Tsikbal: from my perspective

Blackberry has been somewhat of a dilemma for me, since I like the security and the quality of its smart phones. Yet, that its OS is closed source OS is something that I don't really endorse as an open source advocate. Now that Blackberry has made official it's Priv smart phone launch, all changes. Since it's powered by Android, and it comes with Blackberry's security features baked into it from the start, it makes quite an interesting proposition. This combination makes it quite an interesting proposition for people who support FLOSS and those are mindful of their privacy. Now, we'll have to wait until the device hits the market to know how good Priv actually is. Yet, one can be hopeful that it will be quite a good handset, since Blackberry's hardware is quite solid and Android is quite the solid OS as well. The plus for me, is the fact that the Priv comes with a physical keyboard. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer having a physical keyboa...

The news that Steam just crossed the 1,500 games natively available on Linux is great news not only for Steam itself, but the whole Linux ecosystem. While it still lags far behind the number of games available for Windows and OS X, that the mark is significant in itself. It means that Steam is viewed as a viable gaming platform by developers, since it has been adding about a 100 new games a month for a while now. And while Steam still has some pains due to the lack of driver support for some graphic cards, the fact that there people developing and buying games for Linux helps the ecosystem as a whole. Since it gives a reason to GPU manufactures to start supporting their cards on Linux, they are going to have to make available their drivers on the OS if they want to have a piece of the market for themselves. With this, all the Linux ecosystem wins as a whole. The game developers working to make their games on Steam, and the people buying those games, are a driving force to...

The irony of a 9th grader being arrested because he took a clock he made to school is not only big, but quite disheartening as well. One should think that schools would a place a student should be able to bring something like that without fear, specially of being arrested and suspended because of it. As a matter of fact, the reaction one would expect from the teachers and other staff would be the opposite. I mean, they should be quite interested in fostering that kind of skills and mentality on their students for the better. This issue is made even worse, when one takes into account that the US is starting to lag behind other developed countries on that skill set. Not only that, many of the teenagers and kids are loosing interest on perusing and engineering or science degree stuff like this will only push them further away from those fields. Schools should be one of those places where their students could safely share and practice building things like that. Specially, sin...

The news that the city of Munich is contributing upstream are good, really good, news. They mean two important things for open source software, and both can't be understated. To begin with, it comes to show that open source software can be successfully deployed even in places as important and complex and city governments. The argument that open source software can't compete with proprietary software has been rendered muted, and in such a way that its hard to dispute. There are a few other places where software could effectiveness could be tested more throughly than a government, even if it is at a city level. Secondly, it comes to show that contribute upstream is not something that just a few can do. The only requirement is to have an IT department that has the technical knowhow to implement the changes needed to the needs of the particular entity to then share does changes upstream. When there is that aspect, then it makes it more of a matter of will to contribut...

To hear that the Ada Initiative is closing down, is not something an open source advocate wants to hear. Specially when it's an initiative that brings women to the open source community, by empowering them and giving them the skills needed to be a part of the community. Though not all is lost, since their resources are going to be left behind so they can keep benefiting others, the ideal would be that the Ada Initiative to be able to keep on their work. In many ways, there is a need for women to have place like Ada Initiative as support. Though I'd love to see these kind of initiatives moving away from helping women against harassment and those kind of issues, to being being able focus on other kind of support to women who want to move and work on open source software. When we lose an initiative like this, not only women lose. We all lose, since it could mean that many talented women could choose to move away from working on open source software, and deprive the c...

In this article about Google Chrome , there are two main things that I take from it. To begin with, that no software is perfect. As such, all software will have some issues that will affect users in some ways. There is no such thing as a perfect software, there are always issues from security flaws to take care of to quirks that make it do unexpected things from time to time. Some of this bugs won't be a problem to most people, while they can be a deal breaker for other. Good software, will keep this to a minimum. Yet, there will be some for whom it just won't work. Trying to to frame those users as being the guilty ones is not fair, since it's not their fault that the software doesn't work for them. On the other hand, the developers of the software can't be expected to make their product one that works perfectly for everyone who uses it. I'm aware that browsers are a special kind of software that will cover the needs of a broader set of user. B...

As Richard Stallman in this article says, that the NSA uses GNU/Linux or any other FLOSS isn't bad at all. In a way it speaks well on how good the software is, since it can be used in such critical missions. The problem with the NSA lies somewhere else, and not directly with the technology it uses to do its work. To begin with, the NSA shouldn't be spying on everyone in the name of safety. That's a violation of basic human rights, since we all should have a reasonable level of confidence that we aren't being spied by any government at any given point of time without a good cause. Law enforcement agencies shouldn't be able to get any data on anyone without having to give a good reason why an individual should be a target of their investigations. It's better for all, that the bar is high in order to get a warrant to get our data. Also, if law enforcement agencies used FLOSS we the people would have a good reason to be sure that the tools they use ...