G1TalkShop

For some time I have truly been a bit out of touch with developments in Open Source software. To me, the flagship Open and Free application was OpenOffice. There are of course, mightier and more beautiful ones like MySQL. But this one is closer to one's finger tips, purring on our Laptops and Desktops. Quite unlike others enthroned on the arrogant servers or known only to developers. OOo (OpenOffice.org) was for me a good enough substitute for MS Office. It was steadily improving. But sadly, our worst fears – of commercial greed choking this great effort – seemed to have come true. As many are aware, Oracle, the database major, acquired Sun Microsystems some time back. Sun had developed Java. Sun had placed the licensing of its Java implementation under the GNU General Public License in 2006. Java had, by then, already become the hot favourite on the web and on all sorts of devices – from big computers to cell phones. Hmm, Yes! I do mean – Java everywhere! It was too true.