Infopirate.org

The OSSwin project: Open Source for Windows!

http://osswin.sourceforge.net/ 

People who know me know that I am not a Microsoft lover. I am more on the “hater” side of that argument, but I have always felt that they do some things very well. They always targeted developers and tried to get adoption of their platform. This gave them the monopoly on the desktop operating system that they maintained for years. However, this success did not translate well to the internet. They have tried various things with a search engine, Hotmail never did very well under their stewardship and they could not get into the content production space.

http://regulargeek.com/2008/11/07/who-woke-the-sleep... 

InfoWorld's 2008 Bossies recognize the top free and open products for business, IT, and personal productivity

"Chosen by InfoWorld Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers, InfoWorld’s annual Best of Open Source Software awards (or Bossies, for short) celebrate the best products that open source has to offer: the best free software on the planet for businesses, their IT staffs, and their employees’ workstations."

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/04/32TC-bossies-2008_1.html

During my years of Linux advocacy, I am usually asked a very basic question “what makes Linux better than [insert OS here].” The answer is a result of years of developing and honing the perfect answer to a non-technical person. I usually start with explaining that there are two fundamental schools of thought in the programming world. One that conceals and forbids any changes in functionality, while the other is open and encourages customization to fit ones needs. The conversation naturally goes from there to giving examples of Open Source programs this person might be using unwittingly.

http://www.dailyartisan.com/news/7-apps-every-open-s... 

I'm a fan of many kinds of offbeat open source efforts, and the idea of community contributions can be applied to any number of pursuits, as seen previously in this post. This week I came across a few eyebrow-raising open source stories worthy of another short roundup. Here, you'll find four unusual examples of left-field open source in action.

http://ostatic.com/176105-blog/four-more-offbeat-ope... 

Experience the censored Chinese internet at home!

"The Firefox add-on China Channel offers internet users outside of China the ability to surf the web as if they were inside mainland China. Take an unforgetable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (supported by western companies). It's open source, free and easy."

http://chinachannel.hk/ 

The Linux Foundation has published the results of a study that the organization conducted in order to compute the approximate financial value of the Linux platform. Based on the results of the study, the Linux Foundation has concluded that it would cost $1.4 billion to develop the Linux kernel from scratch and $10.8 billion to develop the complete platform stack.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081023-linux-... 

The final version is available now.

New Features: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0/
Download: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#de

http://www.openoffice.org/news/index.html 

Check this out," Massimo Banzi says. The burly, bearded engineer wanders over to inspect a chipmaking robot—a "pick and place" machine the size of a pizza oven. It hums with activity, grabbing teensy electronic parts and stabbing them into position on a circuit board like a hyperactive chicken pecking for seeds. We're standing in a one-room fabrication factory used by Arduino, the Italian firm that makes this circuit board, a hot commodity among DIY gadget-builders.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/16-11... 

A New York software company has announced the scheduled release of its open-source wind farm design software. Albany-based AWS TrueWind designed the openWind software so that a range of end users, from individuals to wind energy developers, could apply and adapt the software their own particular set of data.

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/10/17/openwind-new-ope...