There has been many reports of the Mozilla foundations efforts to make some money from their efforts. Many have thought to accuse Mozilla of “selling out” Open Source by making money and I thought it worthwhile to put that idea to rest.

The first thing to keep in mind is that there is no part of Open Source that states that your organization must never make any money, after all, people must eat right? Secondly, the Firefox, Thunderbird and Mozilla code bases are still Open Source and free, meaning anyone that wants to can still get their favourite email client or web browser free and clear, just as they always have. Some Open Source companies make their money by providing services and support for their Open Source products. Redhat Linux is one such example, but all OSS companies and organizations need some sort of business plan in order to pay for costs, staff and so on. As long as the software is Open Source, who really cares that the company or organization doesn’t want to depend entirely on the kindness of strangers?

So in essence, Mozilla used to rely entirely on donations from people and companies, they will still do so in the future to some extent or another but now they have the chance to help themselves make better Open Source products and there are not many out there who could really call them to task for it. If you don’t like it, download the source code of one or all the programs and create your own OSS browser/email client based on them. The fact that you can do that is the real reason OSS is becoming an unstoppable force in the software world.

I have known ultra-marathoner Jim Dreyer for many years (main entry using flash). He has made direct crossings of most of the great lakes, except Superior. Unfortunately, that lake has bested him about six times. Well he is at it again using modern tracking technology which forestalls the need for a support crew. Wish him well, and make a donation to your local Big Brothers Big Sisters program in his honor!

Opera has released an update for their version 8 web browser, taking them to 8.02. The changes are various bug fixes and security patches. If you are an Opera fan, you should head over and get the updated version.

An interesting article by LinuxDevices has highlighted that embedded Linux accounts for 14% of smartphones whereas Windows only accounts for 4.5%. Between smartphones, Tivo’s and various routers, there are very likely millions of people out there using Linux devices without knowing about it. In the grand scheme of things, if people don’t know about it, it usually means that it’s doing a good job.

Due to some extension compatibility problems with Firefox 1.0.5 and Thunderbird 1.0.5, the Mozilla foundation have released versions 1.0.6 of both Firefox and Thunderbird. There are no new features added to the new versions, they simply rectify an API problem that affected some extensions. In other news, the next generation of Firefox will be called Firefox 1.5 and is not due now till around September.

Summer is a time to enjoy life, and maybe get motivated to do something you dare to do and spend time on what you enjoy. I have truly enjoyed watching Lance Armstrong ride to his seventh le Tour de France victory (well okay he has one day to go now, but he will do it). This story about a “Fat Man Walking” is interesting as well. I like to spend time at Lake Michigan as well. However, my love is barefoot waterskiing. I have been skiing on average once per day. So I am enjoying the summer and maybe ignoring our site a little. Thanks for your patience. Go enjoy life yourself a bit … and you might not miss me quite as much.

WinZip is the first thing many download when setting up a new system. It’s been around just about as long as Windows and has been downloaded many millions of times.
WinZip has now been bought by “Vector Capital” who plan to turn the company around and make it profitable.
Technically WinZip is Shareware and after 30 days of use you are supposed to register it for 29 dollars. Unfortunately it seems many don’t and now the new owners plan to get tough when encouraging users to buy it. Vector Capital also own Corel and Jasc, the later of which was famous for it’s Paint Shop Pro imaging software which was recently sold to Corel.
Read more about it at CNET.