Open Source

Accounting for Vendor Lock-in

July 12, 2012

I am not an accountant.   However, as a Graham and Dodd value investor over the years, I’ve picked up some of the fundamental principles.   A key one is the Matching Principle, that revenues and expenses should be booked in a way that clarifies the underlying business performance, rather than based purely on the timing of [...]

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Gorilla Free Software Marketing, Chapter 8: Community Metrics

April 1, 2012

The Importance of Metrics Revolutionary movements require revolutionary progress.  However, at the start of a Movement, such progress may not be immediately evident to those whose views of progress have been tainted by commercial software, where progress is measured by feature enhancements, quality improvements and user satisfaction.  These are false idols and the shallow view [...]

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Ending the Symphony Fork

February 1, 2012

What is a fork? A fork is a form of software reuse.  I like your software module.  It meets some or many of my needs, but I need some additional features. When I want to reuse existing functionality from another software product, I generally have four choices: If your module is nicely designed and extensible, [...]

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First release of the Apache ODF Toolkit

January 26, 2012

The Apache ODF Toolkit 0.5 (incubating) release is now available for download.  Detailed change notes are also posted.  The ODF Toolkit is a Java library for reading, writing and creating ODF documents.  It is entirely in Java and does not require that you install a desktop editor like OpenOffice.  It operates directly on the file [...]

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An Invitation to the Apache ODF Toolkit

August 15, 2011

Perhaps overlooked in all the excitement generated by the move of OpenOffice.org to Apache was the fact that a parallel move is occurring with the ODF Toolkit.  A few weeks ago we submitted a proposal to Apache to start a new project based on the Java components that were until then hosted by the ODF [...]

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OpenOffice, LibreOffice and the Scarcity Fallacy

June 13, 2011

As you’ve probably heard, the proposal to move OpenOffice.org to the Apache Software Foundation was approved by a wide margin.  Volunteers interested in helping with this project continued to sign up, even during the 72-hour ballot, giving the project 87 members, as well as 8 experienced Apache  mentors, at the end of the vote.  The [...]

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PJ, Goodbye and Good Luck

May 10, 2011

There was a time when daggers were drawn on Linux and its demise was plotted in dark detail.  At that hour stepped out a shieldmaiden with a blog, and that blog was Groklaw.   Eight years later, we hear the news that Groklaw will cease new postings after May 16th.  My sadness in hearing this news [...]

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The Legacy of OpenOffice.org

November 7, 2010

When I hear the word “fork”, I reach for my gun.  OK.  Maybe it is not that bad.  But in the open source world, “fork” is a loaded term.  It can, of course, be an expression of a basic open source freedom.  But it can also represent “fighting words”.  It is like the way we [...]

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A Time for Decision

April 13, 2009

April 15th is Tax Day in the United States, the day by which we must file our income tax returns for 2008 and pay any balance due. The day before, April 14th, is also a day of reckoning, with another outstretched hand asking for our money. This is the day which marks the end of [...]

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Monopoly Freedom Day

January 23, 2009

Each year the Tax Foundation, a 70-year old nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C., issues a press release on Tax Freedom Day, the day in the year where the average American worker has earned enough to pay their taxes for the year. In 2008 Tax Freedom Day was April 23rd. Of course, this [...]

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