Archive for the 'community' Category

Mar 18 2010

It’s all about Contacts: who do you know?

Published by Stef under business, community, eng, funambol

When it comes to doing anything, finding a job, an apartment or a used car, what counts most is who you know. In the old times it was the size of your rolodex, now it’s the size of you digital addressbook. Being so powerful, it’s no wonder that everybody out there wants it: Facebook, Plaxo, [...]

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Mar 17 2010

Why free software applications are a priority on mobile platforms (not device drivers)

Published by Stef under business, community, eng, funambol

Bradley wrote about mobile software freedom, a field that I’m obviously deep into because of my work at Funambol. His quite long article Musings on Software Freedom for Mobile Devices contains an analysis of the situation, which mobile platforms are more freedom-promising and why (in short: Maemo/Moblin merged as Meego and Android/Linux). I only disagree [...]

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Mar 09 2010

The New Funambol Phone Sniper Program

Published by Stef under business, community, eng

After revisiting the Funambol Code Sniper, I thought it was time to adjust also the Phone Sniper program. Funambol Phone Sniper is the easiest way to contribute to the community: participants help by testing the compatibility of their device with Funambol sync and push services. It’s very easy to participate: you need a phone included [...]

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Mar 03 2010

Another Lessig Presentation Silenced By Automatic Stupidity

Published by Stef under community, copyright

To embed laws into the architecture is the stupidest thing the humanity is doing. How come nobody is lobbying Congress to build cars whose engine has been built not to exceed speed limit? Because everybody would think it’s just a stupid idea. Nonetheless Google is accepting to build automatic filters in YouTube that censor videos, [...]

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Feb 24 2010

Wikiedia Crowdsourced its strategic planning process

Published by Stef under community

I’m a firm believer that non-profit organizations need to have a strategy, too. Maybe even more than for-profit ones, because of the constant lack of resources. I’ve been watching without commenting the development of the five-year strategic plan for Wikimedia Foundation: fascinating. The process has entered the last phase, synthesis. There is lots to learn [...]

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Feb 18 2010

Eben Moglen’s Freedom in the Cloud Talk

Published by Stef under business, community

I watched Eben’s speech but now I can quote it too thanks to the transcript done by the friends at Software Freedom Law Center. Talking about the problems of the cloud services, Eben hits Facebook hard with his rhetoric:
The human race has susceptibility to harm but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record. He has [...]

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Feb 16 2010

Three reasons to follow Mozilla Thunderbird development

Published by Stef under community, eng

Since Mozilla Messaging launched Thunderbird 3 I started using it to see if this new version is better than GNOME Evolution, the email/calendar application I used in the past 4 years. Evolution is a decent email and calendar client and I love the integration in GNOME, but it stopped evolving and its GUI has [...]

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Feb 15 2010

Newlyweds: Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin

Published by Stef under business, community

This is good news for mobile free software (or open source, as you wish to call it): Maemo and Moblin joined forces today.  I had lots of expectations for Maemo, but so far Nokia hasn’t pushed it enough. This merge of the two project may give it a new life.  Now the issue is [...]

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Feb 12 2010

What Symbian is risking by freeing its code

Published by Stef under business, community

I honestly cannot understand the fear of forks that is spreading within the Symbian community. Since Symbian Foundation released the full source code of the operating system under the Eclipse Public License I’ve read few comments like the following:
I sincerely hope that we don’t see various manufacturers forking the code, and thus creating a veritable [...]

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Feb 11 2010

Choose a good license and manage well the community

Published by Stef under business, community, eng

Some of the things that Mike Tienman said in this interview with InternetNews.com I could have said myself.
I have come to believe that a license alone is neither a secret to success nor an absolution of sin.
Exactly: choosing a free license is a moral choice but that alone won’t secure neither commercial success nor any [...]

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