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Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)
Inside Higher Ed has a detailed story on the politics behind the creation of the American Council on Education's report on the future of higher education. "That agreement was nearly imperiled last weekend, though. Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president at Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector division, sent an e-mail message to fellow commissioners Friday evening saying that she 'vigorously' objected to a paragraph in which the panel embraced and encouraged the development of open source software and open content projects in higher education." Read the article for the relevant text before and after Microsoft's intervention.
A first look at GNOME 2.16 (ars technica)
ars technica looks forward to the GNOME 2.16 release. "In addition to new icons and an updated GTK theme, GNOME got an infusion of compositing goodness, including support for toggling compositor support at runtime, support for wobbling and exploding affects, magnification, configurable transparency for windows and menus, fading effects, and shrinking effects for minimization."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Report on the Fourth International GPLv3 Conference (Linux.com)
Linux.com has a report on the GPLv3 conference in Bangalore. "Last month the Free Software Foundation (FSF) held its Fourth International Conference on GPLv3 at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. Around 150 participants from all over India and abroad, including Japan, France, and Germany, attended. Since this was the first conference after the second draft of GPLv3, which saw several extensive revisions, both Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen painstakingly explained the new draft, and took many questions from attendees."
YAPC::EU 2006 coverage (O'Reilly)
O'Reilly covers day 1 and day 2 of the YAPC::EU 2006 Perl conference.
Companies
MySQL to drop Berkeley DB storage engine, add memcache plugin (Linux.com)
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier covers a DBMS change from MySQL AB on Linux.com. "With the 5.1.12 release, MySQL will be dropping the Berkeley DB (BDB) storage engine from its list of supported database engines. Some observers have suggested that this move is connected to Oracle's purchase of Sleepycat, and that InnoDB may be next. However, Brian Aker, MySQL's director of architecture, says that they're unlikely to drop InnoDB, and the Berkeley engine is being dropped for technical reasons. Aker also announced the first release of a memcache storage engine plugin for MySQL."
Really Free Software (Forbes)
Forbes is running a look at Ubuntu and its founder. "Canonical has burned through $15 million of Shuttleworth's money in two and a half years. He says that it will take him at least another two years to even know whether it has a chance to become profitable, and that it may never return his investment. But that doesn't matter. He's paying all the bills either way, along with setting up a $10 million endowment for the Ubuntu Foundation that's earning interest for a day when his attentions may drift elsewhere."
Wind River claims embedded Linux dominance (LinuxDevices)
LinuxDevices looks at Wind River's quarterly report, with an emphasis on the company's apparent success in transitioning to Linux. "In terms of specific Linux design wins, [CEO Ken] Klein cited high-end Swedish stereo equipment vendor Bang & Olufsen, which reportedly licensed Wind River's Platform for Consumer Electronics, Linux Edition (PCE-LE), in part because of PCD-LE's interesting remote management capabilities."
Business
The New Barbarians (Forbes)
Forbes is running a series of articles called The New Barbarians. It seems that Daniel Lyons has finally figured out that commodity hardware and free software might offer some value. "Linux today has less than 2% market share on the desktop. That's because with past versions of Linux only hackers could get Linux installed and running right. But a new batch of easier-to-use versions is putting Linux within reach of regular folks." There is also a rather confused article about the GPLv3 process.
Linux Adoption
India state to dump Windows for Linux (Seattle pi)
Seattle pi has published an Associated Press article on the upcoming switch to Linux at all of the high schools in the Indian state of Kerala. "The decision to switch to Linux came after free software guru Richard Stallman, founder of the open-source GNU software project, visited Kerala two weeks ago, and persuaded officials to discard proprietary software, such as Microsoft, at state-run schools, Baby said. Despite the denials that Microsoft was the target, opposition leader M.A. Shahnawaz, of the Congress party, said he believed the decision was based on the communists' opposition to the software giant's products."
Legal
SanDisk faces MP3 licence dispute (BBC)
The BBC covers a dispute between SanDisk and Sisvel over the MP3 patent. "Sisvel's founder Roberto Dini told the website DigitalLifestyles.info that SanDisk could gain an unfair edge over competitors and could potentially offer trade customers at the high-profile German show a lower price for its MP3 players. This is unfair competition,' Mr Dini told DigitalLifestyles.info." The interesting thing - beyond the notion of license fees as necessary for fair competition - is that SanDisk claims to have come up with a non-infringing MP3 decoder. DigitalLifestyles has posted the interview with Mr. Dini, in MP3 format, of course.
Some Quick Comments on Australia's Exposure Draft TPM Measures Bill, by Brendan Scott (Groklaw)
Groklaw looks at DMCA-like draft legislation in Australia. "As a result of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), Australia is required to augment its existing DMCA style provisions in the Australian Copyright Act. The AUSFTA requires that these changes be in place by the end of 2006. Following a number of reviews, draft legislation which aims at implementing the relevant provisions of the AUSFTA (i.e. paragraph 17.4.7) has been released."
Interviews
Author Interviews: Hal Fulton - The Ruby Way (On Ruby)
Pat Eyler interviews Hal Fulton. "Hal Fulton is a longtime Ruby hacker and the author of one of my favorite Ruby books, The Ruby Way. Recently, he's been hard at work on a second edition (due out in November). The second edition will come with a change in publishers, The Ruby Way will now be an Addison-Wesley book. When he's not working on his book, Hal is active on the ruby-talk mailing list and in the Ruby community at large."
PC-BSD Interview (KDE.News)
KDE.News talks with Kris Moore founder and lead developer of PC-BSD. "PC-BSD was initially released as 0.5 Beta about a year ago, April 2005. I chose to begin development with the goal of making a FreeBSD-based desktop OS, with a custom software installation method called PBI or PC-BSD Installer. Instead of a true "distro" with numerous ports or programs being apart of the base system, PC-BSD is by default a Operating System only. Software packages live independent of the operating system, self-contained in their own directories, where they do no harm or cause dependency issues."
People Behind KDE: Celeste Lyn Paul (KDE.News)
KDE.News has announced the latest interview in its People Behind KDE series. "Today's People Behind KDE features the American lass who is forging the KDE 4 Human Interface Guidelines. Find out the advantage of a hobby against job, what is wrong with Fruit Salad plus the good fortune of one KDE convert as we interview Celeste Lyn Paul."
Linspire Founder on Linux, iPod, Zune (Red Herring)
Red Herring interviews Michael Robertson. "Is Michael Robertson afraid of anything? The entrepreneur has a made a career--and a fortune--playing rough with giants. Now, though, he's turning up the volume: predicting an end to Apple's hold on digital music, shaking up the Linux community by looking to marry open source smarts with proprietary know how, and talking trash about Microsoft's new Zune."
Opening Up: Laurie Tolson on Open Source Strategy for the Java Platform
The Sun Developer Network has an interview with Laurie Tolson, VP of Developer Products and Programs at Sun. "Jim: Where is Sun in the process of open sourcing the code for Sun's Java platform implementations? When can developers expect to see the code released? Laurie: Sun will release several significant components of Java SE by the end of 2006. We don't know exactly which ones yet, but the javac bytecode compiler and the HotSpot Virtual Machine --among other things-- are on the table. The rest of a buildable JDK will be released in early 2007. In addition, Sun plans to open source implementations of the Java ME platform (both CLDC and CDC). We intend to roll this out by the end of 2006. Most importantly, we're not doing this in isolation. We want to learn from successful open source projects how best to go about this." (Thanks to Drew Daniels)
Resources
It's not just Linux: Open Source has arrived (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch reports on the results of an IDC study. "Open-source true believers have been saying forever that open source is the way to develop software. It turns out they've convinced most programmers that they're right. According to a newly released IDC study, open source isn't just hype; it's now the way most developers make software."
Linux Gazette #130 is out
The September 2006 edition of Linux Gazette is out. Articles include EclipseCon Conference 2006: The Way of Eclipse, DNS techniques, The Geekword Puzzle, Vancouver Python Workshop 2006, Custom OpenLDAP Schemas, Interview: Timothy Miller, Open Graphics Project and more.
Reviews
Cold War makes for intriguing gaming (Linux.com)
Linux.com plays around with a new game. "It's been a long time since I've played a commercial game on Linux, probably since the fall of Loki, but the long dry spell is over now. I've been spending a lot of time playing Cold War lately, and I've missed this kind of gaming."
Hail the Konqueror (Linux.com)
Linux.com has a look at Konqueror. "Tabbed browsing support is great for viewing multiple sites one at a time, but Konqueror kicks it up a notch with split windows. Its window can be split horizontally or vertically (or both), and you can browse different sites in each pane. This is useful if you're composing a blog post and want to refer to someone else's post on the other side, or if you just have a site that you want visible all the time, such as a Nagios window, where you can keep an eye out for any alerts."
Can Linux-based Collax Replace Microsoft Small Business Server? (CRN)
CRN reviews Collax Business Server. "With the release of Collax Business Server (CBS), Microsoft's Small Business Server 2003 (SBS) is starting to look a little like France in 1940, with Germany amassing troops on the border, readying invasion. Collax has made it no secret that it intends to battle Microsoft for the small business server market and is aggressively seeking soldiers in the form of solution providers. And with the recall and delay of the R2 upgrade to SBS, Microsoft now lacks the re-enforcements it needs to strengthen its line, creating an even more tempting target for Collax."
Taking an OpenReports test drive (Linux.com)
Michael Stutz takes a look at OpenReports on Linux.com. "Business Intelligence (BI) software, those tools and suites that take the raw minings of your databases and turn them into comprehensible signposts and mappings that lead toward profits, is a hot market today. One of the more talked-about open source solutions is OpenReports, a GPLed, Web-based BI report generation system whose first stable, milestone release of its 2.0 series has just come out. A lot of bugginess has been cleaned up from earlier versions. This 2.0 milestone release also brings with it a better report scheduling method".
Review: The Linux-based Motorola ROKR-E2 (OS News)
OS News reviews Motorola's ROKR-E2 Linux-based feature phone. "In the box (arrived in just two days from Hong Kong) we found the cellphone, an 850 mAh battery, 128 MB transflash-in-SD card, the manual, software CDs, a USB cable, a 3.5mm handsfree and a travel charger. The battery was almost full when the box arrived, but we fully charged it for an extra hour or so too. This feature phone (not a smartphone) features triband GSM, 1.3 MP camera with flash, 11 MBs internal storage, full SD slot, 2.2" QVGA screen, stereo sound, FM radio, 3.5mm audio jack, USB 2.0 charging & file transfer and Bluetooth."
Personal wikis: Three small, simple alternatives (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at some lightweight wikis. "Wikis aren't just great tools for sharing information and collaborating on projects. They also make excellent personal information managers. With a personal wiki, all of your to-do lists, notes, and appointments are at your fingertips in form that's easy to use and maintain."
Miscellaneous
FSF reaches out to social activists (NewsForge)
NewsForge covers the Free Software Foundation. "2006 may be remembered as the year that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) reached out to the community. The FSF has already undertaken an unprecedented year-long consultation process about the revisions to the GNU General Public License, and the Defective By Design campaign against digital rights management technologies. Now, the FSF is planning a third campaign to deliver its message about ethical software to social activists outside the technical communities. "We think that social groups taking on policies about free software can act as a huge lever within schools, trade unions, local governments, and churches," says Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF."
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