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ZeroPaid Reviews LibreOffice – An Open Source Office Suite

Drew Wilson — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:29:32 +0000

A few months ago, there was some fanfare about an alternative to the OpenSource personal productivity suite OpenOffice.org. This split project is known as LibreOffice. ZeroPaid decided to take a look at this software and gather some first impressions.

Personal office suites are pretty much a staple of the personal computer. If you want to type out a letter, create memo's, write essays, put together reports, you name it, an office suite like OpenOffice or Microsoft Office is often a go-to set of applications for anyone wanting to do these things in, say, a Windows environment. For those who have lived through and remember the early to mid 90s well, most will probably remember that old retro Microsoft Works or maybe another early iteration of Microsoft Office. It had a nice row or two of buttons as well as that drop-down menu system along the top of the workspace of the document. If you're like me, you'll probably have had that shocking experience of opening and trying to use the ultra "user friendly" interface of Office 2007 that was so user friendly, it actually impeded your productivity - and I'm not just talking about that annoying paperclip in the corner soaking up screen real-estate with excessively "helpful" hints. Gone were the drop-down menu systems and now there's that dramatically different button system with a tabbing system probably best left to Internet Explorer - but enough about the complaints I had with Microsoft Office 2007. Several years ago, I personally made the switch to OpenOffice around roughly after when Microsoft Office 2007 was released. It wasn't entirely like the old familiar layout I had before, but it was a substantial improvement over its Microsoft rival. Did you have to re-learn how to do basic things? In some cases, yes. So, making the switch from the Microsoft version to the well known open source version wasn't without a learning curve. One of the biggest differences was having to download and install the dictionaries which wasn't something you did in the Microsoft version. With a little learning, some patience and a few hints from help files and even asking Google once in a while, you can be very proficient in OpenOffice and do just about anything you could ask of it. This was my reservation for using LibreOffice - do I really want to learn a third office suite just to do what I've been doing for years? I admit, I personally held off getting this software just for this reason alone. One fresh start on a computer later, I decided to try using LibreOffice while re-installing other programs. I figured, the worst thing that could happen is that I wind up de-installing LibreOffice and re-installing OpenOffice. Once I took the plunge in to LibreOffice, it quickly became apparent that there's next to nothing separating the interfaces. The menu-system, the placement of features, everything was just like OpenOffice. I still had to download and install the dictionary, but this procedure, which is about as easy as it could get for new users, was really old hat for me. The learning curve between OpenOffice and LibreOffice is pretty much non-existent. Conclusion So, overall, if you're coming from a Microsoft Office suite and if you used older versions of Office such as, well, any number of versions older than 2007, then there will be a learning curve, but it's really only a matter of learning a few of the quirks in LibreOffice before your really rolling with the software. If you're coming from a background of only having been exposed to Microsoft Office 2007, then there will likely be a somewhat more steep learning curve. You could probably think of it as a step up in user interface. You'd have to wrap your mind around a slightly different style of interface, but there should be enough similarities between the two interfaces to get you started. Once you get a general grasp of how to use the software, you can really figure out where your interface taste's lie and choose which kind of interface you want to keep using. If you have experience in OpenOffice, then the learning curve is almost completely non-existent. The interface has a lot of things that are identical to OpenOffice. The only thing that would be immediately different is actually the logo in the corner of the window and a button or two that looks different. LibreOffice contains LibreOffice Writer (for documents), LibreOffice Impress (for slideshows - ala PowerPoint), and LibreOffice Calc (for spreadsheets) as well as a few other applications. Numerous formats are compatible with this suite. While we only tested this in very basic ways, we feel that it's what most users would use it for anyway. Well worth the install. LibreOffice homepage Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Third Installment of Humble Indie Bundle Rakes in Over $500,000

Drew Wilson — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:28:45 +0000

The Humble Indie Bundle gained quite a following by being an overwhelmingly successful pay-what-you-want DRM free sale. Now, the latest version of the famous sale has netted over half a million dollars in its first few days.

At it again. Video game developer Wolfire has posted the third instalment of the Humble Indie Bundle known as Frozenbyte after the featured developer FrozenByte. Like other bundles, a portion of the proceeds will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play which is customizable for the contributor. The games featured this time around are Trine, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, Shadowgrounds, a pre-order of Splot and a prototype of Jack Claw. The games are DRM free and most of them are cross platform. As of ths writing, this sale has earned a total of $568,439.63 from a total of 110,708 sales. Last year, the original Humble Indie Bundle earned nearly $1,275,000 while its sequel, the Humble Indie Bundle 2, earned over $1.8 Million. The latest sale launched just three days ago and currently has just under a dozen days left. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Pay-What-You-Want Game Sale Closes Totaling $1.8 Million

Drew Wilson — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 07:57:00 +0000

The Humble Indie Bundle 2, a sequel to the overwhelmingly successful Humble Indie Bundle pay-what-you-want model for selling games closed earlier this week. The sale by independent video-game developer Wolfire earned a total of $1,824,476.16, easily surpassing the previous total of $1.27 Million.

Since the sale has earned more than $1.75 million, Wolfire has said the promise made of releasing the source code of Revenge of the Titans will be kept. While Wolfire is no doubt happy with the success of the sale and fans of the sale are cheering about the success of the alternative business model for video games, there was some controversy along the way. Some have questioned whether or not such a model is sustainable - particularly for mainstream game development companies. Another criticism is whether or not such models erode the overall gaming industry. An example of this criticism is if someone is use to paying 60 dollars, sees the sale and realizes they can pay 5 dollars instead, would that erode prices and, thus, reduce the quality of video game development because people are expecting the price tag to be lower now that competition is reducing the expected cost of a video game? Personally, when I examine the criticisms towards the success of the Humble Indie Bundle, I actually think of sports. Is it typical that a football player wears pink and yellow over-sized polka dot pants and goofy goggles while playing their games? No. If it helps that player win the Super Bowl, who are people to complain about it? It's what business in a competitive market does, find something that works and benefits the company and take full advantage of it. Already, there are surveys coming out recently saying that 65% of internet users pay for content. Really, taking all of this in to account, a success is a success. If the pay-what-you-want model ultimately fails in the long run, then the market will probably either revert to the old system of paying for games or someone else will come up with something better and gamers will migrate to that method instead. In the mean time, what would it hurt to watch how these types of sales turn out and take notes? Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

ZeroPaid Interviews the Free Software Foundation

Drew Wilson — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:51:48 +0000

Open source has been in the media for quite some time whether directly or indirectly. With ACTA leak and the ASCAP letter two big news items that affects open source, we decided to sit down with the Free Software Foundation and talk about these and other things related to the open source movement.

Update: Please see note at bottom of article with regards to the use of the term "open source" There are many things happening with open source. There are big news items that effect open source such as clauses in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and, what some have called, an indirect attack coming from ASCAP through the ASCAP letter. There are also issues that go under the radar such as open source adoption. With so much happening with Open Source, we decided to sit down with Peter Brown, the Controller and Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation to get his take on various issues. What is the Free Software Foundation and how is it important to open source? The FSF is a not-for-profit foundation created in 1985 to sponsor the GNU project and promote the worldwide cause of software freedom. Free software is about having control over the technology we use in our homes, schools and businesses. Where computers work for our individual and communal benefit, not for proprietary software companies or governments who might seek to restrict and monitor us. The GNU system that we developed with the help of a worldwide community of volunteers, is in widespread use today in the form of GNU/Linux: a combination of the GNU system and a kernel written by Linus Torvalds. Open Source is a different idea. The term was created by people in the free software movement that were concerned about appealing to the CEO's of powerful corporations, who didn't care to hear about our social movement's purpose of gaining computer user freedom. Today, more people know this history and appreciate the values of software freedom. Indeed, many representatives of Open Source organizations point to the Free Software Foundation's work and recognize that our mission is the core of their purpose. You can help the cause of software freedom by not participating in the corporate process of hiding the meaning behind this movement. Please call this work free software and not open source. Remember that the system is GNU using the Linux kernel, not just Linux. These are great and simple ways to make a difference and educate others. When people think of "free", some might think, "well, that means no one is getting paid and every contribution is voluntary to an open source project." A lot of advocates of open source I spoke to personally say that this is a big misconception about open source and people, indeed, do get paid while contributing to open source in various ways. Do you agree that free doesn't equate to no one getting paid from an open source perspective? Free software is about freedom not price. The FSF itself sells disks of free software. We are perfectly happy for people to make money using free software. So think about your freedom, not about making or spending money. Free software values mean no spying on your activities. Free software values mean no DRM (digital restrictions). Free software values mean no locked down devices. Free software values means sharing with your friends, making copies and learning about free software from studying the source code of the software you use--if you want to. A while ago, ASCAP issued a letter attacking various user rights organizations and, curiously, Creative Commons. They said that "copyleft" is undermining their "copyright". While Creative Commons responded saying that these claims are false and copyleft isn't undermining copyright because Creative Commons, in fact, is a copyright license. Some people took ASCAPs comments as being an indirect attack on open source, maybe because open source is viewed as part of the copyleft movement. First of all, do you feel that you are part of the copyleft movement? Secondly, do you think ASCAPs attack on Creative Commons was also an indirect attack on open source as well? Finally, what's your take on the ASCAP letter? The concept of copyleft was created by our founder and president Richard Stallman. The world's most popular copyleft software license is the GNU GPL--a software license published by the Free Software Foundation. So in fact we represent the founders of the copyleft movement. But we should be clear about what copyleft is. Copyleft is a technique that Stallman created to prevent free software from becoming proprietary software. It depends on copyright law, and it is composed of a set of permissions that the copyright holder grants to the user. It is not anti-copyright, though the FSF and many other organizations take the position that copyright laws have become to strict and overly broad and need major reform. ASCAP doesn't like these views because they conflict with their purpose: making as much money as possible off the back of our shared cultural heritage. The topic of software patents, as much as I can tell, has always been a very controversial topic for those in the open source movement. How can software patents, in your view, undermine the open source movement and, more broadly, undermine software development and society as well? Many corporations who represent Open Source love software patents because they own so many of them themselves. The free software movement rejects the very idea of software patents. Please watch the recent documentary film we sponsored Patent Absurdity. Advocates of software patents might argue, "Hey look, patents allows us to secure jobs and money for various companies and to be against software patents is an extreme position to be in that would hurt jobs." How would you respond to criticisms such as this? That the economic evidence doesn't support that finding. In fact, the evidence makes clear that software patents are a drag on the US economy as a whole and are a deep threat to all other nations if software patents get adopted internationally. The FSF sponsors a campaign against software patents and we present all the evidence about the harm that software patents inflict, including economic at EndSoftPatents.org. ACTA recently made its way in the media with news of its more recent leak. Do you think ACTA could potentially harm the open source movement? If so, in what ways is ACTA in its current form harmful for open source and software development? Again, many corporations that support Open Source have been silent on ACTA. The Free Software Foundation has spoken out against ACTA and is promoting a petition. ACTA encourages spying on computer users. It encourages internationalization of DRM schemes and harmful laws like the DMCA. It makes citizens wary of sharing, when sharing is what we want to encourage with free software. ACTA is simply another gift from paid-for law makers to an industry that hates technology that empowers citizens. Open source has popped up in the news here and there in fairly impressive ways. Different corporate and government organizations have made announcements over the years that they are switching to open source solutions. How positive are these types of announcements for the open source movement? Could you name a few particularly memorable announcements of organizations switching to open source? Many organizations are wary of announcing their use of free software, because proprietary software corporations like Microsoft show up to threaten and abuse them. They did this in Massachusetts when the State tried to adopt a policy of using Open Document Format. They did this to the One Laptop Per Child program when they were promoting their use of GNU/Linux. But Microsoft's power is waning, so more news is reaching the public. CERN's large Hadron Collider depends on GNU/Linux. The US armed forces have stated their dependence on free software for weapons systems. The NYSE trading platform is GNU/Linux based, and many other trading systems use free software. The White House uses Drupal for its website. And Wikipedia is served up using only free software. The list of high profile users is getting to be a long list. I personally have spoken to someone from within government who says that the big dissuading factor of an organization switching to open source is liability. The example I was given was if, say, Microsoft screws something up, a company can be blamed. If an open source product messes up, where does the blame go? How can open source overcome perceptions like that to help get more people to use open source solutions? Are there other perceptions from, say, businesses that you would like to lay to rest? If Microsoft screws something up it's just another day in the life of a proprietary software user. Microsoft isn't about to cut you a check to make it all better again. Having Microsoft to blame doesn't help you. Most organizations that use free software use a vendor who offers support and services. Free software makes it possible for anyone to get into the business of offering these services because the software gives you that freedom. It's great for local economies. Some people only know proprietary software. An example is someone saying, "hey, I know Microsoft enough to use it, why should I make this big leap to open source when all I want to do is get from point A to B." Open source, though, isn't solely tied to operating systems though. What would you say to that person if you wanted them to use more open source technology and where should that person go to find out about open source? Go to FSF.org to get an introduction and a pathway to using more free software. Using free software is great. But understanding and appreciating the values of free software is more important. That's why you should reject the term Open Source. What the FSF wants to talk about and what we want to pass on to your readers is an understanding of why it matters that you have software freedom. Why it's important for our society to build its future on a technology that we can control and that serves our interests. Think about the alternative future where free software doesn't succeed. Where a hand-full of proprietary software companies thus control all access to the internet. Where spying on your computing activities is assured. Where copying digital media files is prevented by pervasive DRM schemes. Where you're forced to do your computing on a corporation's servers: often referred to as cloud computing, or as we know it, complete spying. Where your rights that are lawful cannot be expressed because the software you use prevents you from undertaking those legal activities. And where competition is allowed to be stifled because these same corporations have collected thousands of software patents that prevent anyone else from changing the rules of the game. These examples may seem extreme, but companies like Microsoft and Apple are busy pursuing these outcomes and lobbying your government to help them. Is there anything you would like to add? Keep up to date by subscribing to receive the Free Software Supporter newsletter and alerts. Volunteer for us. There are many jobs to be done and you don't have to be a coder. The FSF receives the bulk of its funding from its Associate Members. You can become a member for $10 a month ($5 students) or donate at FSF.org.jf Happy Hacking! --- We would like to thank Peter Brown of the Free Software Foundation for taking the time to sit down and answer our questions. UPDATE - Important Note: This interview was conducted via e-mail where the questions were sent all at once and I received the answers all at once. Up until the interview, I didn't know the term "open source" was, in and of itself, a poor term for some. So for those concerned that I insisted on using the term "open source", this wasn't really meant to come off this way and I apologize for that. This interview was meant to be educational to the general public and it was even educational to me since I'm not as involved with free software as I am with general file-sharing, technology and even free speech. Rest assured, I got the message. For all intents and purposes, this interview is already doing its job of informing. Thank you for your concerns. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Humble Indie Bundle Closes on a High Note

Drew Wilson — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:17:49 +0000

It was a deal that had plenty of people talking. A "Pay What You Want" deal was launched a while ago now and the sale is now over. The results are definitely great.

The deal would last a little over a week. A pack of games for whatever the price you set. In the first 24 hours, the Humble Indie Bundle managed to get a little over a quarter of a million dollars. Since our initial report, the story spread like wildfire and the deal scored over a million dollars in less than a week - thus beating out, well, everyone's expectations. The deal was extended, but is now closed and the results are just as impressive as our earlier reports. The deal earned a grand total of nearly $1,275,000 dollars with close to 140,000 contributors pitching in. While we previously reported that the pot was sweetened, that wasn't the only things that were happening during the sale. On the back of the bundle's overwhelming success, Wolfire also made a couple of their games open-sourced. One of those games that went open source was Lugaru and within hours of the release of the source code, a patch was released by someone which allowed Windows users to play the game (not previously possible). If this taught anyone anything, it's that respecting your fans can yield positive results. Instead of putting DRM all over games, Wolfire took the opposite rout and open sourced some of their games and let people set the price and the results were amazing. One things for sure, these developers actually "got it" and did what other developers seem to think would never be possible, let alone successful. One can only hope that this experience can help set a more positive future for other game developers. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

‘Pay What You Want’ Indie Game Sale Breaks Million Dollar Barrier

Drew Wilson — Wed, 12 May 2010 04:27:46 +0000

Last week, we reported on a so-called crazy idea of a sale where customers set the price of a pack of video games. This crazy idea has now earned over 1 million dollars.

In the first 24 hours of the Humble Indie Bundle got over a quarter of a million. Today was suppose to be the last day of the sale, and we caught up with how the sale is doing today. The sale is, as of this writing, a hair shy of $1.1 million. The sale has since been extended by three days. A fair bit has changed about the sale between then and now. Since the sale began, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sweetened the deal by offering special memberships and swag for those who donate $100 or more for the bundle (in whatever style donator's choose). Another thing that has changed since the launch of the sale was the addition of a fifth game, Samorost 2. To say developers are happy would be an understatement. Wolfire said, "The Humble Indie Bundle experiment has been a massive success beyond our craziest expectations." "So far," Wolfire added, "in just over 7 days, 120,399 generous contributors have put down an incredible $1,097,310. Of this, contributors chose to allocate 30.96% to charity: $339,778 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play Charity." There was some criticism along the way from there to here as well. "Unpacking the actual numbers behind piracy is often difficult," Ben Kuchera of Arstechnica wrote, "but Wolfire has been incredibly transparent about its numbers. The result is strong evidence that no matter what steps developers take, piracy will still be an issue." Wolfire did offer some statistics on people pirating the game anyway, but it's worth pointing out that big companies constantly argue that they are losing big revenue due to piracy. At this point, this no longer obscure game developer is, as seen by other comments from Wolfire, thrilled by the success of the sale. It renders the argument that the Indie Bundle is being pirated pretty much a moot point. Even if piracy had an impact on the sale, it's to increase the exposure of the developer in the first place. Hundreds of thousands of people know about Wolfire now - it's the kind of publicity that costs other companies millions in marketing and these guys pretty much did it for free. That also means an increase in loyal future customers that Wolfire didn't have before the sale. An invaluable thing particularly for a smaller independent gaming company. It's next to impossible to find anything negative about this sale and it's next to impossible not to find anything positive about the sale. The sale allowed anyone to set the price for the game package. People could also choose where the money went - be it all going to the developers, all going to the different charities involved or divided up however the user wants. It will be interesting to see how much more of a success this sale will be by the time the sale does come to a close. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Apple Rumoured to Be Preparing to Sue Open Source Codec Developers

Drew Wilson — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:22:18 +0000

An e-mail reportedly from Steve Jobs has recently surfaced which suggests that Apple may be preparing to sue Theora and other open source video codecs. The dispute would revolve around patent laws.

It's been one wild weekend in news so far and the craziness doesn't seem to be stopping. An e-mail has been posted by Hugo Roy of the Free Software Foundation. According to CNET, the e-mail was in response to an open letter by Roy which disagreed with the use of proprietary video codecs. Steven Jobs issued a response:

All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.

Apparently, suing open source isn't for SEO anymore. One might be puzzled as to why, after all these years of open source video codecs have been around, has Apple chosen to litigate open source now? CNET suggests that Apple and Microsoft have been rolling out HTML5 and h.264 would be part of the HTML5 strategy. It's not hard to see that litigation might be a way of removing the competition. The case has its similarities to the way file-sharing has played out in the US. Business entities saw the potential of file-sharing, but litigation saw the end to the business side of file-sharing. That didn't mean the end of file-sharing, rather file-sharing moved further underground with many developers opening up the source code to their clients to ensure the clients would live on. The jump from over ground to underground wouldn't be as huge given that the codecs are already open source. The only difference is that development would move further underground should patent disputes occur. One could easily draw the conclusion that, with the way things are going, it'll eventually be illegal to even give your own content away for free. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Open Source Alternatives for X Professional Software

Drew Wilson — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:29:12 +0000

The Open Source movement has always been present. Whether proprietary software seems to be gaining ground or not, open source has always been a very enticing alternative. The problem has been, how do people know whether an open source alternative exists or not? Here’s two websites that hope to change that.

If a user is sick and tired of some of the flaws of, say, Internet Explorer and they want to turn to an Open Source solution, the easy goto browser for surfing is FireFox hands down. In fact, FireFox does have what very few open source solutions have – a household name that most know about. Chances are, someone who knows someone who knows someone at the very least either knows or uses the famed browser. What about alternatives to, say, AutoCAD or Adobe Illustrator? That might be a bit more difficult to find.

Wouldn’t it make sense to have a website devoted specifically to having a directory of well known proprietary software and list all the open source alternatives? Actually, there are a handful of sites that do that sort of thing.

Open Source as Alternative or OSALT.com is one of those websites. You can simply type in their search bar something like Adobe Illustrator, then browse a list that appears to have some of the latest Adobe products, click on the software you are looking for, scroll past the description and you can have a short list of open source projects that is similar to the software you are looking for. For this example, we were able to find InkScape which appears, based on the description, to be a nice vector editing software that is open source and a potential alternative to Adobe illustrator. The page contains a right hand bar with a link directly to the Inkscape home page. It seems to be quite a handy website for those who are hoping to switch to open source.

Another website that tries to fit the bill for an open source alternative directory is Downloadpedia’s Open Source Alternative to Commercial Software page. Fittingly, it’s in a Wiki format which allows users to contribute to the site. It probably needs some help given how huge the page in question is, but one can simply use their browser to quickly search through the page. In FireFox, one can click on Edit, then Find and type in on that website, say, “AutoCAD”. The page points to two pieces of software and links directly to their home pages. One of those is BRL-CAD.

One of the problems with open source software like this is that design schools tend to teach the proprietary software rather than the free versions. This can mean that users who want to get over the learning curve of either choice either have instructor help with proprietary software or face their problems more or less on their own with the open source solutions. When it comes to open source and facing the problems on ones own, users aren’t actually on their own. YouTube have hundreds of thousands of tutorials on different pieces of software and open source is no exception.

Simply go to YouTube and, going back to the first example of InkScape, type in YouTube’s search for Inkscape tutorial. This specific example reveals a number of tutorials on the software in question.

Open Source provides an excellent opportunity for students because basic terms, in design for example, never change. A stroke will always be a stroke, measurements will be in picas, pixels, inches, etc. and layers will be layers. If one were to think about signing up for a program, even if they were to be learning Adobe Illustrator for example, learning the open source alternative even if it is for general purposes will really help understand fundamental principles in a given design project. The interface will no doubt be different and there will still be that learning curve, but that curve will more than likely shrink when one knows about the general ideas of design through learning the open source software.

There’s always the classic arguments for businesses to switch to open source alternatives such as it cuts down significantly on overhead costs. How much does it cost to upgrade over 100 machines to the latest software and properly license it? Wouldn’t it be great if it was possible to remove that cost? It certainly wouldn’t be very possible for the BSA to be coming after a given business for using legally free software.

Of course, such changes would never happen overnight – if at all. Still, that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t be aware of alternatives in the first place and it’s great that there are resources out there that will point a user in the right direction should that user choose to give open source a try.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

New Zealand – Green Party Pushes for Open WiFi Internet and End to Software Patents

Jorge Gonzalez — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:28:39 +0000

It seems that one political party in New Zealand has some bold plans for the future of New Zealand’s technology sector.

There’s an interesting report over on Stuff which suggests that one of the political parties of New Zealand, namely the Green Party, is pushing for bold plans for New Zealand’s technological future. The policy as released by MP Metiria Turei says that, among other things, it would exclude software from the patent process and investigate the possibility of a free municipally owned wireless network.

The report suggests that this move follows up an earlier move to get government desktop computers moved over from Microsoft’s Windows to open sourced solution Linux. From the report:

Centre systems manager Jason Horncy says it is “very satisfied” with its decision in 2003 to install Linux on the 120 desktop PCs in its 25 regional offices and on most PCs in its head office. It previously used Microsoft Windows on its desktops but moved all its main systems, including servers, to open source software at the same time.

The fact that the latest policy calls for a greater expansion on the use of open source seems to highlight another positive news story for the open content community. Last week, the open content community in the United States effectively won, at this point, a key legal battle which makes open “artistic licenses” like GPL and Creative Commons subject to copyright law. The more open source is adopted, the better for the open source community.

This isn’t the first positive move out of New Zealand. When New Zealand reformed it’s copyright laws, some, at first, thought the country caved to US copyright industry pressure. However, a closer look revealed that while some aspects are distasteful, it also demonstrated generally acceptable flexibility when it comes to Digital Rights Management (DRM).

This certainly makes it easy to be excited over what could be in store for the people of New Zealand, but the idea of an open WiFi network (should the government try for city-wide WiFi) has been attempted a couple of times without success. In the United States (specifically Portland), a company called MetroFi attempted to set up a city-wide WiFi network. Unfortunately, the network failed to reach completion due to money related issues. Attempts to sell the network also failed and the city may end up spending $60,000 to remove. In Canada, in preparation for the 2010 Olympics, there were plans to set up a city-wide WiFi network, but the last news bit was back at the beginning of 2007 where Vancouver police said it would attract global crime. There hasn’t been any developments on the subject, that we are aware of, since. If New Zealand is successful, they may be the first to implement such an undertaking successfully, but previous attempts elsewhere suggest that it may not happen.

As for software patents, the history of software patents is complicated. There’s very good reason to exclude software from patents. The EFF’s Patent Busting project has some great examples of why software shouldn’t be included in the patent system. Some of these examples: patent on VoIP, patent for online gaming and the patent on encoding digital music.

While there are great examples that justify the idea of excluding software from the patent system, there is probably already a good deterrent to keep software out of the patent system already. Typically, a patent involves submitting information on how such a thing works. Since most commercial companies aren’t willing to give up the source code, software is usually copyrighted and not patented because copyright doesn’t require details on how it works to be submitted.

The Green party, judging by the report, is mainly interested in ending monopolies. Of course, it points to Microsoft as a great example of this. If this is what the Green party intends to do, it is easy to understand why they want to make such bold moves. ISPs have notoriously held on to a comfortable oligopoly in many countries. Patents are specifically designed to give certain people or companies a monopoly over an idea. Windows Operating Systems are overwhelmingly dominant in the Operating System industry.

While it may be difficult to actually follow through on these bold plans, there are no doubt plenty who wish them the best of luck regardless.

BitTorrent Democratic TV App Miro Upgrades to Version 1.2

Jorge Gonzalez — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:25:14 +0000

A major update to the Miro software has occurred this evening. The open sourced democratic TV software has upgraded to 1.2 which features many upgrades and bug fixes.

“We’ve just released a major update to Miro, version 1.2″ The announcement says, “This version adds lots of tweaks and bug fixes that make Miro smoother and slicker. It also lays the groundwork for some big improvements that are coming soon.”

The release notes (Google Cache for those who have as much trouble loading the page) contain the following improvements:

Update to VLC 0.8.6e (which fixes a security flaw in vlc)
Reorganization of frontend / backend (with cool implications for developers)
Separate preferences to control manual and automatic simultaneous downloads.

There was also a number of bug fixes including:

global preference to control autodownload settings
A preference to set torrent upload ratios
All revver searches return 0 results.
DailyMotion? videos downloads give File Not Found errors
Can’t Minimize to Task Bar via task bar on First run
An extra directory level for downloaded torrents

Miro implements many things including the BitTorrent protocol which is known for efficiently distributing large files to users. Miro suggested that shows such as Democracy Now! could save thousands (in this case, $1000 a month) in bandwidth costs by implementing the BitTorrent technology.

There is high hopes for applications such as Miro given that the CBC has already announced it’s plans to distribute TV shows such as “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” through BitTorrent. The hope is that this first step by a major TV broadcaster would open the floodgates to many North American broadcasters to follow suit.

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