Opinion: Absolutism hurting Debian — The 5.0 ("Lenny") release of Debian Linux has been delayed by a philosophical rift among project developers. In a thoughtful essay entitled "Debian, Philosophy, and People," Linux Foundation Fellow Ted T'so draws examples from literature, religion, and philosophy in renouncing the free software absolutism of Debian's Social Contract. ...
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Linux patent program finances "defensive publications" —  Patent holding company Open Invention Network (OIN) has launched a "Linux Defenders" program, co-sponsored by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and the Linux Foundation (LF). The program is designed to make prior art more readily accessible to patent and trademark office examiners, says OIN. ...
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Linux Foundation announces TAB electees — The Linux Foundation (LF) announced the results of its Technical Advisory Board (TAB) election. Six new members were elected to the ten-member TAB, originating from companies including Intel, Oracle, and Red Hat, says the LF. ...
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Mistah SCO -- he dead — The little company that posed a big legal challenge to Linux early on now seems to have been handed its final comeuppance, in a court document ominously described as a "final judgment." ...
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Worst security blooper ever? —  T-Mobile has issued an over-the-air fix for a laughable Android security bug that caused anything typed into its G1 phone to be interpreted by a root shell process. Prior to the fix, hackers briefly enjoyed root shell access, leading to such fun as Debian SD-card installations. ...
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Novell offers RHEL, CentOS support —  Novell has launched a "competitive replacement" program aimed at luring Red Hat and CentOS users to its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) product. Through the program, Novell will support customers' RHEL or CentOS servers for up to two years, while the customer migrates to SLES. ...
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Windows 7 no threat to netbook Linux — I've been nonplussed the last few weeks as ordinarily sane compu-journalists opine that Windows 7 will somehow kill Linux on netbooks. This weekend, I had a chance to actually see XP running on an EEE 900, and I can tell you, Linux has nothing to fear from Redmond. ...
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Microsoft breaks HotMail for Linux users? —  [Updated 8:30] -- A Linux-Watch reader today reported difficulties using Microsoft's Hotmail service with Firefox browsers running on Linux operating systems. We confirmed that creating a new Hotmail account was not possible, due to an error message suggesting a "browser upgrade." ...
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Torvalds: Real quality means taking it personally —  The Linux Foundation (LF) has posted a ten-minute video interview with kernel coordinator Linus Torvalds. Held during the Linux Foundation's recent Linux Kernel Summit, the interview reveals the Linux founder speaking out on issues ranging from kernel/userland interactions to why Linux has so many interfaces. ...
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Opinion: open source value transcends tough times — Am I the only one turned off by ads touting the advantages of open source software during tough economic times? They strike me as unsavory, like an ambulance-chasing lawyer tucking his card into the pocket of an unconscious or at least severely sedated IT industry. ...
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OpenOffice 3.0 reviewed —  Nine years after Sun Microsystems bought StarOffice, the resulting OpenOffice.org project is has rolled out its 3.0 release. Enhanced format compatibility and features put it on par with Microsoft Office. ...
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Shutting down idle PCs with Linux — This simple project describes building a low-powered embedded Linux system to find and shut down idling Linux and Windows PCs left on by careless, energy-wasting users. Suitable for deployment on a Linksys WRT54G or NSLU2, it leverages the open source Argus network monitoring tool, along with custom perl scripts. ...
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Linux valued at $10.9 billion — Have you got some loose change in your pocket, and dreams of building a better operating system? It would take about 25 years, nearly 60,000 developer-years, and $10.8B to re-create a distribution like Fedora 9, according to a new report from the Linux Foundation. ...
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UK gains LPI affiliate — Bristol, UK based LinuxIT has joined the Global Affiliate Network of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI). In its capacity as an official LPI affiliate, LinuxIT has established an independent "LPI-UK" organization aimed at ensuring that "all UK Linux training is accredited under the LPI framework," LinuxIT CEO Peter Dawes-Huish said. ...
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Linux now an equal Flash player — Welcome to the future. Linux is now a first-class desktop operating system citizen. Adobe today released version 10 of its Adobe Flash Player, available now in a variety of convenient packaging formats for Linux, as well as other popular desktop operating systems. ...
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LSB 4 is out the door -- almost — The Linux Foundation's community manager, Brian Proffitt, today announced a "beta" release of version 4 of the Linux Standards Base (LSB 4). Designed to foster application portability across compliant Linux distributions, LSB 4.0 adds tools for developers, including new shell script and application checkers. ...
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OpenOffice 3.0 ships — OpenOffice.org (OOo) has shipped a major update to its free, cross-platform office suite. OpenOffice.org 3.0 features native Mac OS X support for the first time, along with more MS Office interoperability including "Open XML" and ".accdb" file format support for Office 2007 and Access 2007, respectively. ...
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Wikipedia standardizes servers on Ubuntu — The operator of the popular Wikipedia website has reportedly standardized its 400 servers on Ubuntu. San Francisco based Wikimedia Foundation, which employs five geographically distributed IT staff, and serves two million pages daily, says the move will simplify server maintenance, according to a report. ...
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RIP LinuxWorld — [Updated Oct. 9] -- The largest conference devoted to Linux technology is changing its name to embrace open source software on other operating systems (OSes). Next August, LinuxWorld will relaunch as the OpenSource World Conference & Expo, but will retain existing LinuxWorld features, says show organizer IDG World ...
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Financial crisis may bode well for Linux — Linux developers shouldn't be too worried over the threat of a major recession, says the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin, according to an eWEEK story. As companies look for ways to cut costs in response to the current financial crisis, Linux will be given greater consideration, Zemlin was quoted as saying. ...
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Financial exchange joins Linux Foundation — A financial market describing itself as the "world's largest derivatives exchange" has joined the Linux Foundation. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has been a vocal proponent of Linux since 2003, when it began using the open source OS to improve trade speed and system reliability, it says. ...
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Linux Foundation courts individual members —  After announcing its first event for "end users," the Linux Foundation has begun to promote "individual memberships." Available now for $50 a year, memberships include a T-shirt, quarterly newsletter, and the "ability to run for and vote for a Linux Foundation board seat," says the organization. ...
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SGI frees up GL-related licensing — SGI has radically simplified the license covering its OpenGL Sample Implementation, GLX, and other accelerated 2D/3D graphics software releases. Moving from five pages to three paragraphs, the new version of the SGI Free Software License B mimics the free X11 license, a non-copyleft license similar to the BSD license. ...
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OSCON 2008 presentations, videos posted —  Wrapping up the OSCON (Open Source Convention) held in Portland, Oregon on July 21-25, show organizer O'Reilly Media has posted photos, videos, and presentations files. Meanwhile, winners of the 2008 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards and the SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards have also been announced. ...
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Linux -- not yet photo-friendly — Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton is fond of saying, "If you want the kernel team to do something, make us look bad." Perhaps somewhat in that spirit, a blog called "Linux Photography" has carefully outlined where Linux falls short today as a world-class environment for serious, production-oriented professional photographers. ...
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