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Here is a fascinating article that puts Steve Ballmer and Microsoft up against Linux and the OSS (Open Source Software) movement. While not a “product XYZ is better than ABC” style article, it discusses the philosphy behind the different development styles.

This is a MUST READ for anyone who is umm.. reading this site. For anyone who is interested further in the difference in development philosophy between traditional commercial software development and open source development, I highly recommend the book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric S. Raymond. Hopefully that link is to the entire book (I read the printed version)

Forbes posted an article today called “Linux’s Hit Men” which talks about the legal action the Free Software Foundatation (FSF) is currently taking against Cisco regarding a router that utilizes the Linux operating system.

One aspect of the FSF is to provide legal enforcement when companies (or individuals) violate the GPL. The GPL, GNU Public License, is an end user license (EULA) that many open source software packages such as Linux use.

One aspect of the GPL is the rights for redistribution of a GPL product. Basically it states that if a product is distributed that contains GPL source code, it must be made available to the OSS community. In effect, this clause makes programs released under the GPL to be significantly different from traditional, commercial licenses.

Traditionally, if a product is distributed by a company, the company is required to pay royalities for the privlege of distribution. GPL, on other otherhand, maintains that the additional source code, not monetary reward is requested.

Why is this? Simple. Ever watch the movie “Pay it Forward”? Instead of requiring payment (in the traditional sense) the GPL asks that you contribute your ideas and programming back so others may build upon it.. When you think about how much GPL software is out there for others to use — operating systems, productivity suites, internet tools, email clients, games, server software, device drivers, utilities, desktop publishing suites, etc all for the taking, the simple request to contribute back to the community if you decide to use it for a product you distribute (key word: distribute … if you use it for your own personal/corporate use (ie internal corporate development) the GPL doesn’t require the source code be made available) then it is asked that you contribute back.

Companies in violation of the GPL are essentially profitting from the use of the GPL software without giving back to the community — in effect, they are stealing the software. In the case of the Cisco router in the article, it has sold 400,000 units at $129 ($51,600,000) … The use of the GPL software allowed them to be quicker to market (didn’t have to internally develop all of the software) and did not have to pay out any royaltities to a traditional company (ie $10-$15/unit) utilimately providing the company with a strategic advantage in the marketplace.

So the question remains — should a company be allowed to steal from the OSS community? It seems like this article thinks so. Apparently the author argues that the terms of the GPL are too insane, comparing the GPL to “burning down your house” — however, no one ever FORCED the company to use the GPL code. Infact, the terms of the GPL have remained unchanged since 1991, a time well before the use of OSS gained wide acceptance.

The bottom line? If your planning on using a product, especially if your planning on making money off a product, READ THE LICENSE AGREEMENT. If you don’t agree with the terms, consult the developers who released the product. There are many circumstances where the same product is released under difference liceneses (GPL and a more “commercial friendly” license). If the option is not available, there are many packages released under the BSD license (ie FreeBSD) which does not require the release of source code for products based around it.

According to this article on news.com, web developers are demanding better Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) support in Internet Explorer. CSS is a web standard that provides centralized design control of web sites that promotes consistency throughout the site.

Unfortunately, it appears that Microsoft is not interested in making its browser compliant with the standard. As a result, leading web content application developers such as Adobe and Macromedia have started to bundle their design tools with Opera, a browser that does maintaining compatibility and compliance with HTML standards.

Not only has Microsoft been ignoring standard compliance in Internet Explorer, but its web browser continues to be full of unpatched security holes.

“Recent exploits of Microsoft software has made it unsafe to surf the Web… it will be very difficult for some users to even know their computer is infected with a virus or otherwise compromised,” according to Ken Dunham, the ‘director of malicious code’ at U.S. based ’security intelligence’ company iDefense.

At this time, there are atleast 31 publically known, unpatched security holes in Internet Explorer.

My recommendation? Use a standards compliant, security concious web browser. Not only are browsers such as Mozilla Firebird more secure and more standards compliant than Internet Explorer, they are also being currently developed and have exciting features such as tabbed browsing and a built-in pop-up blocker. Check out this page for additional information.

Every few months I look at the state of the industry and take in all that has happened to determine various trends.

Needless to say, the trend toward increased use of OSS continues. In August, I wrote that the OSS HTTP server Apache reached an all time high .. well scratch that .. Last month, Apache added another half percent to its fold to sit at an all time high of 64.52% of the market. Just an FYI, a half percent is equal to 447,762 unique sites … So thats 10.4 new Apache sites going online every minute…. nice.

Not only did Apache gain a half percent, but the other 3 major players (Microsoft’s IIS, Sun’s SunOne and Zeus) all loss market share, the largest loss being Microsoft at a quarter percent.

Other happenings included a few point upgrades on the KDE desktop with a HUGE upgrade to v3.2 planned for December of this year. The 3.2 release will bring vector based icons, kontact (a PIM similar to Outlook), kopete (multi-protocol friendly instant messaging client), JuK (jukebox/music manager program similar to iTunes/MusicMatch/etc..), etc..etc..etc.. lots of really cool stuff going on in KDE land.

Of course, OpenOffice.org 1.1 was released today which is huge. It fixed a lot of rough edges from the 1.0 release and added some very cool features that makes it a very solid office suite. You know you have a winner on your hands when your 1.1 version is getting compared to the industry leader and coming out ahead on certain key points.

Cross platform compatibility also received a huge boost with the release of Samba 3.0, the Windows network file/printer sharing software. Lots of cool features that further allows a *nix box to seamlessly integrate with a Windows network.

In international news, the South Korean government plans to port a significant portion of its computing infrastructure to Linux. The plan, they claim, will save them $300,000,000 a year. It will be very interesting to watch this conversion. While many conversions have happened at the city and state levels across the globe, this is perhaps the largest declared migration yet. It will be interesting to see if Japan and China follow South Korea’s lead (the three countries reported that they might jointly develop a non-MS operating system). Perhaps other countries will see the advantage of using OSS and port their infrastructures over to OSS as well.

It is not hard to understand why foreign governments are interested in using an open source platform for their infrastucture. I believe many corporations will start to feel the same way (check out Ford) and pretty soon staying “connected” with vendors and customers will not mean having the latest version of Microsoft Office but rather having a standards compliant web browser, office suite and being able to communicate with open standards such as XML, XHTML, SVG, etc. Now is the time to make sure that the software you rely on will be able to meet those requirements when that day arrives.

OpenOffice.org 1.1 FINAL has been released. OpenOffice.org is a full office suite (similar to Microsoft Office) that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing applications.

The new version includes export to PDF, improved MS Office file format compatibility, export to Flash (for online presentations), an open XML file format, XHTML export, macro recorder, database integration, and DocBook/PDA file format support.

OpenOffice.org is free and available for a wide variety of platforms (Windows, Macintosh, Linux, BSD, etc..).

If you want to read a review on OpenOffice.org, here is one from a Windows site..

WinPlanet review of OOo 1.1 RC 2