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Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
There Is No Open Source Community (O'ReillyNet)
OnLamp has published a lengthy tome on open source as a purely economic phenomenon. "An updated open source mentality has profound implications for businesses looking to leverage open source in commercial ventures. Reevaluating the open source equation in economic terms presents a different takeaway. The commoditization of software and a gradual, long-term reduction in price have played far more important roles than previously recognized. Business strategy designed to leverage open source should focus more on economies of scale (in terms of user and developer bases) and less on pleasing a mythical, monolithic community."
The Open Source as Prior Art Discussion Begins (Groklaw)
Groklaw takes a look at the Open Source as Prior Art Project. "It's easier to want to have something crash if you are not one of the likely first victims. The US patent system is broken. Everyone knows it. It's a runaway train. And in my opinion, it's heading toward FOSS, not because it should, but because some have SCO-like desires to work the system to target it, to slow down Linux and FOSS adoption. There haven't been enough trained USPTO examiners. And it's hard for them to find prior art, for reasons I'll explain."
Reactions to the GPLv3 Draft and a GPLv2-V3 Comparative Chart (Groklaw)
Groklaw takes a look at some reactions to the draft GPLv3, and presents a chart comparing v2 to v3. "But if decent businesses want to use the code -- and that is voluntary -- perhaps they need to consider being more "freedom friendly" and realize that the GPL community is quite serious about protecting users' and developers' freedoms, by protecting the code's freedom. While many businesses are buying into the DRM, cuff-the-customer balkanization strategy, the GPL stands for users and against the business mentality of profit at *any* cost to anyone and anything."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Intel and More Inside (O'ReillyNet)
O'Reilly has published coverage of Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote. "When Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivers his Macworld keynote address, it is some of the best theatre you will ever see. This year, in a little over an hour and a half, he reported on Apple sales statistics, introduced the many changes in iLife '06, rushed past the lack of much in the way of improvements to the iWork suite, and introduced the new Intel-based iMac. Almost as an afterthought. he let the audience know that there was one more thing. Nearly 90 minutes into his talk he just casually mentions the PowerBook is being replaced by the Intel-powered MacBook Pro. Pure theatre."
Fresh eyes to greet linux.conf.au (LinuxWorld)
LinuxWorld.com.au looks forward to linux.conf.au, coming up soon in New Zealand. "Like last year's conference in Canberra, the show will again play host to Free and Open Source Software bigwigs including Andrew Tridgell of Samba fame, Linux International's Jon "maddog" Hall, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, PHP founder Rasmus Lerdorf, and HP's CTO for Open Source and Linux, Bdale Garbee."
Osnabrueck IV Meeting Brings 'Akonadi' PIM Data Storage Service (KDE.News)
KDE.News has this report from the Osnabrueck IV Meeting. " For the fourth consecutive year a group of KDE PIM developers followed the gracious invitation of Intevation GmbH to meet at their headquarters in Osnabrück, Germany on the first weekend in January. As in the past years, the face-time proved very productive especially since everyone felt that with KDE 4 the time for more fundamental changes has come. By the end of the meeting the group had agreed on a vision and initial architecture for a unified, extensible storage service for PIM data and metadata, allowing all applications on the desktop fast and reliable access as well as powerful search capabilities. This service, codenamed "Akonadi", together with intiatives like Plasma and Solid will form the basis of an exciting KDE 4 experience."
Companies
HP Appoints New VP for Open Source, Linux (eWeek)
eWeek covers the appointment of Christine Martino as HP's new VP for Open Source and Linux. "Asked what her immediate goals were for HP's open-source and Linux division, Martino said she is not coming in with a plan to make big strategy shifts, "as we already have the right strategy, which is borne out by the fact that we have top market share and the success we have had with customers," she said. "We offer them choice on the hardware side, a multiple operating system strategy and a level playing field across all of those, which works well.""
Companies push Linux partitioning effort (News.com)
News.com looks into efforts by SWsoft to get OpenVZ into the Linux kernel. "In this, it has a major ally: Red Hat, the top seller of the open-source operating system, which plans to add the software to its free Fedora version of Linux for enthusiasts. The companies' move to make OpenVZ partitioning standard in Linux is timely, said Pund-IT analyst Charles King." (Thanks to Andrew Kornak)
Business
TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Here's a NewsForge report on the possibility that TurboCASH - a GPL-licensed but Windows-only small business accounting program - might move to Linux. "The debates surrounding these decisions sum up the major problem that the new TurboCASH faces: its 20- year legacy is both its greatest asset and its main liability. For example, it's unlikely that a brand new project would have a debate over FreePascal/Lazarus or Python."
Linux Adoption
25 Reasons to Convert to Linux (Bellevuelinux)
Bellevuelinux.org presents twenty-five reasons to switch to Linux. "(10) Linux is highly resistant to system crashes and rarely needs rebooting (i.e., restarting). This can be very important for large organizations for which even a few minutes of down time can result in a substantial cost. The reason is that Linux has been designed from the ground up to be an extremely stable and robust operating system, incorporating all that has been learned about attaining these goals from the more than 35 years of history of Unix-like operating systems."
Legal
Some Safety and Reliability Questions About DRM, by Victor Yodaiken (Groklaw)
Victor Yodaiken discusses DRM issues in a Groklaw article. "We are entering the era of ubiquitous and safety critical computing, but the developers of DRM technologies seem to believe that computers are nothing more than personal entertainment systems for consumers. This belief is convenient, because creating DRM mechanisms that respect security, safety, and reliability concerns is going to be an expensive and complex engineering task."
Microsoft, Yahoo, others sued by Softvault over DRM (Inquirer)
Here's an Inquirer article on a company called SoftVault, which is suing a long list of companies for infringement of its DRM patents. If we weren't so opposed to software patents, we might be tempted to see this as a sort of poetic justice.A look at SoftVault's web site is also instructive: "Access to software programs or digital content, or to a device, is enabled by periodic authorization messages, akin to a 'heartbeat,' exchanged between the server and client agents. As long as these periodic authorization messages continue to be exchanged, access is enabled. If for any reason the authorization messages are terminated, access is disabled. In the case of software or digital content, disabling may involve encrypting or deleting files. In the case of a device, the disabling logic would essentially turn the device into a 'brick' that is unusable and therefore has no practical resale value."
Math You Can't Use, Ch. 6 ~ by Ben Klemens (Groklaw)
Groklaw has an excerpt from Math You Can't Use, a book on copyrights, patents and software. "The world of software engineering is in no way restricted to software companies. Beyond Microsoft or thousands of smaller software vendors, almost every corporation in the world keeps a stable of programmers in the basement to write little scripts that move the company's e-mail and make the "add to cart" button do what it should. I am a programmer because I write simulations and statistical analyses. Even you are a software programmer if you use the Record Macro feature of your spreadsheet or word processor."
Interviews
Previewing KDE 4 (O'ReillyNet)
John Littler talks with Aaron J. Seigo about KDE 4. "Recently at a Linux show, John Littler saw a preview of a new version of KDE running on a KDE developer's laptop. The interface looked cleaner than before, and apparently there was a whole raft of new stuff under the hood. John recently interviewed KDE developer Aaron J. Seigo about the forthcoming KDE 4 (due in the fall) and also a little about the recent controversy surrounding the porting of KDE to operating systems other than Linux."
Görkem Çetin (People Behind KDE)
The People Behind KDE talk with Görkem Çetin, leader of KDE Turkey. "How and when did you get involved in KDE? I got my first KDE installation when it reached version 0.3. After doing some translation for KDE in 1998, I took over the Turkish translation team work and I have been the lead of this group for 7 years now. It was the time when Linux was referred as "multithreaded, multiplatform, ..." etc. Sounds funny now." (Found on KDE.News)
Resources
CLI Magic: Learn to talk awk (Linux.com)
Linux.com slices and dices text with awk. "When it comes to slicing and dicing text, few tools are as powerful, or as underutilized, as awk. The name "awk" was coined from the initials of its authors, Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan -- yes, the same Kernighan of the famous Kernighan and Ritchie "C Programming Language" book. In the Linux world, every distribution includes the GNU version, gawk (/bin/awk is usually a symbolic link to /bin/gawk). The GNU version has a few more features than the original. Let's play with some of the core features common among POSIX-compliant awks."
Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)
Tom Lynema assembles a Ubuntu-based Linux home media center. "Like a lot of people nowadays, I have a growing collection of digital media. My digital media is stored on a home Linux server. Most of the digital media players available today do not support protocols to connect to a Linux server, which make them unsuitable for my use. I realized the best way to connect my digital media library with my home theatre was to build my own Linux home media center (LHMC)."
SAMBA Server For Small Workgroups With Ubuntu 5.10 (Howto Forge)
Howto Forge presents a tutorial on setting up Samba under Ubuntu 5.10. "This is a detailed description about the steps to set up a Ubuntu based server (Ubuntu 5.10 - Breezy Badger) to act as file- and print server for Windows (tm) workstations in small workgroups. This howto uses the tdb backend for SAMBA to store passwords and account information. This is suitable for workgroups for up to 250 users and is easier to setup than an LDAP backend."
Xen Virtualization and Linux Clustering, Part 1 (Linux Journal)
Ryan Mauer introduces Xen in a Linux Journal article. "In this article, I briefly introduce the concepts of Xen virtualization and Linux clustering. From there, I show you how to set up multiple operating systems on a single computer using Xen and how to configure them for use with clustering."
Reviews
Google Talk API and source code release (NewsForge)
Nathan Willis examines the recently released Google Talk software. "Last month, the Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) released documentation for two extensions to the Jabber (XMPP) protocol, named Jingle Signaling and Jingle Audio. On the same day, Google -- co-creators of the extensions -- released a BSD-style-licensed library called libjingle, the implementation of the extensions that powers the company's Google Talk software. In addition to opening the API used in Google Talk itself, both actions will benefit open source instant messaging clients and perhaps increase the pressure on closed systems like Skype."
Exploring natural media graphics with Krita (Linux.com)
Linux.com has a review of Krita. "[Boudewijn] Rempt's guidance has taken the project away from the 'GIMP for KDE' philosophy towards what he describes as a painting model -- namely, simulating the tools, materials, and work flow of a real-world artist, who creates a picture out of physical 'stuff' -- not pixels or shapes -- and puts 'gunk on his paper or canvas and generally pushes that around.' For starters, this means drawing tools (pens, brushes, and paint) take center stage over the image adjustment tools (histograms, contrast controls, and masks) found in the GIMP. It also requires built-in pressure sensitivity and new ways to model color. The real difference, though, is conceptual. Eventually, Rempt wants Krita to simulate the experience of working with physical media, right down to mixing colors on the artist's palette."
Xen Virtualization and Linux Clustering, Part 2 (Linux Journal)
Ryan Mauer continues a look at Xen and clustering. "We ended last time after configuring our first unprivileged Xen domain. In this article, we complete our cluster and then test it using an open-source parallel ray tracer. The first thing we need to do is create additional slave nodes to be used with the cluster. So, let's get down to business."
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