It was a very good year for Open Source Software (OSS). The annual end of year lists have started to appear.
Here are a couple of stories on my personal list of top OSS stories for 2007.
Google launches Open Handset Alliance.
Bringing the Linux OS to mobile phones and opening the mobile phone platform for developers to build real world applications. In todays IT world, few landscapes are as closed as that of mobile devices. Few companies have done more to open it up than Google.
Bringing innovative laptops (running Linux) to the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte and his team have been so successful that they now face competition from the likes of Intel. Yet it is the quirky visionary from MIT who has delivered the superior product:
“… no competitor approaches the XO in innovation. It is hard drive-free, runs on the Linux operating system and stretches wireless networks with ‘mesh’ technology that lets each computer in a village relay data to the others.”
Yes it was a good year for OSS. I’ll probably think of several other stories as we count down to the drop of the ball.