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Package installation for Linux distributions has traditionally separated libraries and application binaries into different packages, so that only one version of a library would be installed and it would be shared by applications that use it. Other operating systems (e.g. Windows, MacOS X) often bundle a particular version of a library with each application, which can lead to many copies and versions of the same library co-existing on the system. While each model has its advocates, the Linux method is seen by many as superior because a security fix in a particular commonly-used library doesn't require updating multiple different applications—not to mention the space savings. But, it would seem that both Mozilla and Google may be causing distributions to switch to library-bundling mode in order to support the Firefox and Chromium web browsers. Click below, subscribers only, for a look at this issue from this week's edition.

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Our development process depends heavily on code review. But at what level, and using what criteria, is that review best done? Guest author Neil Brown addresses that question by looking at the specific example of sysfs attributes. Do those attributes conform to the rules which have been laid out for them, and, just as importantly, do those rules make sense in the first place? Click below (subscribers only) for an interesting look at the kernel development process.

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Konstatin Dmitriev's Morevna Project is to 2-D animation what the Blender Foundation's Open movie projects have been for 3-D. The goal is to produce a production-quality, full-length animated feature, using only open source software, and license the source content and final product under free, re-use-friendly terms. Along the way, the work provides stress-testing, feedback, and development help to the open source software used, while raising awareness of the quality of the code. Subscribers can click below for a look at the project from this week's edition.

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Almost exactly one year ago, LWN examined the problem of 4K-sector drives and the reasons for their existence. In short, going to 4KB physical sectors allows drive manufacturers to increase storage density, always welcome in that competitive market. Recently, there have been a number of reports that Linux is not ready to work with these drives; kernel developer Tejun Heo even posted an extensive, worth-reading summary stating that "4 KiB logical sector support is broken in both the kernel and partitioners." As the subsequent discussion revealed, though, the truth of the matter is that we're not quite that badly prepared; click below (subscribers only) for details.

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Software patents have long been the source of a great deal of concern in the free software community; patents are by far the biggest restraint on our ability to program our own computers. Those who worry about these things have expected that attacks might come from patent trolls, or from software companies with fading prospects. Apple's lawsuit against HTC shows that the real threat may come from a different direction. Click below (subscribers only) for a look at Apple's attack on Android and on Linux as a whole.

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One of the features expected with the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 release is the Ubuntu One Music Store (UOMS). The UOMS is a mechanism by which Ubuntu users can purchase songs in the MP3 format, with some of the revenue going to support Canonical. These songs are evidently compressed at a relatively high bit rate and lack any sort of DRM or watermarks. Support for the UOMS has been integrated into the Rhythmbox music player, with support for other players expected in the future. Discussion of this new feature has been relatively subdued thus far, but developers elsewhere are beginning to take notice and ask some questions about the extent to which the UOMS should be supported.

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On Sunday at SCALE 8x, Inkscape developer Jon Cruz presented a talk entitled "Why Color Management matters to Open Source and to You," putting the need for color management into real-world terms for the average Linux user, outlining current development work on the subject at the application and toolkit levels, and giving example color-managed workflows for print and web production. Color management is sometimes unfairly characterized as a topic of interest only to print shops and video editors, but as Cruz explained at the top of his talk, anyone who shares digital content wants it to look correct, and everyone who uses more than one device knows how tricky that can be. Click below, subscribers only, for a look at the talk from this week's edition.

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The casual view of open source software is that the code always comes first: releases are made when the code is ready, new contributors prove their chops by the quality of their code, and so forth. But in reality the FLOSS ecosystem relies on a complex legal framework in order to run smoothly and to stand up to proprietary software competition: the various software licenses, contribution agreements, copyright and other "intellectual property" law. Every once in a while, a good status check on the legal dimension is healthy for the typical developer, and SCALE 8x offered just that in a series of talks.

Click below (subscribers only) for the full story from guest author Nathan Willis.

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There are lots of ongoing efforts to increase the number of women participating in free software, but reports on how those efforts have fared are few and far between. Sarah Mei spoke at the Women in Open Source (WIOS) conference, which preceded SCALE 8x, to report on what she and other members of the San Francisco Ruby community have been doing to bring more women into that community. Click below, subscribers only, for a report on the talk from WIOS.

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You are reading a standard-form news article, and when new information comes to light, the piece you're reading might just be referenced in a follow-up — but it won't be displayed in context or be easy to navigate. However, if Google's Living Stories experiment takes off following the release of its code, that won't always be the case. Subscribers can click below for a look at Living Stories from this week's edition.

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Current news

Video recordings for the linux.conf.au 2010 conference are available. LCA2010 was held from January 18-23, 2010 at the Wellington Convention Centre in Wellington, New Zealand. (Thanks to Scott Dowdle)

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The H looks at the list of accepted mentoring organizations for GSoC 2010. "The GSoC contests offer university students stipends to write and develop code for various open source projects. Accepted mentors include the Debian Project and the KDE Project, both of which are already seeking project ideas. AbiWord, FFmpeg, Facebook, the GNU Compiler Collection, the LXDE Foundation, Mozilla and Ubuntu are all among the other accepted organisations."

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Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier reviews Claws Mail. "Modern mail user agents (MUAs) tend to hide as much complexity from the user as possible. Claws, bless its speedy little heart, doesn't. Claws is extremely configurable, feature-rich through the use of plugins, and can be keyboard-driven to satisfy users who want the speed of text-based mailers like Mutt with a decent GUI."

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CentOS has updated C5: kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Debian has updated php5 (denial of service).

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Dave Phillips continues his coverage of Linux arpeggiators. "Part 1 of this series introduced arpeggiators in general and profiled the QMidiArp application. This week we conclude our survey with a look at two more arpeggiators for Linux musicians: Hypercyclic and Arpage."

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Linus's allegedly shorter-than-usual merge window has seemingly mutated into one of the longest merge windows in recent times. Along with big trees for the Microblaze and Blackfin architectures and the SCSI subsystem, the kernel has just gained the Ceph distributed filesystem, a high-performance filesystem intended to scale into the petabyte range.

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Ryan Paul covers the launch of the Open Video Alliance. "The Open Video Alliance (OVA), a group that seeks to promote adoption of standards-based open video technologies, has launched a new campaign encouraging users to upload videos to the Wikipedia website. The goals behind this new campaign are to visually enrich the online encyclopedia and promote awareness of the value that open video technologies can bring to the Web."

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Version 7.1 of the GDB debugger is out. The big changes appear to be multi-program debugging and the ability to work with PIE executables. There's also a couple of new platforms supported and a number of other enhancements.

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This entry in the not403 blog discusses OpenSSO, a single sign-on project which Oracle acquired from Sun and has subsequently shut down. "A Norwegian company called ForgeRock has stepped up to give OpenSSO a new home and continue developing OpenSSO under a new name: OpenAM (because of copyright issues with the name). They claim they will continue with Sun's original roadmap for the product, and they have started to make available again all of the express builds, including agents, that were removed from OpenSSO's site, and a new wiki with all the content that once was available at dev.java.net."

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Luis Villa compares mailing lists and parties on his blog. He is reacting to a blog posting by Máirín Duffy that mocks up a web-based mailing list interface that incorporates feedback for readers and posters. Villa sees the feedback as being essential to reducing "bad conversations" on mailing lists. "First, the similarities. At most parties, like most mailing lists, most people want to have interesting conversations, and they understand the shared social standards and interests of the other people at the party. And at most parties and most mailing lists there are a handful of people are boors who probably don’t want to spoil the party, but who violate those shared norms- some in very mild ways (boring, talking too loud, posting too much), or maybe some less mild (the guy who doesn’t think he’s a racist, but really is.) If you’ve got similar mixes of people, why then do parties usually handle boors well, while mailing lists often fail and flame out?"

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