Jan 10 2008
Yesterday I stumbled across the Google Code Syntax Highlighter.
If you have Javascript enabled, it prettifies various types of code and markup:
<h1>Matthew is cool</h1> <p>You should listen to Marillion.</p>
Adding it to Wordpress is pretty simple, through a Wordpress plugin.
Mar 08 2007
A future Conservative government would “create a level playing field” for open source software, George Osborne - Shadow Chancellor - has announced. It’s the top story on the Conservatives home page, at the moment.
Citing the Japanese government’s plans to move to open source payroll and Extremadura’s Linux move, Osborne claims open source software could bring a?5% saving on central government’s IT spending.
It appears, though, that Osborne understands that it’s not just about cost savings:
“What it is about is better and more effective government. The problem is that the cultural change has not taken place in government. There isn’t a level playing field for open source software. As it stands, too many companies are frozen out of government IT contracts, stifling competition and driving up costs.
“All too often, a government IT system is incompatible with other types of software, which stifles competition and hampers innovation. Looking at the litany of IT projects that have collapsed or spiralled over budget, it’s clear too that this has meant billions of pounds wasted and public service reform being hampered.
“Let’s start being open source right now.”
It’s great to see the number two of the UK’s opposition party taking open source seriously. Whether it translates into action …?well, let’s see.
Nov 08 2006
In the most recent LugRadio, we discussed licence proliferation.
Our main conclusions were that:
We already face a battle in explaining the benefits of free software to non-enthusiasts: licensing is something that rarely makes it onto the radar outside our community. We can make the job easier by talking about concrete benefits but the conversation becomes increasingly difficult with every caveat introduced by yet another licence.
When licensing writing, music, visual art, we don’t need to be lawyers or even all that familiar with the Creative Commons licences. Instead, we need a rough idea of the rights we want to grant and the protections we want to retain. The Creative Commons licence picker translates those desires into the most appropriate licence.
On the show, we suggested licencepicker.com as a way to help users know where they stand and guide projects in making an informed licence choice, without the need for a law degree. It’s great to see that members of the LugRadio community have picked the idea up.
To better cope with the licences that we have, licencepicker.com could offer a clickable list of common FOSS applications, each with a summary of the licence under which it is released.
The genie is already out of the bottle, though. We have more licences than most people could name and we’ll undoubtedly see more. Although many people may agree that licence proliferation is unhelpful, each new licence’s creators believe that their modifications are necessary.
Perhaps we can learn a lesson from environmentally led government policy: the polluter pays. We need to raise awareness, within the community, of the pain that licence proliferation causes. As attitudes change, so it will become more difficult for projects to create yet another licence. If the pain of introducing a new licence becomes more equitable with the damage it causes to the user’s understanding of their freedom, there’s a chance that projects and companies will settle for an existing licence.
Free software is hobbled if we don’t understand the rights it grants us. Mark Shuttleworth highlights licence proliferation as one of the big challenges we face in making “free software ubiquitous on the desktop”. I see three ways to attack the problem:
These suggestions aren’t perfect, the list isn’t exhaustive and this all needs discussion. For example, some would argue that a licence picker would make it easier for projects to choose yet more obscure licences.
Nov 01 2006
451 Group is a US IT analysis firm, with some interest in open source matters.
Their oddly named CAOS Theory blog provides daily links to open source related news stories. There’s often a bias towards enterprise IT, as you might expect from a firm of analysts, but they also appear to understand the many motivations behind FOSS.
As a slight disclaimer, I have to admit, other than reading their links list each day, I know nothing about 451 Group.
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Nov 15 2005
Following our interview with Everybody Loves Eric Raymond creator, John Leach, Michael Erskine has created Everybody Loves LugRadio.
Damn, I knew I should have updated my photo on the LugRadio website.
Incidentally, Michael has a hole in his tongue large enough to fit a pair of kitchen scissors through.
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Nov 10 2005
John Leach, the chippy northerner behind Everybody Loves Eric Raymond, has caved into the pressure of his fanbase by releasing:
Everybody Loves Eric Raymond the t-shirt.
John also talks about ELER on the latest LugRadio.
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Jan 30 2005
Kphone is, unfortunately, the only SIP phone software in Ubuntu Warty Linux.
Over the past week, I’ve been wrestling with it, trying to get it work with both Gossiptel and SipGate. Kphone lacks documentation, which would be fine if it “just worked”. However, my experience has show a couple of quirks, that have led to several frustrated evenings.
Once apt-get has installed Kphone, you’ll notice it doesn’t appear in any menus. It is on your system, you just need to type “Kphone” from the command line. Once loaded, you’ll be able to edit what Kphone calls your SIP identity. This is fairly straightforward, just bear in mind:
You can then click “Register” to check your details. Frustratingly, if you’re changing an existing Kphone identity, you’ll have to restart Kphone before it uses the new details.
Depending on whether your firewall has explicit SIP support, or not, you’ll also need to visit Preferences->SIP Preferences->Socket, to enter details of your SIP provider’s STUN server. In simple terms, STUN helps Kphone to get round the restrictions put in place by your firewall. For Gossiptel. ensure Use STUN server is selected, and define your STUN server as “stun.gossiptel.com”. In my experience, it doesn’t
OSS sound setup
You should now be able to make and receive SIP calls. However, like most of the rest of the Linux world, you’ve probably moved onto ALSA for your audio. Kphone has not. Kphone still uses OSS. So, even if you’ve had Skype running successfully, you’ll still need to go into your volume settings and have a fiddle.
For whatever reason, each time I restart Ubuntu, I have to reset the OSS settings, to make it work with Kphone.
Make sure your microphone is set to Mute and Rec, with the slider up high. Also set In-gain to full, as this boosts the signal coming from the mic. Of course, your setup may not need in-gain.
Even once you’ve got what appear to be the right settings, I’ve found it may not work until you’ve selected, unselected, then reselected those settings a few times.
Testing everything
On Gossiptel, you can call 160 for an echo test. You can also give me a bell on 9301661. If you’ve been a Skype user you’ll be surprised by just how reliable and clear a VOIP call can be.
Kphone, on my system, has been prone to crashing and is far from the most user friendly software out there. However, despite the more complicated initial setup, I’d say SIP is a far better system than Skype, which now feels rather like VOIP-lite.
Jan 17 2005
Mark Shuttleworth seems like a cool bloke. He came onto LugRadio, to talk to us aboutUbuntu Linux and to explain a little more about why he’s working on it and what plans they have for the future.
I think many open source fans will agree with a lot of what Mark says. He seems to have a thorough understanding of why open source is a good idea and what can be achieved with it, both commercially and as a community.
Dec 16 2004
DJ, one of the LugRadio faithful, mentions today’s advert for Firefox, in the New York Times.
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Dec 05 2004
When I ran Debian, the shutdown process would never power off my machine. The processor fan would stop and the screen would read “Power down”, leaving me to press the button. A minor irritant.
I had the same problem with Ubuntu, until yesterday evening. After reading a few forum posts which all seemed very involved and a bit disjointed, I added:
apm power_off=1
to /etc/modules
Now, Ubuntu powers down automatically. Hooray.