I tend to write a lot about how Free and Open Source Software projects rely on a community of contributors to grow and expand, and how projects without a healthy community tend to face problems and in some cases disappear. Today, I would like to discuss a sad reality of …
I have been recently reminded that while it may be hard enough to discuss the role and importance of communities for Free and Open Source Software, it is equally important to understand the complexities and the challenges that a Free and Open Source Software foundation has to meet. It may …
Common wisdom has it that sleeping dogs are better kept snoring and I tend to agree. I’m going to do what may seem to be understood as the contrary. I believe it is not the case, as prejudice is something that is hard to fight and tends to stick around …
An attentive reader of this blog made this private comment about software commons to me a few days ago: There are no real software commons, because you cannot compare these with actual, material commons such as air or water. One should treat software proprietary or free as in freedom, as …
One regular reader of this blog contacted me a few days ago to share a few suggestions and some concerns about the LibreOffice project. I did not agree with many of the points he was making, but a few of them made sense. I’d like to discuss the main one, …
When the Document Foundation announced its release policy, few people besides IT professionals understood why we were telling people about two distinct stable branches for LibreOffice. The truth is, not only do many FOSS projects share this kind of release policy, but software vendors producing proprietary software often have very …
Welcome to this new edition of Eyes and Ears. Today we’ll start with two books – it’s been a long time I have not updated my reading list. Books This book has been written by Laurent Liscia, current executive director of the OASIS Consortium (yes, the consortium where ODF is …
On the 25th of March 2015, my son was born and to me it is by far the most important event of the day. Yet the same day the Document Freedom Day was gathering people across the world to celebrate open standards for documents and spread the word against vendor …
This blog post will be somewhat peculiar. It could well be a rant, based on informations I perceive and a few facts as well; and it may ruffle some feathers too (standard terms apply; this post reflects my personal thoughts and not the ones of the Document Foundation, nor my …