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State Of Open Source In 2003 Reviewed
uninet writes "Open for Business' latest Year-in-Review article regarding GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source Software is up here. Things that made our list of notable occurrences include (not surprisingly) SCO's legal issues, MandrakeSoft's financial problems, our product pick of the year (Shuttle XPC SB62G2) and many more small and large items of note. For an interesting look back, you can find previous Slashdot coverage of OfB Year in Review articles here (2002) and here (2001)."
They mention Fedora Core 1, but I believe that the support and distro changes RH made this year are a VERY significant event for OSS. Regardless of whether you think that it was a good thing, it was definitely a BIG thing.
"Real, whose aging Real Player for UNIX has fallen far behind its Windows and Mac OS X counterparts, announced the Helix Player project that would produce a new, Free Software client for a wide array of media files. While the actual Real codec will remain proprietary, the client will also support many Free Software formats, such as Ogg Vorbis."
*sigh* Who thinks the Helix Player will be just as bloated as Real Player?
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
I think 2004 is going to be a bumper year for open source (and Linux, in particular) thanks to the advances made in 2003. Linux is finally a term that is recognized by many businesses, and the concept of 'open source' is invading even the most stoic of companies. More developers than ever are joining the ranks (although many only because they're out of work, unfortunately), and there are lots of cool projects.
;-) And perhaps he'll stop using Welsh only on his diary. And as discussed over at KernelTrap, Reiser4 may also be merged into 2.6, although this is not certain, and may be merged into 2.7 first for further testing.
Mike Home, who works on Wine, posted a great summary of planned open source developments in 2004, mentioning Wine's continuing development (0.9 should be out in 2004), and planned leaps in KDE and GNOME. GNOME will finally get a full and stable version of Epiphany, too.
Development continues on Perl 6 and the Parrot virtual machine, and I am particularly interested in the development of Dashboard, a GNOME 'just in time' information manager project created by Nat Friedman, of Ximian fame.
Alan Cox should have his MBE this year, er, MBA, rather
So, what do YOU see happening in open source in 2004? Fill us in on what you plan to do, and why 2004 is going to be a bumper year for open source, Linux, and all. What technologies are going to spring up this time around?
My new years resolution: 1280x1024
*sigh* I fail to understand why so many people have trouble grasping this.
The operating system is the lowest level software api that abracts the software from the hardware. Therefore the operating system is Linux. The Linux operating system includes absolutely no gnu software whatsoever. It doesn't even require an equivelent to the function of any gnu software. You don't name the operating system after software which runs on it. Even if you lived in some twisted world in which you did, it would be "Linux OS that happens to be bundled with some gnu software and other things"
When you bundle software with the Linux operating system (in the case of linux the kernel is the operating system, in the case of some microkernel systems there are more players), it's called a "Distribution", the distribution is named by whoever puts it together and distributes it.
Exactly where does Eric Stallman come in? At what point exactly does he suddenly have right to rename the linux operating system or any particular distribution?
Even if your one of those oddballs who believes that an "operating system" includes applications which run on what is actually the operating system (including all the GNU utils that ESR grumbles about), you have GNU software, which can exist independent of the Linux kernel, in which case the end result is NOT linux. And you have the Linux kernel, which can exist completely independently of any GNU software. In which case you DO still have a linux operating system.
Most people load GNU untils on Solaris, will ESR be contacting Sun and advising them they should change the name to GNU/Solaris next? Or how about BSD, is it no longer BSD if alot of people run GNU software on it and suddenly it should be called GNU BSD?