At its core, open source is about collaboration. Whether it’s version control, licenses, or issue trackers—everything exists to support people working with each other. Open source embodies a model for people to work together, building something greater than they can create on their own. Open source projects on GitHub come in all shapes and sizes,… Read More »
Openness is a set of values by which you live. It is not a prefix for a sector – open access, open source, open data, open government. Nor is it a license. Openness is not contingent on what license you use. Rather open is a personal position and it transcends both sectors and licenses. Living… Read More »
Ubuntu is very software rich. That is, there’re a lot of applications that can easily be installed from the “official” Ubuntu Software Centre. But there are some applications that can only be obtained by adding a PPA to your Linux system. Then the question that should lurk in the minds of a user considering… Read More »
In a previous post I introduced the concept of a personal package archives (PPAs) and how you’d create one if you are capable of developing software for Ubuntu. In this post we would be talking about how to add PPA configuration to your system and install software from them. If you know the web address… Read More »
Before we go into the topic (PPA) of the post, I would like to enumerate the different sources for applications for a Ubuntu system organized into four separate areas or “components”, based on the level of support offered by Ubuntu and whether or not the program in question complies with Ubuntu’s Free Software Philosophy. The… Read More »
Close to half of all computer users around the world tend to get their software illegally, and business decision-makers are no exception. That’s one finding from a recent survey commissioned by the Business Software piracy Alliance (BSA) lobby group, which reported the results in a blog post last week. “An especially troubling finding in the… Read More »
When Microsoft first started addressing market pressure toward open source, the company didn’t get it. Probably it’s more accurate to say Microsoft didn’t want to get it. Or wanted to pretend not to get it. A key exhibit was the Shared Source Initiative (SSI), an early 2000s initiative to allow certain parties to view… Read More »
There is no doubt that Linux is the best free/open source operating system (OS) out there. But we’re living in a Window-lized non-free country, and so a transition to a free operating system would not be a day job. And I’d like to share some lessons on how one can easily try (and probably move… Read More »
One thing that many newcomers to Linux discover when installing applications on their systems is that they’d always have to install directly from the internet – – most times. To add to the web of these technicalities, different distributions (distros) support different format for distributing and utilizing their applications (e.g. the .deb for Debian-based systems… Read More »
Though I have written severally on the principles behind the free and open source philosophy (which is the entire mission of fossnaija) and how they can help or be applied to Africa as a continent and Nigeria as a developing country. In this article I’m going to examine the aspect of FOSS that can help… Read More »
