lot of applications in Facebook work with the more famous Flash Player of Adobe (which is also used by Youtube to show all the videos on the net), a competitor of Microsoft. Now, there is a new “Software development kit” (SDK) from the Silverlight manufacturer with the intention to give people the chance to make new Facebook-applications with Silverlight instead of Flash Player. People already can choose from many different SDK’s, such as Javascript, PHP, and even one for iPhone.
The big question is if Microsoft will be able to earn a greater market share concerning the Flash Player-based applications on the internet.

You find the article here: Microsoft toont ontwikkelplatform voor Facebook

Wouter Snoeck

Open source, risk or advantage

Open source software can be accessed by pretty much everyone and it’s free to be used, modified and distributed. The wide variety of licences  however, (which are connected to specific open source software) provide specific conditions in the application of open source software. It’s deep within these licences that there are risks hidden.

Open source can be described as a collective term for all types of software of which the source code is made widely available.
Everyone can, in a simple manner, make adjustments or corrections for this particular software and spread it again. The specific terms linked to the open source licences on the contrary, aren’t to be taken lightly and, if not handled properly, may cause problems . For example, the conditions can oblige to release a source code of a commercial product because it was based on an open source software. This can lead to a serious disadvantage in that company’s market position.

Carl Van Acker

Source: http://www.iusmentis.com/computerprogrammas/opensourcesoftware/gevaar-kans/

Google Chrome OS releases source code

On a press conference, Google Inc. reported about their new Operating System, Google Chrome OS, and their intention to cooperate closely with the ‘Open source community’. According to Sundar Pichai, the deputy director of Google, the operating system will be released at the end of 2010. The system has to be really fast, and therefore all the programs you’ll use on your minilaptop (the machine for which Chrome OS is manufactured) will be web applications. There are several advantages for using web applications. First of all, the minilaptop doesn’t require great system requirements, as almost all of the programs are web based. That makes your computer a lot faster. Second, it’s a lot easier for the ‘open source community’ to make programs with codes they already know (html, php, java, Flash,…). Chrome OS itself is Linux-based (which is also well known in the open source community).

Read the article here, have a look at a preview here .

Wouter Snoeck

Microsoft violates open soft licence

Microsoft has stopped the distribution of it’s newest Windows 7-upgrade tool for minilaptops. The underlying reason for this sudden stop is that there were voices claiming that Microsoft is violating the open source code of this tool.

The application Windows 7 USB/DVD download is designed for owners of the XP-netbooks who want to install Windows 7 on their device. A blogger named Rafael Rivera reveals in a blogpost that the Microsoft code uses Imagemaster, a tool which has been released under the “GPLv2-open-source-licence” (General Public Licence).
This GPL allows, just like any other open source licence, that the code may be used by others. But, there is a catch, GPL has it’s own conditions about the freely sharing and adapting of there code. It is exactly this curveball that Microsoft failed to dodge when they were producing this tool.

Carl Van Acker

Source: http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/11/07/microsoft-s-windows-7-usb-dvd-download-tool-uses-open-source-code.aspx

The clash of the free browsers

The question of who gets the title of ‘safest internet browser’ isn’t one that is answered easily.
Of all the respected internet browsers, (programs with which you can surf on the net) Firefox was the ultimate ‘champion of security leaks’ in 2008, and not in a positive way. According to the Danish company Securnia (a company who specialises in finding these leaks) , the Firefox browser counted 115 security leaks last year. The average amount of leaks that were found in other browers was significantly lower, for example, the amount at Internet Explorer was 31. Luckily for Firefox it has one monstrous advantage, it can close the leaks much faster than it‘s biggest competitors (Microsoft for example). I fear the solution for this epic struggle between Internet Explorer and Firefox about who may call himself the safest internet brower isn’t one for the nearby future.

Carl Van Acker

Source: http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=GBU2706IH_2&word=Firefox+is+%27kampioen%27+van+de+beveiligingslekken

Free Software doesn’t mean no earnings

The Mozilla Foundation, the makers of the famous (and free to download) browser Mozilla Firefox and the e-mail program Mozilla Thunderbird, earned about 79 million dollar in 2008. If you know that none of their programs need to purchase a license,  it’s a rather high amount of profit. The greatest part of the 79 million comes from another enterprise in the same market, Google Inc. Now, Google has his own Open source web browser like Google Chrome etc. The profit of Mozilla has grown a lot in the years where Google didn’t have his own browser (in 2007 the earning of mozilla has grown about 12%, in 2008 just a little growth of 5.3%). Before google you just had Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox as the 2 great oligarchs. Now Google is penetrating the market.  The contract between Google and Mozilla is still going until 2011. We all hope Mozilla can stay in Business after 2011!

Read the Article on ZDnet

Wouter Snoeck

All-in-one

Mozilla Labs started a new open source project : Raindrop . This service uses a mini web server to pull your messages from multiple sources (Email, Twitter, Facebook…)  and organizes it in one place. What’s more, Raindrop is able to place the most important messages first in order to relieve the user of a lot of useless information. It also allows you to interact with them using your favorite web browser. Since Raindrop is an open source project, all interested people are invited to contribute to its design, development and testing by using standard open Web technologies.

Pieter Parret