The good news, the bad news, and the ugly news about the diffusion of free and opensource software through the Canadian public sector, a must read for those who may be seeking to bring free software into any government environment.

The final report by e-Cology Corporation on its study of open source software (OSS) in Canada, which was contracted out by the Government of Canada, is now available. The main report includes five chapters. The Appendix contains detailed information from the study including questionnaire results, company profiles, a comprative analysis of open source software licenses and the scenario workshop report.
[ via e-cology corporation ]

In particular, I note a recurring theme of disorganization and disinformation in the diffusion of micro-vendors working the FLOSS space, and I can't help but remember nearly a decade back and our grand noble plans during those Bynari.ca years, and the grand snub of silence our proposal for a collaborative federated front foundation received from our compatriot me-me-me memed entrepreneurs.

Happy ending? Or a good riddence? I may not have been as blunt in my post-mortem of the falling out ... Ok, I probably would have if I had your ear in a pub and maybe gone a few steps more depending on the hour, but nonetheless, I couldn't have said it better than Richard on how the break with BitKeeper is a Good Thing for Linux, and a Good Thing for free software in general.

We should not forget the lesson we have learned from it: Non-free programs are dangerous to you and to your community. Don't let them get a place in your life.
[ via BitKeeper bon-voyage is a happy ending ]

Hear, hear. And further to that notion, I'll risk of munged paraphrase of what John Cage said about pianos:

Proprietary software is like money; any intrinsic value is only a misperception by those who own it.

Back about 4 years ago, we were working with mega-publisher MCP on precisely this sort of thing, plans for a general HowTo Linux phrasebook guide for Windows programmers who had seen the light (or lucky enough to work for managers with good future-sense) and now must embark down the long road porting their prior O/S choice mistakes into a reliable open operating system. We couldn't find anyone willing and able to write our book back then, but it seems we were simply too far ahead of the curve ...

The wave of migration to open source in business has the potential to cause a tremendous porting traffic jam as developers move the ever-pervasive Windows application to the Linux platform. In this three-part series, get a mapping guide, complete with examples, to ease your transition from Windows to Linux.

Part one begins with inter-process communications, and oh boy are you Win-kernel people in for a treat!

[ read Porting Windows IPC apps to Linux ]