i.justrealized

Forbes 2009 billionaire list is out and Bill Gates regains title as the world’s richest man despite losing USD18 billion in the past 12 months. Gates is now worth USD40 billion. Well, the other fellows lost something like USD25 billion so Gates is top again. Warren Buffet’s (2nd richest) Berkshire Hathaway is down 45% since last March. For Carlos Slim Helu & family, net worth dropped to USD35 billion.

In Pictures: The 2009 Billionaire List

Software visionary regains title as the world’s richest man despite losing $18 billion in the past 12 months. Stepped down from day-to-day duties at Microsoft last summer to devote his talents and riches to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Organization’s assets were $30 billion in January; annual letter lauds endowment manager Michael Larson for limiting last year’s losses to 20%. Gates decided to increase donations in 2009 to $3.8 billion, up 15% from 2008. Dedicated to fighting hunger in developing countries, improving education in America’s high schools and developing vaccines against malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS. Appointed Microsoft Office veteran Jeffrey Raikes chief exec of Gates Foundation in September. Gates remains Microsoft chairman. Sells shares each quarter, redeploys proceeds via investment vehicle Cascade; more than half of fortune invested outside Microsoft. Stock down 45% in past 12 months. “Creative capitalist” wants companies to match profitmaking with doing good. (Source: Forbes)

Well, that is still a lot of money. I’m rank #239025921 in the world with $20 in my wallet right now.

A company, Vyper Logix Corp, has released Django 2.0 without the blessings of the Django Software Foundation. According to James Bennett, the software is built on the Django 0.96.2 codebase which includes a critical bug.

Who would have thought opensource projects could be ripped off that blatantly. Django is a registered trademark of the Django Software Foundation, perhaps a warning could be issued. There’s really no point wasting time and resources pursuing this incident.

The man behind Django 2.0 is Ray Horn whose public LinkedIn profile can be viewed here. He owns a patent, a Python blog where he blogs as “Guido Python” and wrote some dubious Python software. (Guido van Rossum, by the way, is the Python’s Benevolent Dictator For Life.)

In the LinkedIn profile, he claims to be:

1. Supporting around over 2 million lines of Python codes.
2. And I quote “Accomplished, seasoned Consultant with over 30+ years experience in web based software using ColdFusion and JavaScript/AJAX; consultation work includes SBC/AT&T, IBM, Stanford University, NationsBank, and Multimedia Live.”
3. And I further quote “Recently produced 6000 lines of JavaScript code in less than 3 weeks; 3200 lines comprised a reusable JavaScript based AJAX Framework.”

Wow I didn’t know there’s AJAX back 30 years. Didn’t know ColdFusion existed too. Erm, did the web even exist 30 years ago? The JavaScript code… I hope he didn’t release it as JQuery 2.0.

It appears it is not the first time, he did something like this. He has been criticized for taking BlogCFC, rebranding and releasing it for profit.

I am unsure if he did anything wrong here. He probably didn’t as the license might have allowed him to alter the software for commercial purposes so it is attributed back to the author. (I am not expert in software licenses.) But what he did here violates commonsense software ethics because there weren’t significant change from the opensource version. It just start to get me thinking – how to stop such activities. At the end of the day, it’s up to buyers to decide if they are willing to trust the Ray Horn brand or not.

On tech news today, Symbian adopts the Eclipse Public License, set up the Symbian Foundation and went opensource.

Industry leaders to unify the Symbian mobile platform and set it free

…industry leaders are coming together to establish Symbian Foundation, to bring to life a shared vision and to create the most proven, open and complete mobile software platform – available for free. To achieve this, the foundation will unify Symbian, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) software to create an unparalleled open software platform for converged mobile devices, enabling the whole mobile ecosystem to accelerate innovation.

The Symbian Foundation platform will be available to members under a royalty-free license from this non-profit foundation. The Symbian Foundation will provide, manage and unify the platform for its members. Also, it will commit to moving the platform to open source during the next two years, with the intent to use the Eclipse Public License. This will make the platform code available to all for free, bringing additional innovation to the platform and engaging even a broader community in future developments.

The platform will be free and open to develop on from the start whether you are enthusiast, web designer, professional developer or service provider. To develop on the platform you will not need to be a member of the foundation. The Symbian Foundation’s developer program will provide a single point of access for developer support; providing a wide offering of tools and resources. (Source: Symbian Foundation)

Symbian is used by Nokia. It’s like Apple has the iPhone, Microsoft has Windows Mobile and even Google’s coming up with something too. Symbian’s having a rather unexciting future with all the other platforms (especially the iPhone) making news every now and then.

For years Nokia kept the OS closed and all of a sudden they open it. And why’s that so? Because they used it enough already, they earned their cash and they finally decide to share. This news would have been more exciting if released years ago, not anymore.