Open News Episode 29 - Excercises

Exercises

Answer the following questions

  1. Who will be using open source software in Amsterdam?
    • officials
  2. What is Steve Ballmer’s position in Microsoft?
    • Microsoft chief executive
  3. When does Mozilla plan to introduce a new version of their web browser?
    • some time after the 31st December 2007
  4. Name some open source licenses.
    • GNU GPL
    • Mozilla Public License
    • Microsoft Public License
  5. What is the OSI?
    • The Open Source Initiative

Listen to the recording and fill the gaps

News in brief

  1. Ubuntu this week announced Ubuntu Open Week, “a week-long series of [online workshops]”
  2. It appears that Firefox is gaining ground on Internet Explorer, at least if you’re a [BitTorrent] user.
  3. Isohunt, a popular BitTorrent indexing site, reported on their blog this week that Firefox users on [isohunt.com] edged out IE users.
  4. Any incremental costs of running the open source software will be offset by savings in [license fees] that would have been paid to Microsoft.

Story One

  1. People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our [intellectual property],
  2. Red Hat has repeatedly stated that it will not engage in a [patent licensing deal] similar to the Novell-Microsoft partnership, referring to it as an [innovation tax].
  3. The firm ranks behind SCO, which failed in its attempt to prove that it owns the intellectual property to Linux and now faces [bankruptcy].

Story Two

  1. Mozilla is prepping a mobile version of [Firefox], the world’s most popular [open source] web browser.
  2. People ask us all the time about what Mozilla’s going to do about the [mobile web].
  3. It will run Firefox [extensions], and developers will have the power to build their own apps for the browser via Mozilla’s [user interface language], called XUL.
  4. As Schroepfer points out, a Mozilla-based browser is already available for Nokia’s N800 [wireless handheld].

Story Three

  1. The board of the [Open Source Initiative], or OSI, has approved two Microsoft licenses…
  2. The Microsoft Public License, or MPL, and the [Microsoft Reciprocal License], r MRL, two of Microsoft’s “shared source” licenses...
  3. ...said Microsoft general manager of Windows Server Marketing and [Platform Strategy] Bill Hilf in a press statement.
  4. They do have two licenses that went through the [community process] and did sustain the open source definition
  5. However, he said if Microsoft plans to embed [patented technology] in software licensed under an OSI-approved license and call it open source ...

Possible topics for discussion

See also: