Tag Archives: foss

Anyone with TLC for Mac VLC?

VLC is free and open source portable media player software that supports a lot of formats and inputs and can also convert and stream. I think it’s been pretty useful for users who didn’t like MPlayer for whatever reason. Nicole … Continue reading

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Goodbye to an LLP Co-op

The Tool Factory closed its doors on 31st December 2009. As you may remember, our co-op is one of few LLP co-ops and we mentioned 2amase LLP in our case study as one of the others. 2amase were closely linked … Continue reading

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As One Association Closes, Another Network Begins

The Association For Free Software (AFFS) seems to have been finally wound up last week. So long, AFFS was Richard Smedley’s view of it. I actually left four years ago (when I wrote State of the AFFS – site currently … Continue reading

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US Defense or Sirsi-Dynix – which is more credible?

Most librarians probably already know this, but maybe the programmers don’t yet. A SirsiDynix Corp lobby paper against Open Source technologies escaped onto the internet. SirsiDynix is a competitor of our co-op with products that compete with Koha. They’re also … Continue reading

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Some Good Does Come From Ubuntu

I’ve been mouthing off about Ubuntu again, after the forthcoming release parties were advertised in some pretty inappropriate places, lamenting: “Ubuntu has taken a voluntary-sector aim-for-100%-free distribution, built a private-sector free-and-non-free distribution and gets more love and free marketing from … Continue reading

Posted in GNU/Linux | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

FOSS Freeskilling, Bristol, 7pm Tue 13 Oct

Sean Kenny emailed us to tell us about an event in Bristol: “This week’s Freeskilling is called Who needs Microsoft? and we are meeting at the Better Food Co. Cafe, St Werburghs @ 7pm Tues 13th Oct. Ben Smith will … Continue reading

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FOSS Screencast Tools?

As I wrote yesterday, the Koha IRC meeting started discussing tutorials for new contributors. I’d really like to avoid expecting people to use non-free software to learn about contributing to free software. Too many so-called webinars are not webinars. I … Continue reading

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OCLC Record Use: Reboot

Disruptive Library Technology Jester reports that OCLC Formally Withdraws Proposed Record Use Policy. The Series Table of Contents there gives a pretty good history, or you can read my past comments in Libraries, Cooperatives, OCLC and TTLLP and OCLC Library … Continue reading

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New #ukgovOSS Action Plan

Earlier this week, Tom Watson, Cabinet Office Parliamentary Secretary, published the Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan. It’s had a pretty mixed reaction, with mild scepticism (niq’s soapbox: Is gov.uk going open-source?) being the average reaction from … Continue reading

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Three Releases: Debian, Co-op and Videos

Three things I really like have released recently:- Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (“Lenny”): I installed it on a laptop the weekend before going to a conference and I’m really impressed. It installed fairly neatly and was good-looking (gtk installer from USB … Continue reading

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