apache

OSI is changing, and you can help! I spoke at FOSDEM in Brussels on Saturday on behalf of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), where I serve as a director. My noon keynote covered a little of the rationale behind OSI and a quick synopsis of its last decade from my own perspective and then announcements on OSI's behalf about the work we’re doing to make OSI strong and relevant for a new decade. » Read more

Yesterday The Apache Software Foundation Blog posted "Open Letter to the Open Document Format Ecosystem" regarding the current state and future of OpenOffice.org, an open source project that has had a challenging year. Both it and LibreOffice released their 3.3 versions in January. Then in April, Oracle announced it would no longer offer commercial support for OpenOffice.org. In June, Oracle donated OpenOffice.org to The Apache Software Foundation. » Read more

Micheal Tiemann, Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, moderated our October 2011 Open Your World Forum webcast with Clay Shirky. Tiemann and Shirky explored how the principles of open source are being applied to further advance our collective cognitive surplus. » Read more

Today Clay Shirky joined us for a webcast on how open source takes advantage of the "cognitive surplus"—the way we use our free time more constructively for a greater cause. » Read more

In my previous posts, I discussed the new features of the MPL and the new compatibility between MPL and other licenses. In this final post, I'll summarize a few other small details about the new MPL that may be of interest to opensource.com readers. » Read more

True confessions: I’ve been using OpenOffice since 2002 (since I started working at Red Hat, where it was mandated) and… I don’t like it (*gasp* – did he just say that?).  Yep, it’s true.  OpenOffice is just not that great of a user experience.  Microsoft Office, with all it’s bloat, is better.  Apple iWork is even better – that is -  from the perspective of an end user.  But you know what?  It doesn’t matter what I think. That’s because the real value of OpenOffice is not the end-user experience – it’s the fact that OpenOffice is a powerful, open content creation platform. » Read more

Revolution is easy. Nation building is hard.

At Gettysburg Abraham Lincoln dated this nation's founding to the Declaration of Independence. We celebrate July 4 as our national day.

Personally, though, I'm a fan of June 21. That's the day, in 1788, when New Hampshire ratified the Constitution. As it was the ninth state to do this, it was on that day that our form of government was truly established. (For those keeping score at home, that's 11 score years and, as of now, a little less than eight months.)

For Libre Office, September 29 is their Independence Day. That was the date, last year when The Document Foundation was created to fork the code base of OpenOffice.org from its corporate owner, Oracle. » Read more

Governance is the word for open source in 2011. Governance breaks down to two topics, structures and process.

The same elements that make for a stable democratic system also make for good open source governance. This doesn't mean you need a balance of powers, or a judicial branch. It means you need the rules of governance clearly stated, and a process that will allow the best ideas to get prompt action from those running the project. » Read more

What does authentic open source community governance look like? An open source community will involve many people gathering for their own independent reasons around a free software commons with source code licensed under an OSI-approved open source license. But there's more to software freedom than just the license. » Read more

Recently, fellow opensource.com writer Chris Grams remarked that our collection of articles and tips on community-building was getting rather large. Perhaps we had the material to write a set of best practices for building communities. So here’s my stab at it. » Read more