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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Linux in Government: Will Schwarzenegger Terminate Windows? (Linux Journal) Tom Adelstein looks at open source adoption in California. "Special interests will attempt to undermine open-source efforts. Although many consider California to be a progressive state, fiscally conservative Republicans have had the most success in achieving open-source adoption. Consider, for example, Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts. In January of this year, through the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, he issued a final policy on the use of open-source software and open standards. The policy requires commonwealth officials to consider all relevant factors, including the potential for excessive dependence on a single supplier, before they spend taxpayer money on information technology."
Microsoft vs. Linux vs. vendor lock-in (NewsForge) NewsForge looks at vendor lock-in and Linux. "In other words, instead of "world domination," Linux needs "strip mall presence." We need to see lots of small businesses offering Linux computers, software, service and support. We need to see smiling penguins in store windows and ads in the Sunday paper that say, "Now you can have the same operating system that runs some of the world's most powerful supercomputers on your office desk." We need highly visible competition in selling Linux to retail customers, either in dedicated stores or next to white box Windows computers in generalized computer sales environments."
Trade Shows and Conferences KDE.News aKademy coverage KDE.News continues its aKademy series of interviews and articles. Here's an interview with Fabian Franz and Kurt Pfeifle about FreeNX, an interview with John Terpstra on the challenges to Free Software and an aKademy wrap up. "With more than 230 KDE core developers, usability and accessibility experts, translators, editors and artists participating, the event is expected to have a huge and lasting impact on the next major releases of the leading Linux and Unix desktop environment. In addition, 270 visitors from the KDE user base and from other Free Software projects brought the total number of attendees to 500."
Report from KDE World Summit, Day 8: End of the marathon (NewsForge) NewsForge covers day 8 at aKademy. "Running throughout the day was the last pair of tutorials, one of which focused on live cracking - dealing with cracking, that is! Running through who the aggressors may be, what tools they use, how they can crack into your system and how you can block them, participants were treated to live demonstrations and a thorough treatment of the subject."
Report from KDE World Summit, Day 9: Users and Admins (NewsForge) NewsForge reports from aKademy, Day 9. "Day nine of aKademy saw the start of the Users and Administrator's Conference, and the celebration of the international Software Freedom Day. With the end of the developers' section of the summit, the hacking rooms began to thin out, but the loss in numbers was accommodated by (for the most part local) crowds of users filing in to hear from developers and other users and administrators. And for those following the SUSE-Novell developments, a keynote from a Novell employee was not to be missed."
Report from KDE World Summit, Day 10: Why Knoppix chose KDE (NewsForge) NewsForge wraps up its aKademy coverage with a look at day 10. "Those who mourn the passing of geeky trade shows, and the rise of the shiny corporate stall, would have enjoyed the flavour of the talks in this track. Several times during their presentations, hackers had to stop and admit that features they were talking about weren't yet implemented, or didn't work properly. "We should really fix this" was one phrase Ingo Klöcker used several times whilst showing the audience through the configuration dialogues of KMail."
The SCO Problem SCO's 3rd Quarter Teleconference - Transcript (Groklaw) Groklaw has posted the transcript of SCO's 3rd Quarter Teleconference. "McBride: I, I, I think, Dion, to take that on, I, I believe that if you look at the claims that we have, we're, we're moving forward very nicely through the court system. At every turn of the way, there are IBM-sponsored web sites out there that claim that the next, the next claim is gonna be the one that SCO's going down. I mean, they've been saying this for a year. And the cases keep moving through. As Bert said we've retained one of America's, if not one of the world's, best litigators. They have a lot of confidence in our, our cases, and we look forward to having those cases tried in the courtrooms."
Companies Co-Op Puts A New Twist On Open Source (Information Week) Information Week looks at the Avalanche Technology Cooperative, an association of large companies attempting to do "private open source" development. "Avalanche has spent more than $350,000 in the past two years on legal fees with the Minneapolis law firm Dorsey & Whitney LLP to develop a software-licensing policy that would restrict use of the code to co-op members. The group also will indemnify its members against legal action from outsiders. 'We ensure the submitter is the owner of the code,' Avalanche CEO Jay Hansen says. Members pay a $30,000 annual fee that helps cover the legal costs."
Red Hat replaces CFO (News.com) News.com reports that Red Hat has chosen a new CFO. "Red Hat on Thursday named Charles Peters Jr. as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Peters replaces Kevin Thompson, who unexpectedly announced his resignation in June, a few days before the Linux software maker was scheduled to report fiscal first-quarter results."
Business Experts say software vendors will soon offer products for different Linux 'flavors' (NewsForge) Here's a NewsForge editorial on a change in the Linux application landscape. ""Historically, vendors have tended to work with one flavor of Linux," said Daniel K. Boice, president and CEO of The Jaxara Group, an open source software applications developer, located in Bethesda, Md.. "However, it seems that vendors, such as Oracle, are using the growing popularity and acceptance of SUSE, Red Hat, and other Linux distribution, to grow sales. I believe that in an effort to increase both visibility, and revenue, vendor will begin to partner with different Linux distribution.""
Linux Adoption The First Linux Installfest in Iraq (Linux Journal) Ashraf Hasson writes about his experience running the Iraqi Linux User Group's first Linux installfest. "From August 14th through the 16th, Baghdad witnessed massive gunfire and streetfights in many of its districts, which unfortunately prevented some from attending the installfest. On the first day, I was forced to stop while in the middle of the installation, due to an urgent call from the Dean's office informing the staff and students to leave for home at once. There was no time to serve any refreshments! On the second day, we picked up from where we had stopped, and things went along smoothly, although the alert still was on."
Linux at Work Linux vies with Oracle (vnunet) Here's a Vnunet article about a company that replaced an Oracle database cluster with a few Linux servers. "The great thing about this story is that the Linux servers did not run database software. The Oracle database had been converted and stored on the Linux hard disk as a collection of some 100,000 files. The work was part of a major application upgrade that involved redesigning all the components of a busy web site."
Legal Ed Felten on the Chamberlain decision Here is Ed Felten's take on the recent appeals court decision in the Chamberlain v. Skylink DMCA case. "In the end, the court backs away from the simple reverse-Sony interpretation of the DMCA, and makes a more limited finding that (1) tools whose only significant uses are non-infringing cannot violate the DMCA, and (2) in construing the DMCA, courts should balance the desire of Congress to protect the flanks of copyright owners' rights, against users' rights such as fair use and interoperation. In this case, the court said, the balancing test was easy, because Chamberlain's rights as a copyright owner (e.g., the right to prevent infringing copying of Chamberlain's software) were not at all threatened by Skylink's behavior, so one side of the balancing scale was just empty."
Sender ID and Almost-Open Standards (Groklaw) Here is Groklaw's take on the patent-encumbered Sender ID specification. "Are monopolies allowed to use almost-open standards as a weapon to cut off the competition's air supply? Don't answer that. I think that only works in the dark, not under the always-on bright lights of the Internet, and not any more, now that the community has grown up, has some muscle, and some corporate backing."
Interviews Record labels' man in Washington (News.com) News.com interviews Mitch Glazier, lobbyist for the RIAA. "What are your plans regarding open-source or free software that facilitates file sharing, which tends to be hosted at sites like SourceForge?I don't know yet. We have dealt with the individual development of peer-to-peer systems on college campuses when the OpenNap systems were being developed. We have stopped college students from developing independent networks and exporting those to other colleges. My guess is that we would have to proceed the same way. But no decision has been made in antipiracy strategy for open source yet."
Dave Whitinger: Inventing Linux News Reporting (O'Reilly) O'Reilly is running an interview with Dave Whitinger. "Today, he's back and publishing another Linux news site. More competition exists now than when he was almost all alone in the field. Dave's re-entry into the community he never really left may be another example of good timing. Linux continues to gain momentum in every quarter and Whitinger knows that content is king. He's also adding new kinds of interactive technology to his site."
Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet) vnunet interviews Bruce Perens about UserLinux and other topics. "Why are some of the Linux and open source developers upset with the way their systems are being marketed? Because they have no say about it. And even if they have the opportunity, they don't know how to use it. In the UserLinux case we address that not by whining, but by creating a viable alternative."
Resources OOo Off the Wall: The Outlining and the Ecstasy (Linux Journal) The Linux Journal has posted a tutorial on outlining with OpenOffice.org. "Here's where it gets confusing. If you use styles in Writer, you probably know that numbering styles can be applied to paragraph styles. Yet, in addition to numbering styles, Writer has a second system for numbering paragraph styles, located in Tools > Outline Numbering. I call this system multi-style outlining, as opposed to single-style outlining. Both are called outline numbering, yet the two systems are completely independent of each other."
Open Source Wall Street Dion Cornett's "Open Source Wall Street" newsletter for September 7 is available in PDF format. Therein, he suggests that SCO should allocate 1% of its legal expenses to obtaining a second opinion on its anti-Linux campaign, and dedicates a few pages to the claim that Red Hat's stock is now undervalued. "We have frequently asserted that we expect the OSS market to evolve into a 'Coke/Pepsi'-like duopoly as major technology vendors balance the need for competitive alternatives against the difficulties inherent in supporting multiple distributions. We have noted in the past some customers switching from RHAT to NOVL's SUSE, while defections in the opposite direction are difficult to find given that SUSE's more limited installed base. Thus we agree that NOVL is gaining market share on RHAT which was recently confirmed by NOVL's reported server additions (up from 3,800 to 19,000) and is fully built into our Outperform recommendations on both companies."
Reviews Scribus: Open Source Desktop Publishing (O'ReillyNet) O'ReillyNet looks at Scribus for desktop publishing. ""Quark was the model for the first versions of Scribus," acknowledges Franz Schmid, a 40-year-old invoice writer from Breitenfurt, Germany, who created Scribus. "I had a Mac and loved its desktop publishing applications. Soon after my first steps into Linux, I realized that there existed no user-friendly publishing package. So I decided to write my own.""
Review of Mozilla's Sunbird Stand-Alone Calendar Application (O'ReillyNet) O'Reilly's OSDir.com looks at Sunbird, a stand-alone calendar application from Mozilla. "The ability to create and maintain different calendars for different purposes is a nice touch although it does exist in other applications, but it is easier to move between the different calendars in Sunbird. Keeping calendars separate can be very useful especially when you don't want to relay your family calendar to the rest of your work group across the calendar sharing webDAV server."
Miscellaneous Junior Jobs: A Cool Way to Start Hacking KDE (KDE.News) KDE.News mentions some successes of the KDE Junior Jobs system, a mechanism for producing quick fixes for simple bugs. "Today on the kde-quality list, Christian Loose of Cervisia fame celebrated the initial success of the Junior Jobs, which helped him get three patches. Junior Jobs were suggested by Adriaan de Groot back in May. They serve as a "you are welcome to hack here" sign, and mark bugs or wishes that are suitable for someone who is starting to hack KDE."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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