May, 2005 Archive

Gentoo’s Portage to be ported to Windows Services for UNIX:

A group of Windows programmers is working on porting Gentoo’s Portage over to Windows SFU. If you don’t know already, Windows Services for UNIX is a full POSIX subsystem for Windows, enabling it to compile and run almost any software that will compile on BSD, Solaris, HP/UX, and Linux. Details to “emerge” soon.

That sounds a lot like a post i made earlier

Dutch academics declare research free-for-all | The Register

It has been there for a while, but now it’s official. I’m linking to the english summary on the register, the actual site where the stuff is accessible is in Dutch.

Computer Economics: research on strategic and financial management of information systems has results on a survey they held on why organisations choose an Open Source solution.

“Computer Economics recently conducted a survey of visitors to its website regarding the perceived advantages in the use of open source software. Although not a scientific sample, the results are nevertheless startling”

From those results I largely miss 2 things:

1. If “less dependence on vendor” is the main factor, i would like to see some cases where that really mattered, not by showing people who can’t switch from MS (we know there is a lock-in there), but by showing the ease of switching OSS providers.
2. Apparently only the economical arguments count here. Which might make sense considering the focus area of Computer Economics, but what i would like to know if the argument of “freedom” or “right thing to do” was asked, or mentioned at all.

Also, why these results are startling is beyond me.