software

These days there is a software library for nearly every occasion. Many of them are well designed and well implemented. Unfortunately, almost none of them have documentation presented in a way that allows a new user to quickly understand the basics and put it to work effectively. » Read more

A second great year on opensource.com has proven even more that openness can improve just about anything. No matter what you're interested in, we've had a story for you. A few examples: » Read more

Where does open source come from? » Read more

The scientific method: it all starts with a simple, essential question. How can you "know" something?

How can we gather knowledge and have confidence in the correctness of such knowledge? The lucubration of many smart minds over the centuries came to refine the following: » Read more

Software tools for collaboration and project management are the best solutions when you aim to unite the team, tune up the work flow, exchange experiences, etc. With all the available collaboration software, either desktop- or web-based, proprietary or open source, one might consider that such tools are the pandemic panacea for teams of all kinds. But collaboration software has several other advantages.

What I noticed about collaboration systems » Read more

Google Health was doomed from the start.

It was based on a legal fallacy and a technical one. » Read more

Academics - students and teachers both - often want to know what open source community participation will "count" for. Course credit? Research and publication? Better tools to increase efficiency? Teaching? Presentation opportunities?

The answer is "yes." » Read more

Usually when Facebook comes up at opensource.com, it's because they've done something that's very much the opposite of open. But a blog post on FrameThink this week showed Facebook's more open side. » Read more

GROUND LAB is a research and development company focused on designing and fabricating prototypes and solutions for a wide range of clients, ranging from large organizations like UNICEF to smaller NGOs, conservationists and artists. We use the open source approach in our development not only for the benefits and context described previously, but also for the advantages it provides for our clients. » Read more

About five years ago I was hired by a software company that specialized in database security. Some of our software was used to protect databases in military assets and major banks. But a lot of development was very remote from top-secret weapons or classified information. For example, we wrote a small command line utility for driving virtual machines for integration testing. It helped us eradicate failures during installs and upgrades. Was I going to have to write that again at my next job? How could I share it with my friends working at other organizations? » Read more