2010 so far has been awesome.
1. Ubuntu 10.04 was released and its the best Ubuntu yet.
2. Google released WebM (Vorbis+VP8).
3. Steam began porting their engine to Linux.
4. WebGL and other HTML5 technologies are gaining ground.
What all this means is the barrier is lowering and lowering for full open source adoption. With all these great technologies in the browser and on the desktop that support our open source efforts we can rest assured that regular users can move away from proprietary software. Oh and porting steam to Linux lowers the barrier to moving to Linux so although its proprietary software itself it helps users to not get regressions from moving and we should be very very happy about any help we get.
The innovations in web technologies support everyone but mainly this support helps Linux.
If everything on the web is inter-operable then why pay for an crap OS? If all the awesome innovations happening is open source how can Microsoft compete? The answer is even with all of its money Microsoft cant compete long term and with this web innovation happening no one should pay for an OS.
The challenge to Ubuntu is to leverage web apis on the desktop but build fantastic desktop applications for the times when you aren’t connected. Integrating the web into the Ubuntu desktop experience is the challenge for the next 10 years.
Shane Fagan: Why 2010 has been a great year so far for open source
http://shanefagan.com/?p=947
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“Steam began porting their engine to Linux.”
. What you wrote looks like Steam was a company behind some engine, which is incorrect.
More like Valve (supposedly) begun porting their distribution platform, Steam, and their engine, Source, to Linux
Other than that, I agree entirely, it’s been a great year so far, and there’s still much to come.
The distribution platform yes but engine too because its already ported to Mac so its already in OpenGL. All they need is the sound stack integrated next and they should have something workable.
Second link (WebM) gets an error 404.
Fixed now, I forgot to put in http:// for the link and wordpress thought it was an internal link.
It would be cool if this year you can update that list with btrfs. On a slightly kinda unrelated note I wonder what the status of the Android application porting process to Ubuntu is going that Canonical started last year.
Well it was working ok last year but it wasn’t Canonical themselves doing it from what I remember. On the btrfs note its good but still not there yet, hopefully we can get it into Maverick but its 50:50 at the moment. I wouldn’t say its a game changer though a file system doesn’t affect users all that much except when it goes horribly wrong.
Well, nevertheless it would be my dream to see a simple disk management app for btrfs in Ubuntu. I have a Drobo FS (actually runs linux) right now and it’s fantastic. I don’t have to worry about RAIDs, disk failing, running out of space, etc. and it sounds like btrfs can address all of those issues. Hopefully we can see that before the next LTS release.
In terms of android apps, ars did an article that made it sound like canonical was behind it: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/05/canonical-developers-aim-to-make-android-apps-run-on-ubuntu.ars
on the other hand, oracle bought sun
Well Sun weren’t the biggest open source company in the world or anything. Sun simply had a poor business model, they needed a buyout or a huge restructure if they were to survive. Oracle aren’t the least friendly company in the world to open source. A lot of their business is Linux and they are developing BTRFS the next generation Linux file system. The only problem is lots of developers some of whom are the best open source developers in the world were left jobless after the merger.
In what way is Steam on Linux good for FLOSS? AFAICS, it could only bad for FLOSS.
It is good for FLOSS because it lowers the barrier to move away from Windows. Gaming is a huge problem at the moment in Linux. Steam is one of the biggest games engines around with a huge catalog of games so if we have those available we can say there wont be any regressions when gamers move over. Then when the gamers come more games companies will start to make native apps. We just need the support.
We shouldnt turn down help where ever it comes from.