Diaspora gives users control

Developers have taken their first glance at Diaspora - the so-called 'Facebook killer' - which revealed its open source coding to the Internet last week, says AOL.

"This is now a community project and development is open to anyone with the technical expertise who shares the vision of a social network that puts users in control," reads a statement from the Diaspora blog. "From now on, we will be working closely with the community on improving and solidifying Diaspora."

The self-described "privacy-aware, personally-controlled" social networking platform aims to create a user experience that is more privacy friendly compared to the often criticized policies on Facebook.

Dell has provided the code needed to compile a Streak ROM, finally becoming compliant with the Open Source licence, and not before time, writes The Register.

The more technical Dell Streak owner will be celebrating the availability of source code for the Streak's hardware drivers. This code allows fans to compile their own Android variants - perhaps even version 2.2, Froyo.

The missing files were noticed last month when a Dell Streak owner first tried to compile Android for the oversized telephone. That proved impossible because Dell did not provide the necessary files despite their provision being mandated by the GPL licence. That provoked a storm of twittered Web 2.0 protest calling for Dell to be publicly humiliated.

The UK government has confirmed its intention to buy open source software, stating that it will buy open source rather than proprietary software when the costs are similar, according to eWeek UK.

The rather lukewarm endorsement of open source came in a parliamentary written answer by Francis Maude, the Cabinet office minister.

He said that even where there are no significant overall cost differences between open and proprietary products, open source will be selected “on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility”.