IBM has officially launched the commercial version of its Lotus Symphony suite of productivity applications, and looks set amount a challenge to Microsoft Office in its enterprise heartland.
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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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aboutblank
3 years 49 weeks 6 days 18 hours ago
Lotus Symphony is
Lotus Symphony is proprietary software. It's nice that Symphony implements ODF support but ODF support does not improve the ethical standing of anything. User subjugating software is still user subjugating.
schestowitz
3 years 49 weeks 6 days 17 hours ago
Learn from Eclipse roadmap
It is also based on an old version on OOo. Still, better Lotus Symphony than MSO. Standards are a good start.
aboutblank
3 years 49 weeks 6 days 5 hours ago
All Proprietary Software Is User Subjugating
Lotus Symphony is no better than MS Office; they are both equally non-ethical. The fact that Symphony is based upon an old revision of OO.o is irrelevant. Right now, Symphony is non-free to any user.
Whenever a user accepts a proprietary program, they have chosen to give up their freedom in exchange for limited rights to use that program; the freedom that once belonged to user is now under the control of the software proprietor.
The reason why MS is in possession of the power it currently wields is because **the people of the world have given MS power over their lives**. It is futile to tell people to reject one master (Microsoft) in exchange for a different master (IBM); the people will remain subject to a master. It would be much better if there were no masters at all; you can escape the subjugation of software proprietors whenever you exchange proprietary software with free software.
schestowitz
3 years 49 weeks 6 days 1 hour ago
Escape barriers
Good point, I stand corrected.
Standards only lower the escape barrier.