Blog

Open Source in Africa is taking a different turn. It is going policy. We have done the “raising dust” or advocay part. We have also done the debate part of it. The time for constructive and sustainable action is here. The Free Software and Open Source Foundation is now engaging with Regional blocks to entrench…

When Starbucks grew from regional powerhouse to cultural phenomenon, there was one small problem: the coffee they sold did not jive with their brand. So much so that in 2000 they printed millions of pamplets in the US explaining why it was that even though they really, really wanted to sell organic, shade-grown, fairly traded…

Last week I read the book small is possible. It’s a great read, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoyed books like The Tipping Point, The Wisdom of Crowds, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and other books that powerfully explain the world from a new perspective. From the back cover of the book: Forget homeland…

I was happy to learn on Monday that the Petaflop barrier has been broken. IBM’s Roadrunner supercomputer achieved this feat with commodity hardware and open source software (including Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux). Achieving this level of performance is something that many in the research community have dreamed of for a long time. When it was…

I just read the story of Helmer, a Fedora 8 linux cluster in an IKEA Helmer cabinet. The story begins 3D computer rendering are very CPU intensive and the best way so speed up slow render problems, are usually to distribute them on to more computers. Render farms are usually very large, expensive and run…

Business Week has written a series [1], [2], [3] of articles on the One Laptop Per Child project this week, and none are too favorable. I myself have blogged my disappointment with the apparent direction of the project. Yesterday they released Build 703, and before I say anything else negative, I have to see how…

Apparently somebody somewhere sometime recently called Walter Bender, late of the OLPC, an open source fundamentalist. Walter expressed confusion about what that meant. I wish I could clear it up for him, but I don’t know what it means either. We never talk about Open Source in terms of religion or philosophy, morality or ethics.…

I first met Dr. Phatak at the Red Hat Summit in New Orleans in 2005. Dr. Phatak exemplifies what Amartya Sen lovingly calls The Argumentative Indian. Dr. Phatak is passionate, well educated, articulate, and most of all, sincerely committed to raising the standards in India to the highest levels. After spending time with him in…

This report is a summary of Zak Greant‘s Open Source Initiative activities from April 13th to May 17th, 2008. These Weeks Dropped the ball on my OSI volunteer work due to client emergency. Found great sysadmin to manage our infrastructure for us (I now just need to get budget approved.) Lightweight community service (chasing after…

Sometimes I want to declare victory and go home. Of course, that’s usually an admission of defeat, but I really think that with news like Verizon Embraces Linux, that the penetration of Open Source into every sector of computer-using society (which would be … everything) is inevitable. We’ve started the snowball down the hill, and…