Since I saw that the Phoenix Mars Lander runs Linux, I have wondered what would have happened if it had run Windows Vista?

Click for larger image.

With the iPhone SDK starting to appear, a Linux.com article summarizes the concerns of the free software community: the licensing you have to agree to in order to use the iPhone SDK essentially prevent open-source applications. Although I agree this is unacceptable, I see no reason to believe this is anything more than a mistake.

For one thing, what does Apple have to gain from not allowing open-source apps on the iPhone? I suppose that theoretically they could prevent people from seeing the power of open-source and therefor continuing the FUD around Linux… Seriously, you think that outweighs all the bad press they will get?

Another thing: in the past few weeks, we have seen not one but two cases of a bad EULA (end-user license agreement) being pointed out and the company apologizing for it. One was the Photoshop Express EULA that stated that Adobe could use pictures you uploaded for whatever they wanted without your permission. The other was Apple’s own EULA on Safari for Windows which said you could not use it on anything but a Mac. What we are seeing now is most likely nothing more than another instance of a company not thinking carefully enough about their EULA or reusing standard parts and accidentally messing things up.

This is not to say people should not talk about the issues around OSS on the iPhone. It is important that this is brought to the attention of Apple, but I am confident this is no more than a mistake. I just hope Apple does not ignore the open-source communtiy.

A recent post on Pingdom looked at what Google Trends has to say about Linux distributions, Linux, KDE, and other similar keywords. Although Google Trends, which lets you compare how many searches various terms are getting in Google, has the potential to reveal many interesting trends, it is not clear that the results are an accurate representation of interest in a particular subject. Words that have multiple meanings, for instance, will not be accuratly represented in Google Trends. This, however, is rarely a problem for Linux-related terms, due to the uniqueness of most names.

Apart from these confusions, however, how accurate is Google Trends as a measure of interest? Well, it depends on what you mean by interest. Because Trends is based on total searches, it is basically impossible to distinguish between a few people who do a lot of searching or a lot of people who do a little searching. While this might make it a bad option for deciding which product is more popular and similar comparisons, it does not make it bad for everything. Google Trends is very useful for discovering which term is used more. For example, a comparison of Ubuntu and Linux shows that Linux has gone down while Ubuntu has gone up, indicating that the trend (no pun intended) is for people to talk about individual distributions, not Linux as a whole.

In summary, while Google Trends may not be perfect, it is very useful for comparing trends in how people refer to various things, particularly if the phrases are unique.

Note: Sorry to everyone who commented that this is an old news story. I try to verify the accuracy (and I have previously found stories that were very inaccurate), but this one slipped through. This is about a year old, but it is still interesting. Sorry.

Everyone who uses open-source software knows that many people devote hours and hours to development, planning, art, and so on, but crop circles might not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of open-source. The Oregon State Linux Users Group created a gigantic Firefox crop circle. (Picture) You can read more about the process at The Fox Tales or see a video about it here.

As it turns out, the Oregon State Linux Users Group is not a stranger to massive Firefox projects. They painted a huge version of the Firefox logo on the sidewalk and sent a balloon carrying the Firefox logo up into the sky.

The Obama campaign has a position statement on technology and innovation which contains the intriguing promise to make “government data available online in universally accessible formats.” It sounds like he is referring to a format such as ODF that can be read by open-source programs like Open Office. If this were true, it would put some more momentum into the open source movement, and chip away at the monopoly enjoyed by MicroSoft, and despised by the rest of us. Score one for the Obama campaign!

Yesterday, September 2, was the ending date for countries to vote on ISO approval of Microsoft’s proposed OOXML open document standard. But the controversy surrounding this process is almost certain to continue, regardless of how the vote comes out. (See Computer World article.)

As I see it, ISO approval of OOXML would just about guarantee that Microsoft will ignore the existing ISO approved ODF open document standard, and instead devote its immense resources to supporting its own OOXML open document standard. Microsoft is on record with its Open Specification Promise, saying that anyone will be able to use the proprietary elements of the OOXML standard without royalty to Microsoft. But even if that promise is sincerely honored, it seems certain that the OOXML standard will be more difficult to work with than the ODF standard, and especially so for non-Microsoft developers.

Update: Websites are beginning to tally up the votes. See this website.

If you want to learn about what developments are expected in Linux, specifically the kernel try looking at the Linux Weather Forecast created by the Linux Foundation. The site is a wiki-style page of information about what new stuff is expected and when ranging from GNOME and KDE to things like the completely fair scheduler. (Check the site, if you don’t know what that is.)

Linux World Article