Tag Archive for 'open source'

Playing with Joomla CMS

I’m toying with migrating a friend’s HTML site built off a custom intractable CMS to Joomla.

I installed the K2, engine for Joomla just based on the fact that I use K2 for WordPress and it’s great. A weak reason to do so, I know, but one none-the-less.

It’s still too soon to comment on my initial impressions, but watch out for some opinions in true jba fashion as well as possibly a few tips also.

Okay, time for one opinion; the getting started guide is way to floral (in the literary sense) for a getting started guide. Found it incredibly annoying.

Microsoft extends community promise to ECMA C# and CLI

First seen over on monologue, Miguel writes to say that Microsoft has extended it’s Community Promise (around patents etc.) to the ECMA standardised C# and CLI components.

Quote from the announcement by Peter Galli at MS:

It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions.You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications.

The Promise applies to developers, distributors, and users of Covered Implementations without regard to the development model that created the implementations, the type of copyright licenses under which it is distributed, or the associated business model.

Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.

Full Community Promise over at Microsoft.

Note: as Miguel says in his post, mono implements a whole bunch of .Net technology above and beyond ECMA C# and CLI and those parts (ASP.Net ADO.Net etc) aren’t currently covered by this promise.

Remix videos up

So most of the ReMix videos are up. All the cool dev sessions seem to be up there, but at this point in time the panel we did doesn’t seem to have made it up.

Remix wrap up.

So I went to ReMix last Thursday and had a blast. DG and crew put on a great show.

Special thanks to Nick Hodge, for inviting me to talk at an incredibly interesting panel about Microsoft and Open Source. Really enjoyed the session and hoped all attendees did as well. The panel got a decent turn out too.

Thanks also to all the panellists;

Microsoft and Open Source sessions in the AU

I’ve previously blogged that I will be at remix this year on a panel about Microsoft and Open Source. Looking forward to doing that in a few days. It seems the guys at MS aren’t just interested in talking about it at ReMIX.

The guys (Nick Hodge and Jorke Odolphi) are also doing a series of Open Source talks around the country (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) starting on the 23rd June. I’m told the theme of the sessions is meant to be a more of a “get-to-know-you” type session, the same sort of theme as the ReMIX panel. Check it out.

Elements and Principles of Design (video for software devs)

Found this over on planet gnome.

Interesting primer video about the elements and principles of design and how the apply to software inteface components. Little long and sound quality is a little kitchen-esque but still some interesting concepts relayed relatively convincingly.

Elements & Principles of Design – Free Software from Andy Fitzsimon on Vimeo.

I’ll be on a panel at ReMIX 09

ReMIX 09 Australia

So I’ll be on a panel at ReMIX 09 titled, “Sibling Rivalry or Love: Microsoft and Open source.“.

Should be an interesting discussion, totally looking forward to it.

SVN 1.5.0 released

Slightly belated, but this note indicates SVN 1.5.0 is out. I’ve been waiting for this release so that I can get a hold of the svn merge tracking functionality, which apparently is only foundational in 1.5.0. Apparently they’ll fill out the merge tracking functionality in 1.5.1 and subsequent releases.

Pidgin video and voice on it’s way again?

I’ve been waiting for news of this for a long time. I just hope that this time it actually makes it into a mainline release of pidgin. The -vv branch of gaim, back in the day, was promised to be integrated into the mainline way back when and never happened. I’ll keep an eye out for this one.

Mysql backup extensions are open source again

As linked to all over the web, Kaj Arnö has posted a blog post explaining that the Enterprise-only backup extensions that I previously covered on this blog are now to also be available in MySQL Community. This essentailly means that the encryption and compression backup extensions be available to the open source  world.