Bhartiya writes: For ages I have been convincing people to switch from close source to open source, from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. I have been telling people to ditch the controversial docx format and adopt .odt only to find myself in an embarrassing situation, thanks to Google.
Read more »Why Is Google Not Supporting The Open Document Formats?
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Software patents: foolish business
http://www.guardian.co.uk –
Academic research by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society has found that software patents have provided no net benefit to the software industry, let alone to society as a whole.
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TLWIR 13: C++11, Google Buys Motorola, and Linux No Longer a Threat
http://beginlinux.com –
This week was punctuated by three phenomenal stories that show how free software is prospering. C++ has been one of the staples of free software for several decades. It is the programming language of choice for a lot of programmers, and it just got a brand new revision. Google has provided some much-needed backing of free software by buying Motorola Mobility and its associated patent pool.
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Google also passes on European data to US authorities
http://www.h-online.com –
More solid reasons for leaving the cloud to the birds. With varying international laws, almost anyone can end up examining your private data. Security and privacy are never guaranteed.
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About the WebM Community Cross-License
http://www.webm-ccl.org –
The WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) initiative enables the web community to further support the WebM Project. Google, Matroska and the Xiph.Org Foundation make the various components of WebM openly available on royalty-free terms. By joining the CCL, member organizations likewise agree to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL.
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Mmm mmm good - YouTube videos now served in WebM
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com –
To that end, all new videos uploaded to YouTube are now transcoded into WebM. WebM is an open media file format for video and audio on the web. Its openness allows anyone to improve the format and its integrations, resulting in a better experience for you in the long-term.
Read more »Avoid the pitfalls of the JavaScript Trap on Gmail
http://www.fsf.org –
Today we're launching the first in a series of features on how to use common websites without using proprietary JavaScript. You may not be aware of the dangers of JavaScript -- a problem we've deemed The JavaScript Trap -- proprietary software running on your computer, inside your web browser. The focus of our first feature is Google's Gmail service.
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Steer clear of Android Market and its DRM
http://www.fsf.org –
Google recently made headlines after they identified some malware being distributed through the Android Market. Not only did they stop distributing those apps, but they used their "remote kill switch" to remove the apps from phones where they were already downloaded. This is a kind of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) that all computer users should avoid.
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USDOJ opens anti-trust investigation of MPEG-LA
http://yro.slashdot.org –
The Wall Street Journal reports MPEG-LA's statement to try to prevent Google's VP8 codec from spreading is the reason of the interest of the US Department of Justice.
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Google submits documentation for VP8 video codec to the IETF
http://www.h-online.com –
Shortly before announcing its decision to remove H.264 support for HTML5 video from Chrome, Google's codec developers submitted an I-D of its VP8 Data Format and Decoding Guide to the IETF with a request for comments. The document provides a detailed description of the bitstream format and the decoding mechanism used for the VP8 video codec.
Read more »No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM
http://www.fsf.org –
Last week, Google announced that it plans to remove support for the H.264 video codec from its browsers, in favor of the WebM codec that they recently made free. Since then, there's been a lot of discussion about how this change will affect the Web going forward, as HTML5 standards like the tag mature.
Read more »Stallman's Cloudburst: Prudence or Paranoia?
http://www.ecommercetimes.com –
When Richard Stallman talks, the FOSS community tends to listen, and that's just what could be observed in the Linux blogosphere over the past week or so.
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Geek Time with Peter Brown of FSF
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com –
When the Free Software Foundation’s executive director, Peter Brown, visited the Google offices last week, he graciously offered his time for an interview with Samba co-founder and Open Source Programs Office team member Jeremy Allison. Peter and Jeremy spoke for quite a while about several of the hot topics facing free software today.
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Why I will not buy Google’s Cr-48 Chrome Notebook
http://www.linuxbsdos.com –
Knowing that these are part of the service agreement, why would anyone want to own a Cr-48? I understand that a significant percentage of potential buyers will not care, but I do, and that is why I will never own one, when it goes on sale. Not that Google’s executives care one bit whether a blogger buys their latest gadget or not, but it’s about my privacy, not theirs.
Read more »Google's ChromeOS means losing control of data, warns RMS
http://www.guardian.co.uk –
Google's new cloud computing ChromeOS looks like a plan "to push people into careless computing" by forcing them to store their data in the cloud rather than on machines directly under their control, warns Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the operating system GNU.
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