Archive for January, 2009
Microsoft opening up?
According to this note on zdnet.com Microsoft has released the source code for its Web Sandbox software under the Apache 2.0 license. Web Sandbox is a tool for testing the security of web content. The Apache 2.0 license allows the content creator to maintain copyright while allowing others to develop the product for their own use. As the report notes, Microsoft has been gradually increasing its support of the Apache Foundation since 2008. This appears to be a step in the right direction.
Open source government
Posted by ram in FOSS, Science And Technology, interesting articles on January 26, 2009
According to this BBC report Scott McNealy, founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems, has been asked to prepare a paper for the Obama administration on the advantages of using FOSS in the government. According to McNealy, FOSS is the secret to more secure and cost effective government.
Open source vote counting
Posted by ram in FOSS, interesting articles, opinion on January 14, 2009
Here’s a great project that I just learned about in Wired magazine–an open source vote counting system written in Python and released under a GNU GPL v3 license. The system was used as part of the Humboldt County (CA) Election Transparency Project, where it discovered 197 missing ballots and a bug (i.e., another bug) in CA’s proprietary voting system marketed by Premier (formerly Diebold) Election Systems.