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Libcloud, the open source python library released by the vendor Cloudkick, has taken the first steps to be part of Apache Software Foundation by joining the ASF Incubator. Libcloud offers a single programming interface for apps to access different cloud providers including Amazon EC2, Rackspace, vCloud, Terramark, etc.. Even without any standards, Libcloud can offer interoperability between various Cloud providers. (more…)
Yesterday, DeWitt Clinton of Open Web Foundation announced that Open Web Foundation Agreement (OWFa) is now available for use by the developers
The Open Web Foundation was founded to help developer communities collaborate and share technical innovation on the web, bringing to the world of formats and protocols the same successful grassroots approaches established by the open source community. Modeled after the Apache Software Foundation and Creative Commons, the Open Web Foundation seeks to facilitate the creation and implementation of specifications with legal agreements that make such work simple, safe, and sustainable.
We saw how Novell played the Microsoft game for years. After staying away from Microsoft for a long time, Redhat is getting closer to the proprietary software vendor. Recently, they came together to tell the world that their hypervisors will play nice with each other promise interoperability. (more…)
From time to time, I am going to recommend an open source software/service in this space. This is not going to be a random set of recommendations but something I really like and want to succeed. My ego wanted me to call it “Krish Recommends” and hence going to stick with it for the series. If you have any experience with the software I am recommending, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. (more…)
Ever since Amazon released the Kindle, many people have asked me why I am not buying it in spite of being a geek who plays around with new shiny toys. My reasoning is simple. I just won’t trust Amazon Kindle with my books. For me, my books are a lifelong companion. If I have to move from the traditional world of books to ebooks, it should offer me the same kind of experience like the paper based books. When I talk about same kind of experience, I am not talking about formatting and the impact of fonts to my eyes etc.. I should be able to carry my ebooks to wherever I go. I should be able to read on any device I want like my Laptop, My mobile phone, my ebook reader, etc.. To do this, I want my books to be published in one of the open formats and I should be able to store the books on a local storage along with a cloud based storage as it is the case with Amazon Kindle. Amazon only offers a proprietary format for the books and the books can only be stored on Amazon servers. I basically buy the books but I don’t own them because Amazon exerts complete control on my books. If my Amazon Kindle breaks, I have no way to access my books except buy a new Kindle or buy an iPhone and use their Kindle application. Books are very important to me and I wouldn’t trust a proprietary format and complete Amazon control of the books.
Well, it appears my fears are with some merit. (more…)
I posted this comment in one of the ReadWriteWeb posts. Since the topic fits well into the theme of this blog, the concept of open web, I thought I will also post it in my blog.
The death of Readburner brings into focus a very important question. How can we rely on a web service offered by a small startups whose longevity cannot be ascertained. Readburner is a different kinda web service where we do not upload huge amounts of data. What about those two people web services where we invest our time and upload all our data? How can we rely on such companies with our valuable data? Should we wait for some big companies like Google to acquire the service before we start investing our time? (more…)
This is the first post in the Facebook-Scoble Fiasco Series. I want to use this incident to raise the awareness of the users of social networks. This incident brought into focus many claims and counterclaims. Some of them are valid and the rest are plain bullshit. I hope this series helps people make a distinction between what is correct and what is incorrect. This post is not about whether Scoble is right or wrong. It is about things we should be worried before jumping into the social networking bandwagon. (more…)
When Google announced Open Handset Alliance and the release of Android SDK under open source license, I was pretty excited. In fact, few people like Robert Scoble even questioned my excitement during a twitter conversation. Some of the arguments put forward by pundits against my excitement towards Google’s strategy were
Josh Catone has written a post on RWW titled “Why facebook shouldn’t fear open social“. His arguments run as follows (roughly).
Business community advocates free markets. But these free marketers fail to understand the meaning of free in “free markets”. If they had understood the meaning in that case, they would have understood the meaning of free in open source too. Business community, talking about the “cost value” in open source and ignoring the “freedom” aspect of it is shocking. That too, when you find a post advocating something like that in the Wikinomics blog, it makes it doubly shocking. Wikinomics is a book about “collaborative value” in the current day world and how it transforms the business world into a win-win situation for both business community and consumers. The blog associated with the book has a post with the following statement
This got me thinking about open source evangelists. These are the folks (you probably have a few in your organization) that for one reason or another believe that open source is always the way to go – that it’s simply better, no matter what. This is the group that doesn’t understand that open source is simply another licensing model, not a religion.
Facebook opened itself as a platform for application developers 3+ months back. Many in tech media were too eager to call facebook as an open platform. I was not all that happy about the “openness” of facebook then and I wrote a post in June talking about a decentralized social networking platform. In fact, I mentioned about the walled garden nature of facebook to Robert Scoble in one of his Kyte sessions. He said he is not all that worried about putting data inside the walled garden. But I am happy to learn that he has changed his opinion now and he, along with Marc Canter, Joseph Smarr and Michael Arrington are promoting a bill of rights for users of social web.
The blogosphere got a bit excited today with an article on New York Times about the plans of Google and Microsoft to offer an online personalized health care records for consumers. This excitement was further enhanced by a post by Philipp Lenssen with screenshots of a prototype of Google Health service.
We are dreaming about decentralized social networks, where we can take our data and friends to wherever we go. Some of us are even wondering if Facebook and other social networks will take the necessary first step. But the venture capitalist Fred Wilson says that if people leave Facebook for its walled garden, it won’t make a dent on them. He also explains why (more…)
Michael Calore writes on Wired about the new effort by FSF to promote Ogg format
In an effort to rally support for the underdog media format, the Free Software Foundation has launched PlayOgg.org, a website promoting awareness of the Ogg format. It’s an educational primer for playing Ogg Vorbis audio files and Ogg Theora video files on Mac and Windows desktops. (more…)