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Our Blogs Open Sauce - A GNU perspective Open source - and an open mind
Our Blogs Open Sauce - A GNU perspective Open source - and an open mind | Open source - and an open mind |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Friday, 15 February 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 3 Some years ago, CyberSource released what Zymaris calls a "viable replacement for Microsoft's Access database." Named HypatiaDB (Hypatia was the last librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria, the most illustrious library of the ancient world - Zymaris is well versed in the history of his country of origin) the development has been somewhat neglected of recent times. A third application which CyberSource has released under an open licence is OpenTender , a modified version of LimeSurvey, software that is used to conduct surveys. He says that the company has tweaked the code somewhat so that it can be used for open tendering. The next release is expected soon. The development of this bit of software was driven by the tendency of governments to adopt a tender platform which could only be used by those using proprietary systems. A few years back, CyberSource was successful in building what it called a Safe Internet Computer which used a live CD running a modified version of Knoppix, a Linux distribution developed by German Klaus Knopper. A variant of this was taken up by a remand centre near Melbourne with 120 PCs being set up after a six-month trial, with the PCs all booting off images from a server. Zymaris was very active in the area of advocacy some years back but that has fallen off somewhat. If truth be told, he is somewhat cynical about those who claim to be advocates nowadays. And there we go off the record, so you, gentle reader, can theorise in any direction you like. These days Zymaris is occupied with work at various sites, doing technical documentation. This is a switch from his routine, a change that he feels will help recharge the batteries. He tells me that he hasn't gone out to client sites for years. He looks a bit tired but I guess that working in the FOSS arena takes its toll.
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