All posts tagged ‘Open Source’

File Under: Multimedia, Software & Tools
Apr
15
2008

Developer Preview Shows Off the GIMP’s New Look

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gimp2.5.jpg

The latest developer release of the GNU Image Manipulation Program, better known as simply GIMP, features a redesigned interface and some exciting, long-awaited new features.

GIMP is a free, open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop. While GIMP has failed to make serious inroads among graphics professions – for whom Photoshop is less a program than a full-fledged platform – for the casual user GIMP offers many of Photoshop’s features for free.

The new preview release, which isn’t stable and is intended mainly for testing, incorporates some of the community suggestions generated by last year’s open call to help redesign GIMP.

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File Under: Blog Publishing, Software & Tools
Mar
18
2008

Catch a Sneak Peak at WordPress 2.5’s Sexy New Look

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wordpress.jpgThe ever-popular open source blog publishing tool WordPress is getting ready to release a significant upgrade. To show off the coming release, WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg is offering a sneak peak at the stylish new publishing interface.

Although WordPress 2.5 includes some nice new features like better plugin management, full-text feeds, and built-in photo galleries, the most immediately obvious change is the sleek new look, which comes courtesy of Jeffery Zeldman and the Happy Cog design team.

All the core features from the old administration interface remain, but Zeldman and crew have done a nice job of making WordPress much sexier and easier to use.

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File Under: Blog Publishing, Software & Tools
Mar
13
2008

Blog Fight! WordPress and Movable Type Square Off

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mtvwp.jpgIt’s the bloggers equivalent of the Mac vs. Windows flamewar – WordPress vs. Movable Type. The controversy kicked off earlier this week when Six Apart’s (Movable Type’s parent company) Anil Dash posted a note suggesting that WordPress users consider "upgrading" to Movable Type rather than the coming WordPress 2.5.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg didn’t take kindly to the suggestion and used Twitter to accuse Dash and Six Apart of being “desperate and dirty.”

Dash’s blog post is actually disappointingly venom-free, but that hasn’t stopped Mullenweg from escalating the debate with his own blog post attacking Six Apart’s open source credentials and the performance of Movable Type.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jan
16
2008

Sun Shines the $1 Billion Light on MySQL Acquisition

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sunmysql.jpgSun Microsystems has announced it will acquire MySQL, the internet’s fastest growing open source database. Companies ranging from Google to Facebook, with thousands of smaller ones in between, use MySQL to store data for their services and MySQL’s popularity continues to grow with some 50,000 copies downloaded every day.

MySQL is the ‘M’ in the fabled “LAMP” setup, a collection of open source technologies which many credit for speeding the development of both web 2.0 and the internet as a whole. The LAMP setup is comprised of four main tools which power many of your favorite websites — Linux is the operating system, Apache is the web server, MySQL is the database and PHP or Perl are the common development language. Even with Ruby on Rails and Django gaining in popularity, MySQL remains a popular and common choice of database for today’s startups.

The acquisition of MySQL AB gives Sun a solid competitor to Oracle’s enterprise database which is closed source and can cost up to $40,000, depending on the licensing you need. By contrast Sun will continue to offer MySQL for free and development will remain an open source effort.

In some ways the estimated $1 billion dollar acquisition brings MySQL home to Sun since the database was originally developed to run on Sun’s Solaris operating system. But developers need not worry, Sun doesn’t plan to stop development of MySQL for Linux or any of the other platforms on which it currently runs.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Dec
27
2007

Discover Heaps of Free Software at Open Source Living

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Oslivingbeta
A new directory for finding free-to-use and open-source software applications has emerged. Open Source Living lists the most popular open-source applications for a wide variety of tasks — ripping DVDs, browsing the web, chat clients, coding tools, audio players, you name it.

OSLiving’s directory is neatly organized and the listings (for the most part) provide clear indications about what operating systems are supported by each of the apps. So far, there’s no way to narrow down the lists to show just Windows or just Mac OS X applications, but that’s probably something you can suggest in the forums.

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