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[Announcements] Posted Mar 11, 2010 20:38 UTC (Thu) by ris

The H reports that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has elected Simon Phipps, formerly Sun's Chief Open Source Officer, to the board of directors. "As a director, Phipps hopes to help the organisation change so that it becomes more member-oriented, more active in promoting open source in education, in policy development and possibly in organisational support for open source projects; "My goal as a Director will be to facilitate that change, a change that is already well under way following recent face to face discussions and the great work that Andrew Oliver and Danese Cooper have already put in"."

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[Announcements] Posted Mar 11, 2010 19:33 UTC (Thu) by jake

This year's Embedded Linux Conference, which will be held in San Francisco April 12-14, has announced that its program is now available. The keynote speakers will be Greg Kroah-Hartman ("Android: a Case Study of an Embedded Linux Project") and Matt Asay ("Embedded in 2010: an End to the Entropy?") along with a whole slate of over 50 presentations, tutorials, and BoFs. "This is your chance to meet leading developers from the embedded Linux community, and learn about the latest changes in Linux. Also, you can talk to engineers working on real products at some of the largest CE companies in the world, describing how they solved real issues in their own development projects." Click below for the full announcement.

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[Development] Posted Mar 11, 2010 19:25 UTC (Thu) by ris

Dave Phillips looks at arpeggiators for Linux. "An arpeggio is a musical technique whereby the notes of a chord are played in succession rather than all at once. The order of the chord notes in this succession may follow a strict set of rules or they may be played in purely random sequence. A device that acts upon a chord in this manner is known as an arpeggiator."

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[Security] Posted Mar 11, 2010 19:24 UTC (Thu) by ris

Debian has updated kvm (multiple vulnerabilities), dpkg (path traversal), and kernel (privilege escalation, denial of service).

Fedora has updated F12: samba (multiple vulnerabilities).

Mandriva has updated virtualbox (unspecified vulnerability) and squid (denial of service).

Slackware has updated pidgin (multiple vulnerabilities).

Ubuntu has updated apache (multiple vulnerabilities) and dpkg (path traversal).

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[Distributions] Posted Mar 11, 2010 16:15 UTC (Thu) by jake

Over at CNET, Stephen Shankland has a fairly lengthy interview with Canonical's new CEO Jane Silber. "But is there more urgency about profit now? Silber: There is a sense of great opportunity right now. When we started Ubuntu in year one, we didn't put a strong push on trying to sell Canonical services, not because we were not interested, but it's hard to build a business around selling services around an operating system that nobody is using. We knew we needed to gain a user base and momentum before we could sell services. That user base is now there. There is urgency and momentum around that at a level we hadn't necessarily seen in the first couple years."

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Posted Mar 11, 2010 2:52 UTC (Thu)

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for March 11, 2010 is available.

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition

• Front: Who is Fedora for?; Gnash; Morevna; Mozilla to update the MPL.
• Security: SCALE 8x: Ten million and one penguins; New vulnerabilities in apache, cups, curl, samba,...
• Kernel: Deadline scheduler; 2.6.34 part 2; Nouveau and interface compatibility; 4K-sector drives; Zombie quotes.
• Distributions: Rolling with Arch Linux; Fedora 13 Alpha released; Debian Project Leader Elections 2010; Ubuntu changing its look; MeeGo: Toward Day One; Announcing NEOPhysis; interview with Mark Shuttleworth.
• Development: Bluefish 2.0; Releases from Apache, Mercurial, OpenSSH, Renoise, ...
• Announcements: Magnatune sends check to GNOME Foundation thanks to Rhythmbox; European Parliament pushes back on ACTA; Meanwhile, back in Utah...; Elliott Associates and Novell; Schwartz: Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal; Simon Phipps: Last Day At Sun.

Read more

[Announcements] Posted Mar 10, 2010 19:03 UTC (Wed) by corbet

The SCO case has long since dropped off the radar for most. It is worth noting, though, that the Novell "slander of title" trial is now underway in Utah. Groklaw has detailed coverage of the testimony thus far. "Why did Novell slander SCO's title? Because of Linux. Linux started as a hobbyist tool. It's open source; 'nobody can be completely sure where the code comes from'. Starting around 2000, IBM inserted into Linux stuff that belonged to SCO. SCO sued, and started their licensing program (SCOsource). Novell stated that SCO doesn't have the copyrights and can't sue IBM."

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[Security] Posted Mar 10, 2010 18:22 UTC (Wed) by corbet

Debian has updated tdiary (cross-site scripting).

Fedora has updated samba (F11: filesystem access privilege escalation).

Mandriva has updated php (two safe_mode bypass vulnerabilities).

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[Front] Posted Mar 10, 2010 15:09 UTC (Wed) by corbet

The Mozilla Foundation has launched a process to update the Mozilla Public License. The project is described this way:

While the update process is inspired by the GPLv3 update, the objectives are far less ambitious: Mozilla would like to smooth various rough edges without making major changes to the license. They hope to have the process complete - after releasing three drafts for comments - by November of this year.

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[Announcements] Posted Mar 10, 2010 14:34 UTC (Wed) by corbet

Jonathan Schwartz writes about patent attacks, and Apple's attack on Android in particular. "Having watched this movie play out many times, suing a competitor typically makes them more relevant, not less. Developers I know aren’t getting less interested in Google’s Android platform, they’re getting more interested - Apple’s actions are enhancing that interest." He also says that Microsoft tried to shake down Sun with patent claims on OpenOffice.org.

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[Announcements] Posted Mar 10, 2010 14:25 UTC (Wed) by corbet

Swedish MEP Christian Engström reports that the European Parliament has passed a resolution coming out against the secretive ACTA copyright treaty negotiations and demanding transparency in the process. The vote was rather definitive: 633 for, 13 against. "At last, the elected representatives in the parliament have sent a strong message. We have shown that we do not accept secrecy. We have shown that we are prepared to stand up for a free internet open to everybody."

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[Front] Posted Mar 10, 2010 14:08 UTC (Wed) by jake

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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[Announcements] Posted Mar 10, 2010 4:53 UTC (Wed) by jake

Texas Linux Fest has announced the initial list of speakers and presentations for its inaugural event. Keynote speakers include Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier and Randal L. Schwartz, with additional presentations by Linux, free software, and open source experts such as Jon "maddog" Hall, Amber Graner, Bradley Kuhn, and Max Spevack. The event will take place on Saturday, April 10th, in Austin Texas. Registration is available online. The complete list of talks is available as well.

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[Kernel] Posted Mar 9, 2010 23:19 UTC (Tue) by corbet

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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[Announcements] Posted Mar 9, 2010 22:53 UTC (Tue) by jake

The LibrePlanet conference, being held March 19-21 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will be featuring a day-long Women's Caucus on Sunday March 21st. That track will be focusing on finding concrete ways to increase women's participation in free software, including a panel on recruiting and retaining women, a presentation on mentoring, and a workshop on how non-coders can take up critical roles in free software projects. In addition, LibrePlanet has keynotes from FSF founder Richard Stallman and EFF founder John Gilmore. More information can be found on the web sites or in the schedule.

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[Development] Posted Mar 9, 2010 19:29 UTC (Tue) by ris

Bruce Byfield takes a look at innovations in GNOME and KDE. "Of course, GNOME and KDE have long had features that Windows lacked, such as multiple desktops and finer controls for customizing the user experience. However, in the last few years, both major free desktops have added features that show not only an interest in usability, but, at times, an effort to anticipate what users might actually want. The focus is by no means consistent, yet scattered here and there are features that can make any user glad that they're using a open source desktop."

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[Announcements] Posted Mar 9, 2010 19:15 UTC (Tue) by ris

The H covers the CeBIT Open Source Forum. "The CeBIT Open Source Forum, a prominent feature in the Open Source area of Hall 2, featured several lectures, demonstrations and keynote speeches on several topics, from Open Source in data centres and security, to web browsers, mobility and multimedia. The H attended several of the Open Source Forum sessions, including the introduction of the latest 6.3 release of the popular Knoppix Live Linux distribution by Knoppix creator Klaus Knopper."

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[Announcements] Posted Mar 9, 2010 19:05 UTC (Tue) by ris

Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun, reminisces about some achievements during his tenure. "Got some of the most important software in the computer industry released under Free licenses that guarantee software freedom for people who rely on them, regardless of who owns the copyrights. Unix, Java, key elements of Linux, the SPARC chip and much more have been liberated."

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[Security] Posted Mar 9, 2010 18:56 UTC (Tue) by ris

Debian has updated typo3-src (multiple vulnerabilities).

Fedora has updated bournal (F13, F12, F11: multiple vulnerabilities), F12: curl (arbitrary code execution), and F11: sudo (unintended privilege escalation).

Pardus has updated sudo (unintended privilege escalation) and firefox (multiple vulnerabilities).

Slackware has updated httpd (multiple vulnerabilities).

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[Distributions] Posted Mar 9, 2010 15:36 UTC (Tue) by corbet

The first alpha release of Fedora 13 is out. "We need your help to make Fedora 13 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it -- every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide." There is a lot of new stuff in this release; see the announcement for a summary.

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