I’m a bit behind on my open source news reading - so if you knew this already - sorry for the repeat.

Today, the #1 competitor to Digg, Condé Nast’s Reddit, says “Screw you guys, we’re going transparent”. That’s not an actual quote, but the company’s actions say that in a nutshell.

Condé Nast is opening up Reddit’s codebase to developers, your moms and dads, your pet fish, and whoever else has a computing device hooked up to the interwebs.

This announcement via DownloadSquad. On the new Reddit code page you can find more information about the secret sauce behind this social news tool.

We’ve always strived to be as open and transparent with our users as possible, and this is the next logical step. When we say ‘open-source’ we mean specifically that the code behind reddit is available to the public for download, and we’re inviting the public to submit code to help improve the site.

Reddit is unique in the social news scene in that we have a huge community of developers. It seems only natural that we give you all in that community a chance to contribute back to reddit and make it a better place for everyone. We know reddit’s success has less to do with our technology than it does with you, our community, and now we want to let our community improve our technology.

Technorati Tags: reddit

Carl Grant points us to a white-paper by Ingres, entitled ‘6 Myths About Open Source’:

It could also come in handy if you’re trying to convince a Board Member about open source and they give you a blank stare when you say “Index Data“, “Relais“, “CARE“, “LibLime” or “Equinox” but at least acknowledge they’ve heard of a company called “Ingres“. Many of the reasons Ingres cites as to why open source is a viable option for all size institutions (all the way up to enterprise level) bears striking similarity to what we’ve said in previous posts. It’s short, to the point and carries some authority. You might find it useful.

Yes! In fact that’s why I love my job so much. I get to go out and help educate librarians about what open source really is. I get to write here and I get to read all kinds of neat articles like this one on ZDNet Australia.

In April, ZDNet.com.au revealed that a number of high-profile government CIOs claimed their primary reason for not deploying open source software was a lack of support.

“For our really big core stuff, we really need the support we get. We buy the support, so we’re not likely to see massive open source right through the place,” said Centrelink CIO, John Wadeson.

Simon Phipps, chief open source officer for Sun Microsystems, argues that support for open source projects of any scale is available, and has suggested that reliance on proprietary vendors based solely on their ability to provide support is not a sound business case.

“CIOs who are thinking there’s a lack of support are probably people who are thinking solely in terms of spreading the risk over their existing infrastructure,” he said.

Phipps claimed that the “commercial strength support” available for open source is comparable with that provided by proprietary vendors. He also explained that administrators have the option of “hiring experts to join their staff”.

The fact that those who get to make decisions in our organizations aren’t educated about what open source really is is what’s stopping libraries (and other organizations) from adopting more open source applications.

When I talk to librarians, I don’t just focus on the ILS, but open source alternatives to many of the applications we use on a daily basis. I’ve had librarians tell me that they can’t use Firefox because their IT staff thinks that it’s insecure. Libraries are paying thousands of dollars for Microsoft Office licenses for public computers when they could use something like Open Office.

Matt Asay of CNET News comments on this article:

How many years has open-source been around? It’s shocking to continue to see unmitigated ignorance of the breadth and depth of open-source software and support thereof. Unfortunately, the ignorance is generally at the top of the IT hierarchy. CIOs apparently have no clue that they’re running open source in abundance, and often paying for excellent support thereof.

I guess I have a lot of work ahead of me

I’m a Mac user - but not an iPhone user. I have a .Mac account, but don’t use it much … all that said, I think this may still be of interest to those of you open source fans with iPhones or Macs. This from TechCrunch:

One of the big announcements yesterday from Apple was that it is replacing its .Mac service with MobileMe, a new service that will sync your email, contacts, calendar, photos, and files between your iPhone, Mac desktop, and a Windows PC. It will cost $99 per year. But if you want most of the functionality of MobileMe without the cost, you will be able to download an app from Funambol at the official iPhone App Store on July 11 that does many of the same things.

Funambol offers open-source mobile syncing software for email, contacts and calendars. It works with Exchange, Domino, POP, or IMAP email servers, and already supports hundreds of different phone models. It even works on current (jailbroken) models of the iPhone.

The software won’t sync your files or photos, but since it is open-source there is nothing stopping other developers from building such services on its underlying synchronization engine.

Technorati Tags: iphone, open source

It’s finally here! After tons of hard work, the Koha community has announced the release of Koha 3.0 RC1. This from the many Koha mailing lists:

You can download from the usual location:

http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-stableRC1.tar.gz
http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-stableRC1.tar.gz.sig

You can check the integrity of the package; either by verifying the provided GPG signature (.sig) or by comparing the MD5 checksum:

5cc0914c5e8250c2491f4dbcf27d4301 koha-3.00.00-stableRC1.tar.gz

I’ve also tagged this in Git as “version 3.00.00 stableRC1″ v3.00.00-stableRC1

This is the third packaged release of Koha 3. Prior to the official stable release of Koha 3.0, translations will be updated; additional issues and bugs may be be addressed. A list of these are documented on Koha’s Bugzilla:

http://bugs.koha.org

and organized on the 3.0 RM’s QA notes Wiki page:

http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:qanotes3.0

The release notes for this RC1 version are pasted in below, and will also on the koha.org website sometime soon.

Cheers,

–
Joshua Ferraro
Koha 3.0 Release Manager

And as many of you know (well at least those of you on Twitter & Facebook) I have been working on the documentation for this new release and my working draft can be viewed online (hopefully to be moved to a more collaborative medium soon) via LibLime’s Google Sites at http://sites.google.com/a/liblime.com/koha-manual/Home. Feel free to notify me of any changes, suggestions, etc.

Technorati Tags: koha

Well, if you didn’t, no worries, it looks like Firefox has most likely broken the download world record and “went from less than 1% of the browser market this morning to almost 3% in a matter of 13 hours.” This from DownloadSquad:

This morning it looked like Mozilla was on track to set a world record by serving up 5 to 7 million downloads of Firefox 3 within 24 hours of the web browser’s release. But by day’s end, (well, 24 hour’s end anyway), you all smashed that number and downloaded Firefox 3 over 8 million times.

Mozilla is still waiting to get confirmation from the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records before proclaiming the official number, but Mozilla Links pegs the number at 8,290,908, give or take a few. And NetApplications says that Firefox 3 went from less than 1% of the browser market this morning to almost 3% in a matter of 13 hours.

Technorati Tags: firefox

While not library related, this is pretty neat news. The Boy Scouts of America have started an Open Source Initiative. This from the official site:

Welcome to the Boy Scouts of America Open Source Initiative. The Boy Scouts of America Open Source Software Website serves as a centralized resource where the Scouting Community can focus their efforts and resources in an efficient manner. The OSI Project provides a platform where the community of Scouting volunteers can work together with the Open Source Community towards the creation of software designed to meet the unique needs required to support the activities of Scouting.

In the tradition of the Open Source Movement, the resources of the OSS Website are “Open” to the community. We welcome the participation of organizations who face the same sort of technology issues that we do. Many of the challenges faced by the local Boy Scout Councils, and their volunteers, are the same challenges that other non-profit organizations deal with every day.

The Boy Scouts of America wish to express our thanks and greatest admiration to the Open Source Community. Without the efforts made by the volunteers and advocates of Open Source Software, the Boy Scouts of America OSI Project and the OSS Website would not have been possible. The Open Source Community calls new entries into the Community “converts”. We have listened, we have learned, and we have been converted, thank you. The OSS Website is built from 100% Open Source. In addition to being built from Open Source Software, the OSS Website itself is an Open Source Project.

Yippee!! It’s coming. This via CrunchGear:

Next Tuesday is Firefox 3 Day, according to Mozilla’s developer news web site. The most recent release candidate was made available on June 5th yesterday, so that’s a pretty quick turnaround – a sign to me that the browser’s definitely stable.

And this via Mozilla’s site:

After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.

This via the Next Web Blog:

Netvibes’ chief architect François Hodierne announced the opening of netvibes.org, a website dedicated to Netvibes’ Open Source projects: “By giving away our technology, we hope to foster innovations in the widget and personal-page space, and launch a discussion about their wide implementation.” Netvibes widgets are based on UWA, the Netvibes Universal Widget API. ‘Universal’ since UWA-based widgets run on any platform that supports common Web standards (HTML/JavaScript/CSS). That means iGoogle too.

We’re seeing more and more of this happening in the Web 2.0 world.

If you weren’t able to make it to the conference, you can still see all the great talks!! Check out the videos from the conference at Archive.org.

Also all slides and videos are linked from the conference schedule.

Technorati Tags: code4lib2008, code4libcon2008