Tag Archives: open-source

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Bay of Pigs to Bay of Penguins – the Cuban Linux fork

LOLcastroRemember we mentioned late last year that Cuba was talking about going open-source to guarantee their technological independence from the United States (and presumably everyone else as well)?

Well, it seems that Cuba has not only adopted Linux but started developing its own independent distribution:

Nova is Cuba’s own configuration of Linux and bundles various applications of the operating system.

Rodriguez said several government ministries and the Cuban university system have made the switch to Linux but there has been resistance from government companies concerned about its compatibility with their specialized applications.

“I would like to think that in five years our country will have more than 50 percent migrated (to Linux),” he said.

Unlike Microsoft, Linux is free and has open access that allows users to modify its code to fit their needs.

“Private software can have black holes and malicious codes that one doesn’t know about,” Rodriguez said. “That doesn’t happen with free software.”

As TechDirt points out, that last comment isn’t really true at all; whether it was included out of ignorance or for propaganda purposes will presumably remain a mystery.

I wonder if they’ll open up the repositories to non-Cuban users? It’s another great propaganda angle – stuffing the man pages with little homilies on object-orientated Communism from Castro and Guevara… [via SlashDot image by factor_]

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Open-source DRM? WTF?

If there are two concepts in the computing world that could be more antithetical than Open Source and Digital Rights Management, I can’t imagine what they might be[1]. But it’s real: an outfit called Marlin say they’re ready to take on the software behemoths with DRM systems that “works in a way that doesn’t hold consumers hostage [… and] allows you to protect and share content in the home, in a way that people own the content, not the devices.”

Well, bravo to them for making the effort. I give it a maximum of two weeks of the system being out ‘in the wild’ before someone cracks it open like a seasonal hazelnut.

[ 1 – Unless you count ‘Apple’ and ‘Value For Money’, I guess… 😉 ]

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Open-source government – politics without the corruption?

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In an open letter explaining why he’s quitting the hedge fund business, Andrew Lahde makes an interesting comment regarding a way of changing the American governmental system with a view to making it less corrupt – model it on the Linux development process. [via SlashDot] [image by Tony the Misfit]

Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt. George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man’s interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken.

I think most of us can agree on the latter point, but I’m not sure about Ladhe’s idea of making the rewards of government service more attractive at baseline… but if it actually resulted in people who genuinely wanted to make a difference to the world (rather than just their bank balances) taking the reins of government, it’d be no bad thing.

Of course, how much respect you have for the political philosophy of a just-cashed-out hedge fund manager who made a fortune from the sub-prime crisis probably depends on how close to meeting your own monthly budget you are right now…

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Open-source self-replicating machine, er, self-replicates

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Self-replicating machines, as a concept, have been around since mathematician John von Neumann thought them up. But there has never been a working non-organic machine that has been able to construct a fully-functional working clone of itself … until now. [story via pretty much everywhere; image from the RepRap homepage]

“RepRap achieved self-replication at 14:00 hours UTC on 29 May 2008 at Bath University in the UK.”

RepRap - self-replicating machine

I’ve linked to the RepRap Project before when I first started blogging here at Futurismic, and so I’m immensely pleased to see they’ve reached this major milestone. And the head-twistingly awesome bit about it is that, as RepRap is 100% open-source, you can just download a parts list and make your own, then set it to make copies of itself to give to your friends.

“The machine that [self-replicated] – RepRap Version 1.0 “Darwin” – can be built now – see the Make RepRap Darwin link, and for ways to get the bits and pieces you need, see the Obtaining Parts link.”

OK, so it looks clunky, and it lacks the conceptual elegance of Drexler’s engines of creation, but think of it as a proof of concept. Imagine that RepRap could build a functional replica of itself at half the size, and that then the replica could replicate to half the size again, and so on. Unless you’re worried about the largely improbable “grey goo” scenario, it’s possible that we’ll look back on RepRap as the dawn of a new age for the means of production …

… or the root cause of global unemployment, maybe. 😉