A few days ago in Brilliant Brainstorms #9 I suggested, jokingly, that the Brainstorm developers read my posts. I was surprised to learn that at least one of them, Nicolas Deschildre, does read my posts. In the comment was a link to a post on Nicolas Deschildre’s blog presenting an idea called “decentralized Brainstorm.” If you have not seen the post before, I highly recommend you check it out and then come back. To summarize, the idea is that different projects’ Brainstorm sites can talk to each other and exchange ideas. This post, along with some other ideas I have seen, got me thinking about the future of Brainstorm and the future of open-source development.

First, I think it would be great to integrate Brainstorm into the rest of the open-source development tools. Since Ubuntu created Brainstorm and they use Launchpad, I will use Launchpad as an example. Launchpad, for those of you who don’t know, is a system for open-source projects to collaborate on code, feature planning, bug reporting/fixing, translations, and so on. Canonical could integrate Brainstorm into Launchpad, making it easy for all projects to have their own Brainstorm-like site. Additionally, as suggested by Idea #8338 on Ubuntu Brainstorm, some of the ideas behind Brainstorm could go into other parts of Launchpad. For example, the ability to vote on the importance of bugs might be added.

Once a standard system incorporating Brainstorm and other parts of projects is set up, Nicolas Deschildre’s idea about connecting different Brainstorm sites could be put into place. All of this would ease the flow of ideas into and between open-source projects, hopefully, eventually making it so the users, even if they have no development experience, can be part of deciding what the features each release should focus on.

On the developer side of things, this linking of Brainstorm sites with each other and with development tools could really change how things work. Now, a volunteer developer might join one, or possibly two, projects and work on only those projects. Certainly there would still be people like this, but there could also be developers who moved from project to project, implementing the ideas they were interested in, no matter what project that idea was part of.

Although this interconnected web of ideas and development is certainly not a reality yet, I think this, or something like this, may be the future of open-source development. Certainly Brainstorm has unlocked a lot of the potential of free software to be created by the users, and I hope that this idea, or a similar one, will unlock even more of that potential.

I will be very curious to see how those who know more about the development process react to this ideas. Do you think the future of open-source development holds something similar to this?

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

Sometimes it seems like the Ubuntu Brainstorm people read my post (yeah right, they have better things to do). Last week I said this:

First, I have been eagerly watching the Brainstorm Blog, but there have really not been any new posts in a long time. I hope this changes soon.

As you can guess, there is a new post this week. The new post basically introduces some new features for Brainstorm. One of the features is making developers’ comments on ideas more visible. I am very glad they did this, since I was hoping this would happen for a while. (Although I was expecting it to happen through the blog.)

Flash drive unmounting is a strange issue. No one bothers to do it, and it never seems to matter. Still, it is an important issue, since data loss is possible. Since it seems that no operating system has made it easy to deal with unmounting, Ubuntu should be the first.

What is the use of ideas if other people can’t volunteer to work on those ideas?

Although I do kind of like the generic bootloader, I do think that Ubuntu should theme it at least in a small way. Perhaps just an Ubuntu logo?

Last week I talked about an idea to redo Ubuntu’s homepage. Looking at this mockup, it looks like the ideas are already there, it just needs to be implemented.

Some ideas are great, but not that important. For example, this one. Just kidding!

It is great to be able to vote ideas down, but what if you want to know how many votes up or down an idea got, not just the total points?

Note: Everyone that pointed out that it is really only a difference of $50 if right, however the basic point still stands, since $50 max difference is assuming Windows is free.

Also, every that pointed out the USB flash drives are quite different from SSDs is, of course, correct. I am, and was, aware of the difference, however I choose to use flash drives due to their availability.

Today the headlines have been about the Eee PC 900 with Windows being cheaper (at least in Australia) than the Linux version ($650 to $500). Additionally, the Linux version will not be sold in retail stores. The story gets even worse when you read some of what Asus has said. APC is reporting that ASUS said “Microsoft has been a longstanding supporter of Asus.” I suppose this could just be innocent press talk, but it sure sounds to be like there is something suspicious going on.

One element of the story, however, has not been reported as much. The Linux version comes with 20GB of flash memory, while the Windows version only comes with 12GB. At first glance, 8GBs of storage should not cost $150, but flash is expensive. Could 8GB more flash memory create a significant price difference?

The answer, in a word, is no. The evidence I can find all points to, not surprisingly, 8 additional GB costing far less than $150. Let me explain my reasoning.

First, there are two issues complicating what would otherwise be a very simple problem. First, there are not many consumer solid state drives. Instead I had to use USB flash drive prices. Second, 12GB and 20GB are both very unusual capacities. Here I had to use 8-16GB and 16-32GB.

I used three lines of USB flash drives. The Corsair Voyager (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), the Corsair Survivor (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), and the A-Data My Flash (8GB, 16GB, 32GB). I will not get into the math here (it is nothing more than subtraction, but it would take up a lot of space and be very boring), but the numbers come out to this. The average price difference between the 8GB and 16GB (an 8GB difference) model was around $38. The average price difference between the 16GB and 32GB (16GB difference) was about $86 (the largest difference was about $100). In other words, the price difference between the models should really only be about $50 at most, even if Windows was free.

In summary, although it is imposssible to have perfectly accurate results, it is quite clear that the Windows version is, in fact, significantly less expensive than the Linux version for what you get. This is unacceptable.

Now that open-source is gaining attention in the general tech community and the whole world, more and more companies are making big deals of their plans to open up specifications to their products, help with Linux drivers, and generally be more friendly to the open-source community. Unfortunately, however, not all of these announcements are really followed through on. Some certainly are followed through on, such as AMD’s push to open specifications for their graphics cards, but others are not. The question is, how should people react to these announcements, not knowing if the company in question will really follow through or not? I see two possibilities.

Possibility One

The first possibility is to always respond with enthusiasm and praise the company for their steps. The advantage of this is that it lets the company see how excited people are about their move. Hopefully this will make the company more likely to follow up on their promise. The disadvantage of this, however, is that the company is rewarded before they really contribute to the open-source community.

Possibility Two

Alternatively, an argument could easily be made that the initial response should be “OK great, but show me what you have really done.” This advantage of this is that the company gets nothing for their press release, unless they follow through. This would sound like a better way, but it is not necessarily. A company could also take this response as no one cares, so let’s just leave and never really do anything. This, of course, is not what we want.

I don’t know which of these responces is the right answer. Which do you think is the best responce or is there yet another possibility that is even better?

While searching through the latest Linux news, I came across an article that clearly and concisely tackles the major FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) around Linux as well as covering some of the main reasons to use Linux.  While I see “Top 10 Reasons to Use Linux” articles all the time and complaints about FUD around Linux, I was impressed at how well this article explained each piece of FUD and each benefit of Linux, so I decided to share it here. The article is a PCMech piece titled “Why Use Linux?” (I have no relation to the site or the author.)

You may ask why I am posting about this article here, where almost everyone probably already knows everything in the article? The reason is that it is important that this information be spread to others and the article is a good example of how to explain the benfits of Linux clearly. If someone chooses Windows or Mac OS X knowing the advantages and disadvantages of each, fine. The goal here is not to convince people they have to use Linux, but to dispel the FUD and bad reputation that is often unfairly put upon Linux.  Because of this, I encourage you to spread this article and use it as a model in explaining what is so great about Linux or in dispessling Linux FUD.

Remember before the Eee PC appeared? It seems like it was forever ago, yet the news keeps flooding in day after day. Most recently, the Windows Eee PC seems to be the subject of discussion (quite literally, in some cases.) Today, there are three pieces of news, all from the world of the Windows Eee PC.

First, CNet has released their review of the Eee PC with Windows and they gave it a 7.3 (out of 10.) Not a bad review at all by CNet standards, but the Linux Eee PC did better, with a 7.5. (Both reviews are for the white 4G version. They are also both written and edited by the same people.) That may seem like a small, insignificant difference, but when you consider that 90% of these machines are the same and the only difference is the operating system, it becomes more significant.

This is not, however, the only evidence that Linux is the better OS for the Eee PC. Rafe Needleman, editor of CNet’s Webware.com, commented on a non-CNet site (see #111, around 22:40) that Windows XP on the Eee PC “is not a happy experience” and that “I pretty much guarantee it is going to be a dog.” Coming from an relatively unbiased source who has, presumably, been able to play with both the Windows and Linux Eee PC, it probably means a lot.

On a less positive side of things, it appears that the Windows and Linux Eee PCs do, in fact, cost the same price. According to the CNet review of the Windows Eee PC, “Windows XP for the same price as the Linux version.” I have already written about why pretending Windows is free on the Eee PC is absolutly unfair, so I will not get into it again here, but I encourge you to go back and read my earlier article.

Today Ubuntu announced something that I have thought they should do for a while and it is called Ubuntu Brainstorm. Brainstorm is essentially Dell’s IdeaStorm for Ubuntu. If you are not familiar with how IdeaStorm works, the basic idea is that customers/users submit ideas and other customers/users comment on them and vote them up or down. IdeaStorm has been sucessful in bringing a number of changes to Dell products, including adding Ubuntu as a pre-installed option, so if it worked that well for a big company, chances are it will work even better for an open-source project.

While open-source is always about the users contributing to the project, there has never been a great way for an average, non-technical user to share their ideas with the community, until now. Brainstorm will hopefully become a place where Ubuntu developers can see what users want and work to implement those features. I could go on to talk about how great this idea is for a long time, but instead I am going to talk about two features of Brainstorm that can help make it not just another way of gathering feedback, but the central place for feedback and new ideas.

First is the ability to “attach” a forum thread, Bugzilla bug, or Launchpad blueprint that is related to the same idea. This makes Brainstorm a place for all the information about a particular feature to be collected and also makes it easy to migrate future features that were being discussed elsewhere into Brainstorm.

The second feature is the ability to add a button to a website that promotes a particular idea. For example, if I think a particular idea is good and I want to promote it on my site, I can put something like this up:

How can this help make Brainstorm the central place for new ideas? This allows people to tie other discussion or talk about a feature back to Brainstorm.

Because of this easy way of connecting Brainstorm to other resources and of connecting other resources to Brainstorm, Brainstorm really has a chance to become the perfect central site for charting future directions for Ubuntu. Sure you could do all this manually, but these features just make it easier and smoother.

It seems as though every single week a new inexpensive UMPC that runs Linux comes out and this week is no exception. Although it has not been officially announced, CLUMPC is reporting that HP is set to announce a new UMPC with a choice of either Vista ($650) or Linux ($500) and a fairly high resolution 8.9″ screen. Right now this is technically a rumor so the specs may not be just right, but both UMPC Portal and Engadget seem to think it is real. As I said before, there seems to be a new UMPC every week, but I have a feeling this is going to be a more important UMPC than some of the others we have been seeing. Here are my reasons:

• This UMPC could finally bring Linux into real, physical stores. Companies like Dell don’t have much of an in store presence, but HP does. This bodes well for Linux getting noticed by consumers.
• HP is the number one seller of computers. That means that now the top two computer manufacturers, Dell and HP, are selling Linux.  Also,  HP has a much larger share of the consumer market than Dell, so an HP machine will get noticed by consumers to a much greater extent than Dell’s current offerings.
• There seem to be two classes of UMPCs, the super cheap $400 ones and the super expensive $2000 ones, but this UMPC is more in the middle. It is still cheap at $500 for the Linux version, but it looks like it will have some more premium features, such as a larger high resolution screen and an almost full keyboard.
• This UMPC will let us see if consumers choose the Linux version or pay the extra $150 for Vista, assuming both get equal promotion.

Overall I think this is going to be a very interesting UMPC to watch.

There’s been a lot of talk today about Microsoft’s effort to acquire Yahoo and what a successful takeover might mean for various open source software work with which Yahoo is associated. I’m not sure what to make of all that, but I am struck by the fact investors seem to think that a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo will make the combined company worth about $8 billion less than the sum of the values of the separate companies. How did I get this number? Well, the merger became public information before the stock market opened this morning. At the end of today’s trading, Microsoft’s stock price had fallen by $2.15 per share, while Yahoo’s stock price had risen by $9.20 per share. Multiplying these share price changes by the number of shares for each respective company, the implied value of Microsoft was reduced by $20 billion, while that of Yahoo was increased by only $12 billion. Investors, at least, are betting that Microsoft cannot successfully integrate Yahoo’s business into its own, and that the takeover will effectively waste $8 billion.

Just a quick reminder:  Later today I will go through all the comments on “Our Linux Dream” and come up with a list of the most popular/interesting wishes. If you have not yet said what you want for Linux in 2008 (realistic or crazy), you still have a few hours, but you better get started.