AABC IT related activites last year

The Applied Technology and Information Solutions (ATIS) of the Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD) held a two-day training on Free and Open Source Softwares (FOSS) for the faculty and staff of the Asian Academy of Business and Computers (AABC) last October 20-21, 2006. for more details please click link below:


http://www.atis.com.ph/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=174

The school also had its second batch of interns in ATIS for more details pls click the following link:

http://www.atis.com.ph/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=174

Thirty FOSS applications

the link below is a site that opens up 30 free open source applications. Great site:

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/12/01/30-essential-pieces-of-free-and-open-software-for-windows/

new linux distro launched

a new linux distributin that has an interphase like Windows Vista. its called Linux kororaa.
Kororaa is essentially a binary install method for Gentoo Linux. The end system you will have is 100% Gentoo. There are two flavours:
Kororaa - which comes with KDE as the default desktop, and;
Gororaa - which comes with Gnome as the default desktop.

There is also a side-project for Kororaa called the LiveCD. It is a livecd designed to showcase AIGLX, Xgl, compiz, KDE, Gnome, Gentoo and Kororaa technologies. The livecd lets you safely play with the Kororaa system and has the option to install to disk.

for more details please see the link below:
http://kororaa.org/index.php

Open Linux Router Project Announced

Open Linux Router Project Announced

ClarkConnect, IPCop, m0n0wall, and Smoothwall are among the Linux distributions currently available that are targeted for use as a firewall or network server. However, shortly another contender will be launching into this arena and that is the Open Linux Router.

Open Linux Router developers acknowledge Vyatta's open-source router; however, it is just that, a router -- not to mention it is poorly designed interface. The Open Linux Router hopes to provide much more than basic router functionality. Among the features that developers hope to tack on is a file sharing server, firewall, and the capability to add services all on the same device. Users will be able to add (or remove) additional functionality as they see fit. The project aims to provide "true modularity" where the user can simply and cleanly add or remove modules for services they want. The end-user will not be challenged by dependency issues or other conflicts when using OLR modules.

Among the tentative list of features include a web interface via SSL, serial console, wireless support, VLAN support, packet filtering, DynDNS, SNMP agent and management, traffic shaper, SVG-based traffic grappher, Samba support, and much more. The Open Linux Router will also feature a user portion for collaboration, sharing an audio library inside of a household, and provide other media implementations.

The aim for the interface is to be simple, while at the same time will feature some relatively advanced options. The open-source model backs all of these benefits by complying with the GNU GPLv2 license. While far from completion, presently this code is available through Google Code with its Subversion repository.

Once out, for those users wishing to setup their own Linux-based routers, the process should now become one-step easier. The inaugural release of the Open Linux Router will likely occur in May or June of this year. Phoronix will cover the Open Linux Router in greater detail as its release nears. Additional information on this upcoming open-source project can be found at http://www.openlinuxrouter.com/.

internet explorer loses out to firefox

Despite 100 Million IE 7 Installs, Microsoft's Browser Still Loses Ground

Firefox's share of the U.S. browser market is at 14% and has continued to grow each of the last three months, says one research firm.

By Gregg Keizer
InformationWeek

Jan 16, 2007 01:46 PM

Although Microsoft recently touted the 100 millionth installation of Internet Explorer 7, Web measurement firms said that the new browser is simply being swapped out for older editions and hasn't had an impact on Firefox's continued climb.

"[As of] January 8th, we had the 100 millionth IE7 installation," said Tony Chor, an IE group program manager, in an entry on the team's blog. "Even more important than installations is usage. According to WebSideStory (the company we use to measure browser usage), as of this week, over 25% of all visitors to sites in the U.S. were using IE7, making IE7 the second most used browser after IE6.

"We expect these numbers to continue to rise as we complete our final localized versions, scale up AU [Automatic Updates] distribution, and with the consumer availability of Windows Vista on January 30, 2007," Chor added.

While Microsoft had the WebSideStory numbers correct, it didn't tell the whole story, says Geoff Johnston, an analyst with the Web metrics company. "[The growth of IE 7] seems to be exclusively at the expense of IE 6," says Johnston. "It's not eating into the Firefox share at all."

Firefox's share of the U.S. browser market, says Johnston, is at 14%, and has continued to grow each of the last three months. "I thought that IE 7 might flatten Firefox's growth, but it's not taken a hit from IE 7. All the movement there has been internal, from IE 6 users upgrading," he says.

Another Web metrics vendor, Net Applications, confirmed the switch to IE 7 in its most recent data, and also noted the continued slide of IE overall.

According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer accounted for 79.6% of all browsers used in December 2006, a drop from the 80.6% during the previous month. Firefox's use, meanwhile, measured 14% in December, up from 13.5% in November. Also gaining ground in the last month of 2006 was Apple's Safari, which climbed to 4.2% from 4%, and Opera, which saw its share increase from 0.7% to 0.9%.

Net Applications' data put IE 7's market share during December at 18.3%, up dramatically from November's 8.8%. But IE 6 lost more than IE 7 gained, dropping from 70.9% in November to 60.7% the next month.

The gain in IE 7 is largely due to Microsoft pushing the new browser to end users via Windows' Automatic Updates setting, which is usually reserved for downloading and installing security fixes on PCs. Microsoft began issuing IE 7 to Windows XP users through Automatic Updates in early November as part of a controversial scheme to get the new browser in as many hands as possible as quickly as possible.

In July, however, Microsoft posted a toolkit that lets users and enterprises indefinitely postpone IE 7's installation. The toolkit can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web site.

The impact of the automatic upgrade was easy to see when compared with the much slower uptake of Firefox 2.0, the browser Mozilla introduced in October 2006. In the same month that IE 7 more than doubled (from 8.8% to 18.3%), Firefox 2.0's share only climbed from 3.6% to 5.2%, notes Net Applications. Firefox 1.5 still accounts for the majority of Firefox users. Mozilla has considered, and postponed, an automatic update from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0; the auto upgrade is now scheduled for sometime this month.

Johnston wasn't confident that Microsoft would ever be able to make inroads on Firefox's growing share. "Once someone gets used to Firefox, especially its extensions, and unless they think IE 7 or IE 8 or whatever comes in the future is so much better, they're going to stay with Firefox," says Johnston.

"Maybe Microsoft's met its match with Firefox. Maybe it just can't compete against open-source and the whole world [as developers]."

to see atricle source please click the link below:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=LVD0EVRQ2G4S4QSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=196901142

Study Finds Open Source Benefits Business

'Free' software makes economic sense.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek

Jan 17, 2007 04:00 PM

Floss for economic health. That's the conclusion of a newly released European Commission study on the impact of Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (Floss) on the European IT sector.

The EC study, conducted by UNU-Merit, a research institute of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, finds that the use of open source software adds 263 billion Euros to the European economy and "the number of employees among firms contributing code to Floss projects is at least 570,000."

It also says that open source software programmers, nearly half of which are based in Europe, volunteer least 800 million Euros (roughly $1 billion U.S.) worth of labor.

The report calls for "correcting current policies and practices that implicitly or explicitly favor proprietary software" by offering fairer R&D incentives, supporting standardization, avoiding vendor lock-in in education settings, equitable tax treatment for open source contributors, and encouraging partnerships between businesses and the open source community.

The report estimates that the Floss-related share of the economy could reach 4% of European GDP by 2010.

"By providing a skills development environment valued by employers and retaining a greater share of value addition locally, Floss can encourage the creation of [businesses] and jobs," the report says.

That's a perspective shared by Richard Gorman, a venture partner at Silicon Valley VC firm Bay Partners, which invests in open source companies. "Open source is clearly a major trend and is clearly an economic stimulus for the economy today," he said. "The reason we like the open source business model is that it's a way of entering markets and solving customer problems in a very effective way, both from a control and an economic perspective."

Some of the report's findings and recommendations may rankle leading proprietary software makers such as Apple and Microsoft.

One policy recommendation seems particularly applicable to Apple and the ties between the iPod and iTunes Music Store: "Explore how unbundling between hardware and software can lead to a more competitive market and ease forms of innovation that are not favored by vertical integration."

And one of the report's findings is that users of Microsoft Office are no more productive than users of OpenOffice. "We also investigated the productivity of the employees in using Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org," the report says. "Office suites are widely used and are a good test bed and representative for a comparison on issues like effort and time spent in the daily routine of work. Delays in the task deliveries may have a bigger impact than costs on the organization's management. Our findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org."

The report, however, stops short of recommending businesses switch to free applications such as OpenOffice because "employees may perceive that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products." It says organizations should consider that migrating away from proprietary software might have implications beyond cost.

Microsoft maintains that the total cost of ownership for Windows software is less than Linux and continues to host dozens of case studies, white papers, and customer testimonials to that effect on its Get the Facts Web site.

But Gorman insists the open source software makes economic sense. "It's a very good business model for entering large, existing markets and taking significant share, and creating significant customer and investor value," he said. "If you're an incumbent competing with a new company that's an open source company, it's very difficult to adjust or change your business model to be competitive. Usually by the time they end up adjusting, it's too late."

to see article source please click the link below:

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196901596&subSection=Open+Source

related sites to Open Source

http://www.openoffice.org

http://www.opensource.org

http://www.fsf.org