U.S. Trademark groups have decided that Open Source is an enemy of the free market, and therefore also an enemy of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Well, that and it keeps their clients from making a few bucks.
It’s all good, and it’s all free (some are available for Windows, too).
Just think of all of the products this will affect: MySQL, OpenOffice, Java, VirtualBox, and the Oracle DB are included among the ones that I use personally. This will also give Oracle the opportunity to provide a complete stack for their Oracle Database and Applications. I can’t say that I’d mind buying an Oracle Database that runs on an OS and hardware that are tweaked for database performance and fully supported by Oracle.
I’m a bit afraid, however, of what will become of the Open Source products that they’ve acquired; specifically MySQL. I think that perhaps it’s time to get familiar with PostgreSQL. Heck, I can even code in PL/SQL over there…perhaps I should have done that a long time ago.
Sourceforge has posted a number of very nice Free software packages in an easy-to-use download site. I personally use many of these as they are usually better than the non-Free programs they replace.
Note: if you’re not a Windows user, you’ll want to click “Settings” at the top of the screen and change the platform accordingly. The site will detect your OS and display software that suits your platform. You can click “Settings” to see choices for other platforms.
First Obama solicits a whitepaper on the benefits of Open Source, and now this! If the US government can show increased savings and security by going Free, enterprises will follow.
BrewBlogger is an open source web-based homebrewing app. I think I’ll be giving this a whirl next time I brew up a new batch.
