Omeka is a newly available, open-source web platform, bringing good-looking, functional online exhibitry within reach of smaller museums, libraries, and arts groups. From the Center for History and New Media.
posted on Sep 10, 2008 - View this thread

Facil, an open-source community based in Québec, is suing the Québec government for buying Microsoft software when free alternatives are available. Facil's press release says, in part, "From February to June 2008, FACIL has noticed sales of proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars. These purchases were made for products offered by large multinational enterprises, with no regard to suppliers in Quebec. ... While most of the developed countries have started, a few years back, migrating their technological infrastructures to Free Software, Quebec's public administration is far behind." Some applaud Facil's move. Others, not so much.
posted on Aug 28, 2008 - View this thread

What could be less important to the blue than a news item involving model railroading and Java? Yet in an important decision, a U.S. Appeals court has ruled that that the terms of the Artistic License are enforceable copyright conditions. "For non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important but this is huge," said Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig.
posted on Aug 15, 2008 - View this thread

Big Buck Bunny - a fantastic animation. It's also on YouTube, but the download is so much better.
posted on Jun 3, 2008 - View this thread

In the spirit of those who have patented living organisms, the State of Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee is demanding $30,000 from Justia.com for the right to publish Oregon Revised Statutes -- the laws of Oregon -- on their website for two years.
posted on Apr 23, 2008 - View this thread

"Open Source Living is a community-driven dynamic archive of Open Source software spanning all major platforms."
posted on Apr 18, 2008 - View this thread

LugRadio is a fortnightly British radio show that takes a relaxed, humorous look at Linux and open source.
posted on Mar 11, 2008 - View this thread

Ubuntu has quickly become the number one Linux distro for the desktop. Not only is it free, but it has also made Linux easier to use than ever. Now, Wubi enables Windows users to install Ubuntu just like any other application, so you no longer have to mess around with partitions, burning CDs, etc.
posted on Jan 21, 2008 - View this thread

Movable Type has gone open source.
posted on Dec 12, 2007 - View this thread

Papervision3D 2.0 released yesterday. Papervision3D is an open source 3D Engine for flash which provides a lightweight, browser friendly platform for rendering 3d content in your browser window. Papervision (some examples of PV3D in use: 1, 2, 3 (this third one might be awhile to load...), however, is only the tip of the iceberg which is a very committed and talented open source flash community.
posted on Dec 5, 2007 - View this thread

The Web Is Agreement: a poster (large, huge) designed by Paul Downey.
posted on Oct 31, 2007 - View this thread

Halo 3? Phooey! Sure, Bungie's latest title in greatest series for the Xbox is released tomorrow, but for some perspective, take a look at Marathon: Aleph One — the free, open source engine to Bungie's first achievement, the Marathon Trilogy.
posted on Sep 24, 2007 - View this thread

Imagine a library that collected all the world's information about all the world's books and made it available for everyone to view and update. We're building that library.
posted on Jul 16, 2007 - View this thread

Ubuntu Studio is a Linux distribution focused on creative audiovisual pursuits.
posted on May 10, 2007 - View this thread

Recent MeFi threads have suggested how easy it is (or not) to build a gun. The comparison to dynamite or ANFO is made, frequently, in these sorts of discussions, supposedly to illustrate another "weapon" which is in the public corpus but largely outlawed. [more inside]
posted on Apr 22, 2007 - View this thread

The Open Architecture Network "is an online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design." {via Cameron Sinclair's Ted Talk}
posted on Apr 14, 2007 - View this thread

Simplicity v. Complexity Torvalds strikes. López Godwins. Torvalds submits patches!
posted on Feb 17, 2007 - View this thread

The world is not flat Like open source/content? Like youtube? You have a choice. According to IBM, the future is open, and according to Linux, this future is inevitable.
posted on Dec 30, 2006 - View this thread

Prediction markets trade uncertainty for collective wisdom, and have been proven to be more accurate than other mechanisms for predicting outcomes such as polls. Many corporate entities (HP, Intel, Google, Yahoo, Siemens, etc.) are said to be using them internally. Several successful prediction markets already exist, such as Hedgestreet, NewsFutures, the Iowa Electronic Markets, Hollywood Stock Exchange, and Inkling Markets. A spinoff of DARPA's Policy Analysis Market, prediction markets might be to markets what open source was to software.
posted on Dec 16, 2006 - View this thread

Raising for Ryzom. Saga Of Ryzom's parent company is having some sort of undisclosed trouble, and a group of users are raising funds to purchase the source code and art assets. So far, they've raised 60k in euros.
posted on Dec 1, 2006 - View this thread

There are a lot of gift guides for the holiday season, but Make Magazine's open source gift guide skews towards the cool, techy, but also hackable products. Lots of great things listed including: display images in your bike spokes with a POV kit, an open source media server, control your house lights with perl, and free planetarium software.
posted on Nov 27, 2006 - View this thread

Ballmer: Linux Users Owe Microsoft. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle yesterday, that Linux infringes upon his company's intellectual property. Does this signal preparations for all out war against the open source community? Microsoft's recent acquisition of Novell was seen as an ominous sign. Or perhaps it's a sign that user friendly versions of linux such as Ubuntu threaten sales of Microsoft's problematic new VISTA OS, scheduled for release Nov. 30th for businesses and Jan. 30, 2007 for consumers?
posted on Nov 17, 2006 - View this thread

Open Source Physics is a great resource for science eduactors and students alike. Here is a page of great examples that take advantage of OSP.
posted on Sep 8, 2006 - View this thread

To work around the proprietary whims of digital audio software developers and laptop processor limitations during the mid- and late-1990s, a small band of technically-minded people, including the electronic musician Blitter, pulled together in the late 1990s to engineer the open-source OPEN DSP EZ-Kit platform, a 16-bit computer designed entirely with a focus on low cost and extensible control and DSP arithmetic capabilities. While this project and similar commercial offerings never seemed to gain the critical mass needed to sustain long-term interest, perhaps the new Arduino hardware project from MIT's Processing hardware group may gain a foothold with Processing and Pure Data audio software hobbyists and artists alike, allowing the creative community to extend, enhance and share inventive uses of new technology. Arduino's use has already begun in fascinating museum installations around the world, and has become a part of this year's SONAR and Ars Electronica festivals.
posted on Aug 12, 2006 - View this thread

Slashdot interview with Jordanian blogger Isam Bayazidi, focusing on open source in the Arabic world.
posted on Mar 22, 2006 - View this thread

Ndiyo systems consist of a central PC running Linux, serving a bunch of ultra-cheap, ultra-thin VNC-ish clients over 100Mbit Ethernet connections. The developers hope that mass production will soon make the clients cost as little as a typical video cable.
posted on Jan 16, 2006 - View this thread

"Open Source Radio" was what I found at 1550 AM when I was tuning around on the radio.
It didn't sound at all like AM radio, and it wasn't a pirate.
It's Infinity Broadcasting/CBS Radio/VIACOM, but it's also klezmer weddings, motivational spam, Rhino Records, current Japanese music, self promotion, unsigned bands, and things that I can't identify.
posted on Jan 11, 2006 - View this thread

Merrian-Webster open dictionary "Have you spotted a new word or a new sense for an old word that hasn't made it into the dictionary yet? Well, here's your chance to add your discovery (and its definition) to Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary"
posted on Dec 11, 2005 - View this thread

A stunning victory for bearded, radical software programmers and snarky liberals everywhere The conservative blogging company Open Source Media has changed their name back to "pajamas media". [Official Press release about this - ed.]
posted on Nov 22, 2005 - View this thread

Linux®
posted on Aug 21, 2005 - View this thread

Open Source Flash
posted on Aug 15, 2005 - View this thread

DTV beta for Mac is now live. DTV is a new, free and open-source platform for internet television and video. The goal here is to make sure that internet TV is open and independent. Free, open source software and open standards mean anyone can watch and everyone has a voice.
posted on Aug 9, 2005 - View this thread

ChessRogue = Chess + Rogue. (Open source, versions available for Linux and Windows.)

This console-based game takes the pieces of chess and puts them into a Roguelike environment. You start out with a weakened King who can only move and capture horizontally and vertically, in a randomized board full of multi-directional Pawns. As you capture more pieces, the king slowly gains additional powers, like diagonal capture and movement, Knight jumping, and eventually even Rook movement, among others. The opposition gets tougher too, until eventually the entire selection of pieces is out to get you.
Originally created for a three-day programming challenge on rec.games.roguelike.development, it's surprisingly cool, and works rather better than you might expect. It's useful as a break between Nethack fatalities.
posted on Aug 2, 2005 - View this thread

Lula is in trouble. Brazil's progressive president (he even supports open-source!) and the poster politician for a funky, sensible 21st century development (though not everyone is so enamored) is mobbed with corruption allegations.
posted on Jul 20, 2005 - View this thread

Free Beer! ...but free as in "Open Source Beer", mind you. Students from Copenhagen's IT-University have produced and released a powerful beer recipe under a Creative Commons license. Microbrewers, start your machines...
posted on Jul 12, 2005 - View this thread

European Parliament rejects software patenting ..and by a large politically crushing majority of 648 votes vs 14. This is a great measurable success for organization like Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure whose members, supporters and sympathizers have fought against the insane idea of software patent for more then four years (more info on euro software patents on the organization site).
posted on Jul 6, 2005 - View this thread

NextGen Macromedia Flash Tool "Zorn" to Run on Eclipse • "Macromedia's announcement that their next generation enterprise Flash development tool, code-named Zorn, will be built on top of Eclipse, is a watershed moment both for Macromedia and for the open source movement. Macromedia's choice of Eclipse speaks volumes about the impact of open source on commercial software development -- and about Macromedia's commitment to making Flash into an essential platform for next-generation internet applications." </glavin>
posted on Jun 16, 2005 - View this thread

Bogart not the OSS Open Source is cool. Not only is it free-for-you, but you're also entitled to commercialize it as long as you follow some fairly simple rules. Software company Maui X-Stream seems to have run afoul of not just one OSS project but many, cobbling together entire product lines out of free software and branding them as their own -- and then heartily denying it. (More Inside)
posted on May 24, 2005 - View this thread

Tired of virtual dictatorships? Maybe we'll soon have a proper Metaverse (def.) instead.
posted on May 15, 2005 - View this thread

Easytree.org has been shutdown. Easytree, for those unfamiliar, was a tracker site for legal (apparently not) live music and video bit torrents, similar to Archive.org's Live Music collaboration with etree.org. Other discussions of File-sharing on MeFi (specifically the MGM vs. Grokster SCOTUS case) here and here. [more inside]
posted on Apr 6, 2005 - View this thread

BIOS-Biological Innovation for Open Society is an open source biotechnology initiative based in Australia. Along with its parent organization CAMBIA, it aims to foster a "protected commons" for scientific information and technology. Tools and techniques are shared, and can be improved and repackaged, just like in open source software.
posted on Mar 4, 2005 - View this thread

DOSBox is an open source project dedicated towards emulating DOS and many of the features of computers during DOS's heyday. It's not the only DOS emulation project out there either.

When emulation has been discussed before, it has often been considered the domain of video games. Of course, who says it isn't?
posted on Feb 28, 2005 - View this thread

Pushing the open source agenda to the international stage. Brazilian Pop superstar / Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, Grateful dead lyricist John Barlow and others participated yesterday in a World Social Forum gathering in Alegre, Brazil to urge a free open source software policy in the developing world. An open source constitutional discussed previously on metafilter here.
posted on Jan 31, 2005 - View this thread

Thingster is an open-source weblogging service for locative media. It's also the backend for BooksWeLike, which describes itself as "activist e-commerce" and is sponsored (partially) by AlterNet. It's part of a movement for social sharing services, which seems to be an extension of what was previously discussed here.
posted on Jan 24, 2005 - View this thread

The Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn.
posted on Nov 14, 2004 - View this thread

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released today. Servers are reportedly being hit hard so you might want to try a bittorrent download. Comments from: The BBC, PC World, InformationWeek and a very good article from The Boston Globe. Users needing support should check out the Mozillazine Support Forums.
posted on Nov 9, 2004 - View this thread

Why 2004 won't be like 1984. A phenomenal read detailing why Apple's reluctance to open up iPod is not the harbinger of doom that so many pundits claim it is. The horror! Apple may have learned from its mistakes with Macintosh 20 years ago and guess what? Macintosh's failure had little to do with licensing. That is, if you agree with the analysis over at daringfireball.net. This article points out why the media pundits are wrong about Apple's reluctance to open up iPod and shows why their position today is entirely different, and stronger, than 20 years ago. Let the flame wars begin!
posted on Aug 17, 2004 - View this thread

Attention Alpha Complex troubleshooters of blue clearance or higher, good news! The open source version of Paranoia has gone gold. Just in time for GenCon. The happiness control officer will be around soon, to check on your compliance. Have a nice day!
posted on Aug 6, 2004 - View this thread

Open Source Local Journalism. "A small California newspaper [The Northwest Voice] has undertaken a first-of-its-kind experiment in participatory journalism in which nearly all the content published in a regularly updated online edition and a weekly print edition is submitted by community members." Is the editor of your local newspaper aware of this?
posted on Jul 22, 2004 - View this thread

The Sakai Project, an open-source course-management software program for educational institutions is being publicly released today. Backed by the University of Michigan, Indiana University at Bloomington, MIT, and Stanford, Sakai hopes to free Universities from commercial products, which have reportedly become increasingly expensive. Here's a nice little write-up from the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
posted on Jul 15, 2004 - View this thread