Archive for the ‘open source’ Category
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Is it illegally anticompetitive for Google to give schools Google Apps for free?
Today a French court ruled that Google has broken the law by providing the Google Maps API for free. While this may seem like an extreme ruling it is based on the fact that Google used to offer the service for free then began charging once all of their competition had been beaten into submission. I wonder if Google are trying to do the same with schools and Google Apps?
Microsoft and Google have been caught out doing predatory pricing on quite a few occasions in the past. Essentially predatory pricing is where you provide a service for free then after a period of time (Usually once all of your competitors have been destroyed) you start charging for this service. Companies accomplish this “scam” by providing propriety software, propriety software is basically software that can only be provided by one company. I am constantly warning the schools of the risks of investing in propriety standards and I’m sure that nearly all of my readers are tired of me beating on this drum… In this case I think the court actually got it wrong.
Google Docs doesn’t thwart our ability to develop PrimaryPad, PrimaryBlogger or SchoolEmail further, it’s obviously that Google Docs does affect our bottom line but we develop PrimaryPad because we believe in our products and in we know that our contributions towards Etherpad and an open standard for collaborative writing on the web will ultimately be the winner of the war. Remember folks.. Good customer service and open standards always win.
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Being part of an open source project isn’t just for geeks.
Since 2009 I have been working on an open source project, the project is called Etherpad and it’s goal is to provide an open collaborative document editing platform. When I first “joined up” I thought I could just help by fixing bugs and writing guides about how to deploy the software but this role quickly evolved.
I found myself taking on various roles and I thought I should share how diverse open-source projects are and the skills required in the hope to encourage more people to get involved even if your background isn’t in programming or software development.
Community and awareness
Maintain the project website
Organize community events
Watch out for etherpad mentions on social networks and via web based alerts(Such as Google alerts)
Promote community awareness via social networks, video sharing websites.
Engage with new developers to encourage them to join the cause
Provide accomodation for community events
Create explanitory and tutorial videos
Establish relationships with competing projects
Ensure the project can recieve donationsDevelopment
Provide anonymous usage statistics about software usage
Provide a framework for development focused discussions
Decide on the project goals and mission statement
Develop the project, programming and graphics design
Review code submissions
Test new codeCompliance
Ensure legal compliance
Organize conservancy membership -
Could an Android update be the reason you replace your next TV?
Ever owned an android phone that has been late to receive an Android update crippling some functionality? It is pretty frustrating. Your TV may have same issue. In the future when a new great game is released and the only way you will be able to play it is by getting an entire new TV. Google apologize because an update for your TV is not available due to Android hardware restrictions. Sony point at Google. Sony win because you buy another TV.
Sony’s new TV potential poses this exact problem, it runs Google Android and it is speculated that it has the same processor as the Motorola Droid. I’m a big fan of Smart TV as a whole, I just hope that Google / Sony were smart enough to allow modular upgrades of the Android device.
It would be awesome if the big TV players could develop an open standard so other operating systems, not just Android could leverage the warm glowing screen in our living rooms. It will also be interesting to see if any camera functionality is build in for video conferencing and for Kinect like control.
Sony you are in charge here, make it open and the community will do the rest. Note: Please no comments about Android being O/S. I know it is, but that doesn’t mean there is choice if the TV platform is closed.
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Installing the NRPE client, daemon and nagios plugins on debian
We assuming have already configured nrpe on your nagios box and you are sudo’d/root
Steps:
adduser nagios (set the password)
cd /home/nagios
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nrpe-2.12.tar.gz
* If this step fails visit http://www.nagios.org/download/addons for the latest URLtar -zxvf nrpe-2.8.tar.gz
cd nrpe-2.12
apt-get install gcc gawk openssl
apt-get install make
apt-get install libssl-dev
apt-get install nagios-plugins
./configure
make all
make install-plugin
make install-daemon
make install-daemon-config
echo “only_from = 0.0.0.1″ >> /usr/local/nagios/etc/nrpe.cfg
* Remember to replace 0.0.0.1 with your the IP address of your nagios servercp init-script.debian /etc/init.d/nrpe
chmod 700 /etc/init.d/nrpe
/etc/init.d/nrpe startYou may want to make this script run on start up
update-rc.d nrpe defaults -
So tempted to iPhone bash!
Modifying etherpad source today and needed to change this line
“PrimaryPad is not yet fully-functional on the iPhone.”
So tempted to Change it to..
“PrimaryPad is not yet fully-functional on the iPhone. Ha!”
Or..“PrimaryPad is not yet fully-functional on the iPhone. Looks like you don’t fully respect open source!”But of course Etherpad isn’t fully-functional on the Android yet neither
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