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Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Sharing ideas and resource at create.freedesktop.org (NewsForge)
Nathan Willis looks at advantages gained by sharing common resources among applications. "Part of what makes open source software thrive is code sharing and reuse. The Create initiative at freedesktop.org targets this issue by bringing together developers from Inkscape, Scribus, Krita, the Open Clip Art Library, and the GIMP, among others, along with interested individuals. Together they are collaborating on a set of specifications they believe will simplify work for developers and distributions, and usability for end users."
Technologies to Watch: A Look at Four That May Challenge Java's Development Dominance (O'ReillyNet)
Bruce Tate predicts Java's future on O'Reilly. "Bruce Tate has an amazing track record when it comes to identifying successful technologies. He was one of the early developers that identified the emergence of the Spring framework; he predicted the demise of EJB 2 technologies a full year before the EJB 3 expert group abandoned the older approaches. In his new book Beyond Java, Bruce looks at languages and technologies that may challenge Java's dominance in some development niches. In this article, Bruce covers four important emerging technologies."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Live from the 2005 Fall AMIA Conference in Washington, D.C. (LinuxMedNews)
LinuxMedNews reports from the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) 2005 Fall conference. "The AMIA open-source working group meeting was well attended. Many initiatives were entertained such as holding a symposium for FOSS EMR software vendors, having a FOSS track at future AMIA conferences. Encouraging the assignment of copyright to the government at the end of federal software development contracts through the use of DFARS clauses."
EuroOSCON - Remembering the End User (O'ReillyNet)
O'Reilly covers the start of the European Open Source Convention. "Daniel Steinberg reports on some of the sessions and keynotes that spanned the first two days of O'Reilly's first-ever European Open Source Convention, taking place in Amsterdam. In one way or another, these sessions--by Jeff Waugh, Alan Cox, and Simon Phipps--focused on the user."
EuroOSCON - Doctorow on Europe's Coming Broadcast Flag (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet covers Cory Doctorow's closing keynote at EuroOSCON. "For Doctorow, open source is an important social phenomenon in the tradition of science, in which the culture encourages the sharing of knowledge and not the hoarding of knowledge. His keynote explored the problems with digital rights management (DRM) and how it fails on some of the important science tests."
Ballmer: Microsoft to go after Linux strongholds (ZDNet)
ZDNet covers comments by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at a recent Gartner Symposium. "I think we have four big opportunities to take business from Linux and we will. And again, why would we take it. Because people will take a look at the tools and the technologies we put in the marketplace and decide that they deliver better results at a lower cost. What's the first? High performance clustering. High performance clusters is a thing that has been a Linux stronghold. It's about 20 percent of all Linux systems. We're coming out with a compute cluster edition of Windows Server."
Companies
A revolutionary realizes it's time to hang his hat on a bold, new venture (Globe & Mail)
The Globe & Mail profiles Bob Young. "The decision by the former chief executive officer of Red Hat Inc. to walk away from the Raleigh, N.C.-based company was hardly a dilemma at all. Instead, he said it was simply a case of recognizing the different traits that define an executive and a serial entrepreneur." (Thanks to Philip Webb)
Are Microsoft's new licenses open source? (NewsForge)
NewsForge examines Microsoft's new licenses and the company's interaction with the Open Source Initiative. "It would seem the adversarial days of OSI are over. In the same article, [Danese] Cooper writes that OSI 'received strong and consistent feedback' that focusing on Microsoft's past actions against open source was 'leading to the false impression that open source was all about muckraking instead of a viable, professional alternative to the traditional proprietary world of software.' To that end, the infamous Halloween Documents have been removed from the OSI Web site, and OSI members have even been meeting with Microsoft to talk about its Shared Source licenses."
Cold Realities For Novell (BusinessWeek)
Business Week looks at Novell's future. "If Novell can't regain its footing, it could represent a major setback for Linux. The software has gained considerable traction in corporations, with nearly a 25% share of the server operating system market, according to market researcher IDC. Yet customers and the computer makers who back Linux want two strong Linux distributors. And right now Red Hat Inc. seems to be running away with the market."
Ricoh Supports KDE Printing Development (KDE.News)
Ricoh USA is encouraging linux support for one of its color printers, according to KDE.News. "Printer manufacturer Ricoh USA, listening to the energetic advocating of their Linux engineer, has decided to provide Cristian Tibirna of the KDE printing development team with a professional RICOH CL4000DN colour laser printer. Thanks to this support the KDE printing development team will be able to do better tests of the new features in CUPS 1.2 and extend the degree of support in KDE Print for professional printing features which currently lack support by Free Software. Ricoh's Linux engineer and driver developer George Liu said "What we want to do is support Linux printing, and KDE Print is the most successful printing environment.""
Linux Adoption
Initial Results of a Large-Scale Migration Project by Carlo Daffara (Groklaw)
Groklaw has published a preliminary study by Carlo Daffara that looks at European migrations to OpenOffice.org and Linux. "They are measuring and facilitating migrations in a two-step strategy, initially to OpenOffice.org and later to GNU/Linux on the desktops. They already have thousands of desktops migrated, with thousands more planned. The data on switching to OpenOffice.org is very encouraging. What have they found so far? What makes the transition work well? Are there steps one can take to improve user acceptance and ease transitional issues? He told me some of what they found, and I asked him if he'd be willing to elaborate on the findings for Groklaw, and he graciously agreed."
Linux wins approval from the taxman (ZDNet UK)
ZDNet UK looks at possible Linux adoption by New Zealand's Inland Revenue. "The New Zealand Inland Revenue is following in the footsteps of government agencies around the world, including in Germany and South Korea, which are rolling out open source software. Government agencies and schools in Peru are also being encouraged to consider open source software. Under government legislation signed last week by Alejando Toledo, President of Peru, public institutions will now have to choose between proprietary and open source software."
Why customers are flocking to Linux (AME Info)
This article in AME Info, by an IBM VP, shows how the company is trying to sell Linux in the Middle East. "Hot disputes aside, when a technology goes from a student project in 1991 to being part of Charles Schwab's solution to reduce processing times by 90 percent in 2004, something is working. It might be time to look beyond the numbers to the advantages Linux provides its practitioners to understand Linux growth. The advantages of Linux are: Flexibility, Security, Reliability, Total value and Future value; let us examine these in turn."
Linux at Work
Linux powers robotic cow-milking machine (LinuxDevices.com)
LinuxDevices takes a look at a Linux-powered robotic cow-milking system. "A 122-year-old dairy equipment company has used embedded Linux in a robotic cow-milking system (the system is robotic, not the cows). The Voluntary Milking System (VMS) allows cows to decide when to be milked, and gives dairy farmers a more independent lifestyle, free from regular milkings, the company says."
Legal
Monday's Big Meeting (Groklaw)
Groklaw reports on next week's hearing to review the open document plan adopted by Massachusetts. "Like you thought Microsoft's money wasn't any good any more? Kidding. Sorta But you had to know they'd try something. It looks to me like we'd all better use their software so no one gets hurt. Any government that decides to use OpenDocument Format will be sat on. At least that is how it appears to me."
Software Patents are Like Smoking (Groklaw)
MySQL AB head Marten Mickos preaches to the choir in this Groklaw article on software patents. "Many companies apply for software patents for defensive reasons, thinking that if someone challenges them with a patent, they can retaliate with their own patent portfolio. But today the software industry is seeing a new breed of companies - so called patent trolls – that have no other business than acquiring patents and then extracting royalties from other businesses. No patent portfolio will help against a troll, because they have no production or sales of their own that you could threaten."
Small company makes big claims on XML patents (ZDNet)
ZDNet reports that a small company called Scientigo is claiming to have patented XML. "Scientigo intends to 'monetize' this intellectual property, Scientigo CEO Doyal Bryant said this week.... 'We're not interested in having us against the world. We're just looking for ways to leverage an asset; we have pretty concrete proof that makes us feel comfortable saying it is an asset,' Bryant said." The patents in question are 5,842,213 and 6,393,426.
Interviews
OpenBSD 3.8: Hackers of the Lost RAID (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet interviews the OpenBSD team following the release of OpenBSD 3.8. "It's release time again for OpenBSD! The upcoming 3.8 will include some wonderful features for network gurus (trunking, tracking wireless roaming users, interface groups, a new ipsec configuration tool, and failover of ipsec links), a great rework of malloc() that will provide further security protections by default, and the first version of bioctl--a universal RAID management interface."
IBM WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, Apache Geronimo, and Gluecode (developerWorks)
developerWorks interviews Scott Cosby, Gluecode Transition Executive at IBM and Paul Buck, Director of Gluecode Development at IBM. "Since the acquisition of Gluecode Software in May 2005, IBM has made several code contributions and devoted technical resources to help the Apache Geronimo community reach its goal of Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) certification, a milestone that was reached in October 2005. Now, IBM is executing on the next phase of its open source application server goal, introducing IBM WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, an application server built on Apache Geronimo technology. WAS CE unveils a new business model, providing free code for use in development, testing, and deployment."
Resources
The CUPS Printing System (Linux Journal)
Alan Ward has written an introductory article on CUPS in a Linux Journal article. "CUPS is what its name says: a common UNIX printing system. It is aimed at providing a common printing interface across a local network, masking differences among the printing systems on each computer. I am not sure that such a system is needed in a pure Linux environment, where the standard Berkely LPD provides this functionality, but CUPS does provide interactivity with SMB and Windows printers. CUPS also allows dynamic printer detection and grouping."
Reviews
PostgreSQL bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch (NewsForge)
Juan Pablo Claude attends a PostgreSQL bootcamp and writes about it on NewsForge. "Though the living is easy at Banning Mills, the course itself is intense. The day starts at 8:30 with breakfast, and classes beginning at 9:00 sharp. The morning is spent with lessons and exercises at your computer (Mac, Linux, or your own machine if you prefer). Lunch is at noon. After lunch you typically have one more lesson and exercise, then take a brisk walk around the woods to wake up. Then the class continues until dinner at around 6:30. After dinner you are free to retire to your room if you wish, but many of us chose to return to the computer lab, where our instructor was available for questions and general chatting until quite late."
At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software For Linux (Linux Journal)
Dave Phillips looks at music notation software in the Linux Journal. "Recently the MusicXML format has been promoted as a universal music notation file format. MusicXML has much to recommend it. It is an open and humanly readable format based on the popular XML mark-up language; it is free of cumbersome patent and royalty issues; and it already is supported in dozens of commercial and free music notation programs. If you need to move your music notation between applications or platforms, consider saving it in the MusicXML format."
Miscellaneous
Nessus fork emerges (NewsForge)
NewsForge reports on the emergence of a Nessus fork, GNessUs. "Tim Brown, a penetration tester for Portcullis Computer Security Limited in the UK and founder of GNessUs, said the idea to fork the project came out of conversations with colleagues in the security industry in England. Brown said that the company's move to drop the GPL for Nessus 3 was no great surprise after Tenable split the plugin streams for the software and ignored concerns by Brown and others that vulnerabilities would be missed because people refused to check the streams for either fiscal or ethical reasons. "My fork is dedicated to that community," Brown said."
'Firefox One' Launch to Celebrate 100 Million Downloads (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine covers the latest Firefox publicity stunt. "polvi wrote in to tell us that a weather balloon satellite will be launched to celebrate 100 million downloads of Mozilla Firefox. The Oregon NASA Space Grant Consortium balloon satellite, dubbed Firefox One, is expected to reach a height of 100,000 feet (about 30 kilometres or 19 miles) when it's launched from the Memorial Union Quad at the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis, Oregon (north-western United States) at noon on Saturday. It will carry a payload of a large Firefox banner, a Firefox CD-ROM and a camera to "take photos of Firefox at the edge of space"."
'Firefox One' Balloon Satellite Launch a Success (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine covers the successful launch of the 'Firefox One' Balloon. "The balloon carried a Firefox banner up to 100,000 feet before exploding and parachuting back to earth. This was our successful attempt at topping the 50 million download stunt."" Photos of the event are now available.
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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