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Open Life: The Philosophy of Open SourceOpen Life: The Philosophy of Open Source (book)

Print: $29.50

The hot topics in information technology right now are Linux and Open Source. But what does Open Source offer those, who may not see their computer as a matter of life and death? Open Life: The Philosophy of Open Source spotlights the people, businesses, values and practices of the Open Source world. Divided into four parts, Open Life starts rather philosophically by comparing the concepts of openness and mean-spiritedness highlighting the latter’s devious impact on our life. Part Two explores the Open Source culture from the time Linus Torvalds began writing code for his new operating system, how he behaves as a leader, and stating the virtues of a programmer. Part Three reviews some Open Source business models and evaluates both their economic and ethical sustainability. Leaving the world of software behind, Part Four considers how open business models can be applied in fields as diverse as mining, literature, and fashion design.

OpenLife.cc blogs

Apache-MySQL-PHP on my phone, and it wasn't even hard

2008 Aug 22

Holy cow... It really works!! (Just like they promised!)

Collage of web pages served from my Nokia E90

Open Source has arrived... where's the money?

2008 Aug 21

Uh oh. It seems my blog posting frequency is dropping even below my modest minimum target of one per month. I didn't post anything at all in my summer vacation. Well, a small child plus a house to re-decorate does take its share of energy I guess.

I thought I'd still follow up with were we left before holidays:

What I'm left with is the question: Are we there? Is this it? Is all that is left just some minor cleaning up after the big battle has already been won? I think it might be. For me, somehow the day I read the news of the release of Symbian as Open Source marks the milestone when it was clear that we had "won". [...]

The Open Sourcing of Symbian by Nokia

2008 Jun 30

I was sitting in a train in the middle of rainy Ireland when I received a mail that Nokia has bought Symbian and is releasing it as Open Source. I didn't believe a word of it. But the web was full of news about it, so it was true. This is an amazing turn of events that I didn't anticipate at all. (You may or may not know that in my previous job I was heavily involved with Symbian programming. Ironically, one reason I left just 6 months ago is that I wanted to work in an Open Source environment :-)

The MySQL model

2008 May 13

(This blog entry was written and co-posted together with my friend and the CEO of Warp Networks and EBox Platform, Ignacio Correas. Copyright notice: Please note that pictures embedded in the story by Ignacio are certainly not Creative Commons licensed anything.)

Dolphin Ignacio: I have always considered MySQL as the best model for open source companies. Their approach to the market, the execution of different business models, their relation with the community or the way their work internally as a virtual organization have shown an innovative and successful example of how an IT company in the 21st century can be managed.

Back from MySQL User Conference

2008 Apr 21

I thought I had already conquered the jet lag last night when I fell asleep at 22:00 (that's 10 pm...). But then I woke up somewhere around 2:30, read a book for a while until I decided to give up and have a nice breakfast. I kind of like jet lag though, it is a nice feeling to get out of bed 5:30, when no one else is awake, and birds are singing outside.

There would be a lot to tell about the conference, but you kind of find summaries from many live bloggers on Planet MySQL. One interesting aspect of the conference of course was to meet so many interesting people, many of whom I work with of course, but meeting them in flesh is still great. And Santa Clara being in Silicon Valley adds another funny revelational feeling to it all. For a European Yahoo, Google, Digg and others are Internet companies and seeing that they actually do have tangible offices in Silicon Valley was a surprisingly unreal revelation to me. Oh yes, I also saw the Transmeta offices, you know, where Linus went to work after graduating with the M.Sc. work titled "Linux: A portable operating system" (What did YOU do for master's thesis? I know I did multiple choice quizzes, I'm not kidding...). And when strolling in Santa Clara I was also amused to find out that apparently Freedom also begins there, just a few blocks away from where the conference was held!

Road sign says "Begin Freedom CIR"