O'Reilly News & Commentary

Computerization in Nilekani's Imagining India

By Andy Oram
September 2, 2009

Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation promises to occupy a central position in discussions about India as well as the world economy this year. Author Nandan Nilekani can speak with quite a bit of authority on computers, having founded and led Infosys, an early success story in modern Indian commerce and a major player in the historic rise of outsourcing. Particularly relevant to this blog are the book's observations on computers' role in the economy and society.

Five projects for Open Source for America, and other reports from the Open Source convention

By Andy Oram
July 24, 2009

A group of companies and projects announced Open Source for America at the O'Reilly Open Source convention on Wednesday. I already have five projects they could take on.

Maybe software services could harm free software after all (and other news from the Open Source convention)

By Andy Oram
July 23, 2009

Opening dispatch from OSCon: another look at the effects of Software as a Service on opens source plus awards, APIs, and more.

Community Leadership Summit thrills over 200 attendees

By Andy Oram
July 20, 2009

An unconference such as the Community Leadership Summit 2009 feels like one of those long, lingering meals you can enjoy with friends in a fine European restaurant, full of lively conversation. Or an intense experience like an arts festival, which perhaps suggests why one participant at the end of the Community Leadership Summit suggested it be held in conjunction with South by Southwest instead of the O'Reilly Open Source convention.

Cloud computing perspectives and questions at the World Economic Forum

By Andy Oram
July 10, 2009

The World Economic Forum started a research project at Davos 2009 concerning cloud computing, which they broadly define to include all kinds of remote services, from Software as a Service to virtual machines.

Results from Wolfram Alpha: All the Questions We Ever Wanted to Ask About Software as a Service

By Andy Oram
May 8, 2009

Software as a Service, known in earlier decades as Application Service Providers, upends the relationship between computer users and software. I'm seriously tempted to say that Wolfram Alpha takes the SaaS model to its extreme. So Wolfram Alpha's chances at scaling the heights of fame should force us to stop for a moment and run our own calculations concerning the value to us of data integrity, reliability, privacy, and innovation.

MySQL 2009 conference wrap-up: news flash about Flash and other notes from the experts

By Andy Oram
April 24, 2009

MySQL conference wrap-up: Flash, cloud computing, managing large installations, the value of community, and how to fumble your way to winning the presidency.

MySQL conference begins: the resurgence of InnoDB and other current events

By Andy Oram
April 23, 2009

I sense a bigger enterprise theme at the MySQL conference this year. The pride of putting up a PHP- or Rails-backed web site lies in the past; now people are concerned with scaling into the clouds (figuratively and literally) and ensuring absolute reliability.

Challenges from a book sprint: the great things about ignorance and disorder

By Andy Oram
March 24, 2009

I tried to write a conventional computer manual in two days, and the experience has made me reconsider the conventions of computer manuals. The computer field is still in the kindergarten stage of exploring serious questions of how people learn, questions at the center of psychology and pedagogy for many decades. Even those disciplines don't quite get it, because they're fumbling with the instant messaging culture that gives us so many more tools today for learning together.

From Open Source Software to Open Culture: Three Misunderstandings

By Andy Oram
March 23, 2009

The original practice and promise of open source software is unique. The software experience cannot be ported whole-hog into other areas such as sharing songs or organizing public forums. It's worth looking at what goes into creating open source software, and what unique traits of software make the open source process work well there.

Regarding three economic advantages of Open Source

By Andy Oram
December 8, 2008

William Hurley recently posted an article titled Three Reasons Open Source Will Save The Economy one a new weblog of his.

New MySQL Query Analyzer for enterprise customers

By Andy Oram
November 19, 2008

MySQL AB (now Sun's Database group) established a multi-pronged business model long ago: support contracts, dual licensing, and proprietary add-ons all play a role in making them one of the biggest success stories in the area of open source business. Today their MySQL Query Analyzer adds another brick to that edifice. The analyzer can do simple things such as tell you how long a recent query took and how the optimizer handled it (the results of EXPLAIN statements). But it can also give historical information such as how the current runs of a query compare to earlier runs.

The Sine Qua Non of the Free Desktop

By chromatic
October 16, 2008

Pundits of all kinds love to preach that the free desktop needs this feature or that software to succeed. They may be right for certain audiences, but they often miss the single essential feature which gives free desktops an amazing evolutionary edge.

Does Hacking Closed Hardware Hinder Open Hardware?

By chromatic
October 8, 2008

I'm profoundly uncomfortable purchasing devices which, by default, do not provide the freedoms I desire. I'm starting to believe it works against my desire for open, unencumbered hardware.

Vector Linux SOHO Is Free Again

By Caitlyn Martin
September 29, 2008

After stripping away the marketing hype the net result is that SOHO is once again free. I also have to wonder if there was some push back from the community when SOHO, which was free for download when version 5.8 was current, was moved to a paid-only status.

How PowerTOP, LatencyTOP, and Five-Second Boot Improve Desktop Linux

By chromatic
September 24, 2008

Arjan van de Ven is a Linux kernel hacker and the author of PowerTOP and LatencyTOP. His goal is to fix problems in the Linux desktop to save power, respond more smoothly, and to run faster. This interview explains how.

Avoiding Downstream Eddies in Free Software

By chromatic
September 23, 2008

Recent discussions about who contributes to the Linux ecosystem have singled out certain companies as freeriders. That almost makes, but misses a greater point: it's their responsibility to contribute to the health of upstream projects.

No EULA for Mozilla Firefox

By chromatic
September 17, 2008

Mitchell Baker of Mozilla reports that they have revised their decision to include a EULA-like notification in the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution. The debate over Mozilla's decision reveals two important debates in the free software world.

Firefox EULA: Free as in ...?

By James Turner
September 16, 2008

Everyone seems to be in a huff about the EULA that Mozilla is displaying when you start Firefox under Ubuntu. There are even calls to pull Firefox out of the distribution altogether. But in reality, it's a tempest in a teapot, a waste of valuable energy, and harmfully divisive. Here's why.

How copyright got to its current state (Patry blog ending)

By Andy Oram
August 14, 2008

William Patry, one of the most respected online commentators on copyright, has shut down his weblog. It so happens that copyright is a major subject covered in a book recently released by O'Reilly, Van Lindberg's Intellectual Property and Open Source A Practical Guide to Protecting Code. This blog continues with a brief statement by Van about Patry's decision, then a brief statement of my own, and finally an excerpt from Van's book about how copyright got to the state it's in, an excerpt I hope you'll enjoy and learn from.

How copyright got to its current state (Paltry blog ending)

By Andy Oram
August 7, 2008

William Patry, one of the most respected online commentators on copyright, has shut down his weblog. It so happens that copyright is a major subject covered in a book recently released by O'Reilly, Van Lindberg's Intellectual Property and Open Source A Practical Guide to Protecting Code. This blog continues with a brief statement by Van about Patry's decision, then a brief statement of my own, and finally an excerpt from Van's book about how copyright got to the state it's in, an excerpt I hope you'll enjoy and learn from.

How Steve Jobs Plans to Eat Firefox (and why I'm not getting an iPhone)

By chromatic
July 29, 2008

When Steve Jobs implied he wants Safari to take over as the world's dominant browser, I thought he meant on the desktop. I was wrong; it took an iPhone app to make me realize free software needs to move into new ecosystems to help users take control of their computing and their data.

Open Source convention wrap-up (2008)

By Andy Oram
July 25, 2008

The computer industry is certainly not recession-proof, but the Open Source convention that's just wrapping up had more attendees than last year (we were up to about 2000), and discussions about starting businesses based on open source seemed to take place everywhere. And I don't mean just free software: open source concepts apply to hardware, creative content, and other materials. Big topics included virtualization and the next stage of virtualization: cloud computing. Perhaps those are the practitioner's solution to multicores.

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