BusinessWeek has a good piece on the success of Skype and how it is utilising the vast peer-2-peer aspect of the Internet to put the fear of God up the traditional telco's with its free VoIP voice calls. Peer-2-Peer with its many-hands-make-light-work attitude is very similar to how the open source thrives when you ask the community for help.
Speaking of community help, Andy Singleton writes an interesting editorial over at IT Manager's Journal on why some companies don't open source their software. He goes through the classic reasons some companies would not want to go down that route.
The ideas and plays behind open source software aren't unique to the software world. Have you ever wondered how to build a cathedral in today's modern world with no funding, no planning permission or even formal building skills? Do it the open source way; get the community involved. Justo Gallego Martínez is doing just that in Spain. [Thanks to Kirk for passing on the link].
Finally, for some serious office games, check out the latest water gun unearthed by Gizmodo; it is a laser guided power water gun, complete with gallon tank on the back for serious rapid fire action.
Fear and loathing in source code licensing
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Can established enterprise software vendors match the flexibility of open-source applications? If you ask for source code from a vendor that doesn't normally distribute it, you often get an instinctive answer of "we can't do that." You see fear, even paranoia. What are the sources of this fear that is preventing wider source code licensing and collaboration?
Modern day Cathedral
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Justo Gallego Martínez is building his very own Cathedral in Mejorada del Campo near Madrid, Spain. This is no "model" cathedral and he is neither a qualified architect, nor engineer, nor bricklayer -- he is a farmer. "The plans have only ever existed in my head" and have evolved over time in response to opportunity and inspiration.
Head mounted water gun
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The head mounted water gun operates with an antique liquid based fire extinguisher and it is actually more complicated than it looks. For full instructions head over to their site and soon you can be having
the time of your life in no time.
tags: skype open source
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