Surfing Internet brings sometimes interesting results.
Keywords “kosher linux” in google search brought me page from U8UNTU eLXER about Jubuntu = Ubuntu for “Jewish People”

Information from Launchpad and Jewbuntu.org both seems to be a joke.

Jewbuntu.com offers iso with a version of distro 7.10.
I installed it through VirtualBox. Actually, it turned out to be just Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop iso. So, it nothing more than a fake.

I think that would be nice to have a precompiled Linux distro with a set of programs and browser bookmarks for needs of Jewish people with certain religious needs. Hope, soon there appear some light and fast true kosher Linux OS.

Popularity: 24% [?]

jewbuntu, linux, open-source, ubuntu, virtualbox Hide

KosherJava wrote an interesting review on Zmanim for Android.

I plan to get Android based phone, so such a program will be very useful for me as well.

Popularity: 11% [?]

android, java, open-source, zmanim Hide

I decided to make a separate post on topic, which came from questions asked by Oron here.
(more…)

Popularity: 5% [?]

halakha, open-source, proprietary, software Hide

To write this post I was inspired by this e-mail thread. It is really funny to hear from adepts of free software religious intolerant speeches. And I have got a question: is it kosher enough to write open-source programs?
In addition, I was thinking for a long time about halakhic aspects of Open-source in general. My rabbi told me once an example of halakhic issue:
If a rabbi opens a synagogue on a street and earns money for lending it to study Torah, then no one can open another on that street and especially for free.
In our case free software takes earnings from those, who live for that.
I propose to talk not about opposition Windows vs Linux, but about our, Jewish software.
There are a lot of closed source applications, which are provided for money, or supported by donations. Is there a problem to create open-source alternative software? Don’t we steel money from those, who live on it?

as an example, Kaluach.com distributes synagogue wall display program for a pretty big amount of money. Me personally, I don’t see any problem with earning money for programming (I cannot agree with Stallman to free absolutely all software). But the question is: can I create free-of-charge program, which will concur with Kaluach’s program?

Popularity: 21% [?]

halakha, linux, open-source, win32 Hide