Day one at T-DOSE, Oct 16, 2007

In its second year, T-Dose, the Dutch Open Source event aimed at developers takes place in Eindhoven. Your two LXer editors went there to find out what's happening and what's new in open-source land. Todays topics include QTopia for PDA's and smartphones, open source software in the iLiad digital paper device, KDE4 application programming, the Lodel publishing tool, efficient data structures and how to overtake proprietary software without writing code.

"Free software" is a term that's often used interchangeably with "open source," and often understood simply to mean software that is obtained without charge. However, the idea of free software is neither about openness nor about price; it is a matter of freedom, and its implications extend into the political, philosophical and ethical realms.

Ubuntu founder and IT entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth tells Computing SA that picking open source software was not only good for South Africa but also important for the rest of the African continent.

Mark Shuttleworth knows how to build communities and he knows how to make money. It turns out the two go hand in hand.

On Thursday, Canonical plans to release "Gutsy Gibbon," the Ubuntu Linux version 7.10 that the company hopes will lay the foundation for a serious push into the server and other markets six months from now.

In his Oct. 1 column, Michael Gartenberg claimed that Linux is still far from making it on the desktop. As someone who has tracked Linux’s progress since 1991 and the progress of the IT industry since 1979, I would like to offer an alternative perspective.

I was walking down the street when a limo pulled up beside me and Big Steve Ballmer emerged.

Speaking at a Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Michael Dell says that his company is seeing Linux update on the server end increasing faster than Windows. Recent claims by Microsoft alleging software patent infringements have also not affected Linux-based hardware sales.

Canonical, Ubuntu Linux distribution’s commercial sponsor, has announced that the release version of Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop Edition will launch Oct. 18.

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