Archive for the 'open source' Category
Top 5 open source apps of 2006
by Justin Silverton
The following are the top 5 open source apps of 2006.
Ruby on Rails is a full-stack framework for developing database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Control pattern. From the Ajax in the view, to the request and response in the controller, to the domain model wrapping the database, Rails gives you a pure-Ruby development environment. To go live, all you need to add is a database and a web server.
Rails has become one of the easiest and fastest ways to develop full-fedged web applications.
4) PHP
PHP was written as a set of CGI binaries in the C programming language by the Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, to replace a small set of Perl scripts he had been using to maintain his personal homepage. Lerdorf initially created PHP to display his résumé and to collect certain data, such as how much traffic his page was receiving. “Personal Home Page Tools” was publicly released on June 8, 1995after Lerdorf combined it with his own Form Interpreter to create PHP/FI. source
Php is now the 5th most popular programming language, below java, c, c++, and Visual Basic.
When most people give examples of successful open source projects, apache is usually one of them. It is now serving millions of websites worldwide (including this one) and should be considered a great example of open source engineering.
2) Ubuntu Linux
With over 8 million users and growing, ubuntu linux has quickly become one of the most popular and easy-to-use linux distributions.
From the website: “Ubuntu is suitable for both desktop and server use. The current Ubuntu release supports PC (Intel x86), 64-bit PC (AMD64), Sun UltraSPARC and T1 Sun Fire T1000 and T2000), PowerPC (Apple iBook, Powerbook, G4 and G5) and OpenPower (Power5) architectures.”
1) Firefox
Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed that the commercial requirements of Netscape’s sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite’s software bloat, they created a pared-down browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, The Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird. source
Over the last year, Firefox has become the new ruler in the web browser realm. It is more secure, and in my opinion faster than Internet Explorer and many other browsers.
10 must-have open source gifts
By Justin Silverton
With christmas coming up on Monday, I have decided to come with this list of some last-minute open source gift ideas.
1) Neuros OSD
The First Open Source Linux Embedded Media Center.
Features:
• Watch your favorite TV show or movies anytime, anywhere.
• Digitize your home movies.
• Play movies downloaded from the internet on your TV.
• Hold a slide show of your latest road trip on your TV.
• Capture your video game highlights and email to friends.
Beer is always a good gift..in any form..but why not make it better?
This player features a shuffle mode, basic track navigation, volume control, FAT32 support, fragmented file support, an unlimited number of files on the root directory, and high quality playback. Files at 256Kbps can be played without a hitch. Variable bitrate files are supported with peaks up to 320Kbps.
4) An issue/subscription to free software magazine
The only magazine worldwide that is dedicated to free software as a whole. Each issue contains high quality, in-depth articles that cover a wide variety of free software related topics.
5) Stuffed Tux
6) mvix wireless HD media center
It can do Mpeg-1/2/4, VOB, WMV 9, DivX, and Xvid. It’ll play your MP3’s, WMA’s, AAC’s, Ogg files, or straight-up WAV and AC3. It can do it all from its internal hard drive, an external USB drive, or even stream off of your other computers over the network.
7) InstantMusic Vinyl & Cassette Ripper
Liberate your old media into glorious digital technology with the InstantMusic Vinyl & Cassette Ripper. Simply hook up an old turntable or cassette deck to the InstantMusic and plug it in into an available USB port on your PC. The included software allows you to convert your music to MP3 files, or burn directly to CD. It even smartly detects the gaps between songs to divide that old Journey LP into individual MP3 files perfect for transfer to your newfangled iPod.
9) Book: Hacking the cable modem
It goes inside the device that makes Internet via cable possible and, along the way, reveals secrets of many popular cable modems, including products from Motorola, RCA, WebSTAR, D-Link and more.
10) Book: Just For Fun: Linus Torvalds Biography
In this witty and engrossing narrative, Linus Torvalds, the brilliant mastermind behind the latest Internet revolution, in collaboration with writer David Diamond, chronicles his transformation from a pale, skinny Helsinki college kid to an international folk hero. What began as a childhood hobby soon became the astonishing phenomenon known as the LINUX operating system.
badvista.org…bad for open source?
By Justin Silverton
About a week ago, the Free software foundation launched the badvista campaign. It is decribed in their own words as
“a campaign with a twofold mission of exposing the harms inflicted on computer users by the new Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free software alternatives that respect users’ security and privacy rights.”
“Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new ‘features’ in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We’ll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care”.
and finally, the main focus and message of this campaign:
“Our campaign will ask the important questions. Can you set yourself or your company free? Can you ever be free from Microsoft? As with our campaign against Digital Restrictions Management, we aim to demonstrate that technologists can be social activists, because we know the harm that Vista will cause”
Although this is a concern, it should not be the main focus of a new campaign from the free software foundation. The main focus should be the benefits of using free and open software, not the reasons against upgrading to the latest and greatest Microsoft Product.
Many companies that would benefit from this look at Microsoft as an example of a successful business. This new campaign may just alienate them even further from using linux and other open source applications/technologies.
If the Free Software Foundation ever wants to be taken seriously, they will need to stop these types of negative campaigns.
A new password flaw found in Firefox 2
By Justin Silverton
In a recent article, a new flaw in firefox 2 is discussed:
“Mozilla’s Firefox 2.0 has long been considered a safer Web browser than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but a new flaw in the Firefox Password Manager, which lets users store usernames and passwords for trusted Web sites, could let hackers steal their login data.
The problem, known as a reverse cross-site request, or RCSR, was first discovered by Robert Chapin, a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and I.T, consultant. The RCSR appears on blogs, message boards, or group forums that let users add comments with embedded HTML code.
On sites that allow users to enter code, a hacker can embed a form that tricks the user’s browser into sending its username and password information to the hacker’s computer. Because the form is embedded on a trusted Web site, the browser’s built-in antiphishing protection, which is designed to alert users to fraudulent Web sites, does not detect the problem.”
When will this flaw be fixed?
The Mozilla Foundation (the group behind the firefox browser) has classified it as Bug #360493 and also announced that it will be fixed in version 2.0.0.1 or 2.0.0.2.
This attack can be avoided by disabling the browsers’ autosave features for usernames and passwords. In Firefox, the feature is found in the “Options” window under the “Tools” menu.
5 open alternatives to Microsoft Exchange
By Justin Silverton
After the recent announcement by Novell that they were dropping support for the Hula project (an open alternative to Microsoft exchange), I decided to search the Internet for similar applications/projects.
1) Zimbra (commercial and free versions available)
- Desktop client compatibility. Sync mail, contacts, and calendar to Microsoft Outlook and/or to Apple (Mail, Address Book, iCal).
- Professional administration. Real time mailbox backup and restore, high availability clustering, storage cost management.
- Zimbra Mobile. Over-the-air synchronization of mail, contacts, and calendar data with mobile devices.
- Advanced web productivity. Ability to search for content inside attachments and view attachments as HTML instead of downloading.
- Domain management. Ability to re-brand the web client and administer multiple customer domains.
2) Open Xchange (commercial and free versions available)
- Linux Compatibility. Support 30 different linux distributions.
- All Information in One folder. Using one folder, users can store all information needed for a particular project, including all contacts, meetings, and background information.
- Document Management. Automatic versioning, locking of documents during editing, saving from MS Office applications, and access from MS explorer.
3) Scalix (commercial and free versions available)
- Outlook Support. Offers automatic offline mailbox caching and improved PDA syncing.
- Plug-in support. Provides certified plug-ins support for Google Desktop and MSN Search, McAfee VirusScan, Symantec Norton Utilities and Captaris RightFax Outlook Extension.
- Search and Indexing Services. Real-time indexing of private and public folder messages. This results in sub-second mailbox-wide search and retrievals, even in very large mailboxes and folders.
4) Citadel
- Ajax Support. An intuitive, easy-to-use AJAX interface.
- Domain Management. Multiple domain support.
- Easy Installation. installs in minutes without the need to manually integrate all the different components together.
- Contact Management. Saves and organizes thousands of personal and company contacts, telephone, fax, addresses, e-mail contact addresses just to mention a few. Easily configurable with extensive and speedy search capabilities, categorization and remotely accessible.
- Group Calendar. Manage meetings and events for an entire group or individual set of accounts. Attach notes to appointments. Link appointments to contacts and projects. Automatic detection of conflicts.
- Resource Planner. Keep track of your company’s resources such as automobiles, projectors or conference rooms. Searchable timeslots to check for availability of specific resources or resources assigned to a specific group. Automatically check for resource conflicts upon appointment creation.