The Open Sourcerer

Glyn Moody’s blog is a source – no a font – no a fountain – of information and commentary regarding all things Open (& Source).

In the last day or so he’s posted three articles (among several others) that have really grabbed my attention:

First this one: I would not have believed it had I not gone to Tesco’s web site and verified it myself.

Tesco may not be a name that means much outside the UK, but the fact that this huge retailer is selling GNU/Linux-based systems – some for as little as £140 (without a screen) – is pretty significant.

PRETTY SIGNIFICANT? It’s nothing short of amazing in my book. I can understand how Dell and Lenovo can do it. But Tesco? They must have a very strong conviction in Linux to sell it to what I imagine to be their “typical” customer. I notice they are supplying the LTS (Long Term Support) version of Ubuntu (6.06) so I wonder if they have a support arrangement directly with Canonical? Does anyone know anything more about this?

Then this on the EU vs. Microsoft case:

I worry that there’s some wiggle room here – just what exactly is “the open source business model”? – but given the soundness of its thrashing, maybe Microsoft really has given up fighting the EU. Let’s hope.

I love a damn good thrashing don’t you? (Bit of an English Public School joke in there somewhere). I tried to get the detail on this yesterday via Groklaw but PJ’s analysis seemed a little dour. But maybe that’s just because of the stupid IP/Patenting laws in the USA.

And then to cap it all this from Mozilla:

It’s also doing rather well on just about every other metric, as Mitchell’s post “Beyond Sustainability” explains. Recommended reading.

Which I hadn’t seen. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Mitchell’s post is indeed great reading. Mozilla is a true powerhouse in the Open Source ecosystem, and seems for the most part, to be successfully juggling the twin balls of making money and keeping a strong public community behind it. Some of the statistics are incredible… Go and have a read.

And stick Glyn’s blog on your RSS feed reader while you’re there.

Tags: EU, Glyn Moody, Linux, Microsoft, Mozilla, Open Source

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 13:05 by Alan Lord and is filed under FLOSS in the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.