The Buzz Media » Open Source

Google Finalizes On2 Video Codec Company Acquisition

Riyad Kalla — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:13:20 +0000

The Register reports that Google has finalized it’s acquisition of On2 Technologies for a total of $124.6 million ($18 million more than originally offered). On2 Technologies produced the VP3 codec and open-sourced it as the platform for the Ogg Theora video codec. The company continued development on their proprietary video compression and playback codecs and [...]

Discover Your Kindle PID to Securely Share Your .azw Files

Riyad Kalla — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:09:49 +0000

Preston Lee has released a Serial-to-PID Calculator utility for Kindle users. Using this utility allows you to discover your PID so you can share your DRM’ed Amazon .azw files with other kindle users securely — this utility does not remove the DRM from the .azw files: If you wish to DRM-protect your own personal content [...]

ClamTk 4.04 – A GUI Front End for ClamAV – Released

Ray Gomez — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:34:49 +0000

ClamTk just released the latest version of their frontend to Clam AntiVirus which “brings back the Debian builds.” If you’ve never heard of Clam AntiVirus (aka ClamAV) before it is an Open Source antivirus solution for Linux. Over the years ClamAV has gained much popularity, and has been used by many companies small and big [...]

Is Java Becoming Irrelevant?

Riyad Kalla — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:42:38 +0000

Update #1: To clear up any confusion, this article is focused on the business value of Java – it’s ability to control and generate revenue – not it’s value as a language or a technology. So the word “irrelevant” is applied to it’s business value, not if it’s a good technology or not. Sun Microsystems [...]

Sockso Personal Music Server

Ray Gomez — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:44:51 +0000

If you have ever wanted to have access to your personal music collection from anywhere on the road Sockso Personal Music Server just might be the answer you were looking for. All that is required for the installation is Java and a Windows, Linux, or Mac box to run the server on. The software has [...]

Open Source DRM Solution, Marlin, Ready for Distribution

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:18:24 +0000

Marlin Developer Community claims to have ready the first Open Source DRM solution that is ready for rollout. The co-chairman of the Marlin Developer Community claims the open-source system is far less oppressive than those from rivals such as Apple and Microsoft, allowing users to share content between any Marlin-enabled device in the home rather [...]

Google Open Sources Android

Riyad Kalla — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:50:57 +0000

It’s official, no more waiting, no more secret SDKs and top-secret government handshakes (ok, there never really was), but it’s still nice to hear that Google has officially Open Sourced Android. The preferred licensing for working with the Android platform is the Apache 2.0 license. For folks wanting to contribute directly to the platform you [...]

RedHat Pushes Up Sun Schedule, Java Fragmentation Begins

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:15:44 +0000

If you didn’t see it, RedHat announced earlier this week that their completely Open Source Java implementation (IcedTea) had finally passed the Java Test Compatability Kit (TCK). While most folks rejoiced, I think there were a fair number of us that sighed and thought: Goddamnit, here’s the beginning of the Java fragmentation. Or if that [...]

Sun to Begin Closing up MySQL Source Code

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:33:53 +0000

Uh-oh, Spaghettio’s! Looks like Sun is going to start closing up some of the open source portions of MySQL, namely the more advanced functionality and the backup solutions that are currently open sourced. Can you blame them? They paid a goddamn billion for MySQL, it’s not too surprising that they want to create some value-add [...]

Microsoft Prepping to Buy Open Source Companies

Riyad Kalla — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:40:40 +0000

Another big company that is learning how effective controlling open source can be when backed by a big commercial entity. I wonder mention the other glowing example of this, but feel free to guess For the folks that don’t understand the last comment or disagree with it, consider how open source typically works. Now imagine [...]

Microsoft's Murder of OSS Begins

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 14 May 2007 01:20:23 +0000

Looks like Microsoft’s murder of Open Source software has begun. Microsoft claims OSS violates 235 patents that Microsoft owns and it’s time for OSS developers to start paying for royalties. Besides one of the nastiest moves I’ve seen the company make, I’m very curious to see where this goes and what it does to the [...]