Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems

A ZDNet blog has an interesting post titled The rise of the open sorcerors, summarizing and putting a new spin on a Doc Searls’ editorial posted here: Getting Flat, Part 1 | Linux Journal.

The key criticism of Friedman’s book is that he keeps describing Open Source software in the context of proprietary software, portraying it as a big battle. To put Searls’s point succinctly: Open Source isn’t a new addition to the marketplace; it’s a new marketplace.

I’ve read a couple of Friedman’s books, and think he has some great insights. Looks like I’m going to have to pick this one up.

Over in the UK, some people are noticing how the Open Source approach might be applied to completely different fields. Geoff Mulgan writes:

“As has happened with the web - those cities, organisations and nations that move fastest to embrace open methods are likely to benefit in all sorts of ways - economic, social and cultural. There is also a deep political and moral imperative to make the most of open methods since they are one of the most important ways to make a reality of such much-abused words as ‘empowerment’.”

Open source revolution | eGov monitor. A full 77-page PDF report is available here.

At Freelock Computing, we’ve been using OpenVPN regularly for the last year and a half, both in house and at client sites, and we’re huge fans. It’s easy to administer, has a variety of security options, and no vulnerabilities have been found to date. It’s fast, extremely flexible, and can be set up in site-to-site or road warrior configurations.

Version 2.0 was released on Sunday, after a year or so of being in beta. Version 2.0 makes it possible to tunnel an unlimited number of connections through a single UDP or TCP port–in previous versions, you had to set up one port per connection. OpenVPN Download.

There’s a task bar manager for Windows, which makes it super simple to connect and disconnect to pre-configured remote machines. For hints installing in Windows so a non Administrator can start and stop the tunnel, see this page.

Web publishing is no longer just text and pictures. It’s now possible to b eyour own Internet video station, without needing a huge server or bandwidth. Many different technologies work together to make it easy for people to subscribe to video or audio feeds from your web site, downloading large files to their desktops for viewing/listening at leisure.

Today, I stumbled upon a project to bring all these technologies together: Participatory Culture Foundation. From the web site:

“RSS and Bittorrent create the opportunity for anyone to make a television channel with full-screen video that can be watched by thousands or millions of people, with no broadcasting costs. Finally, real competition in television and truly independent television becoming the mainstream.”