Linux in the news

Recommended Reading

On GNOME's 10th anniversary, de Icaza and Waugh look back, ahead (Linux.com)

Linux.com looks at ten years of GNOME. "It seems like just yesterday that the GNOME Project got its start, but actually it was a decade ago that Miguel de Icaza got the ball rolling. While de Icaza has largely focused his time on Mono recently, the GNOME community has kept making progress. To get some perspective on GNOME's history, I spoke to de Icaza and longtime GNOME contributor and GNOME Foundation board member Jeff Waugh."

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Linus Torvalds talks future of Linux (apc)

apc features an interview with Linus Torvalds. "APC: Out of curiosity, do you have anything to say to hardware manufacturers who refuse to release datasheets or specifications about the functioning of their hardware so it could operate with the Linux kernel? LT: Is "I hope you all die a painful death" too strong? The good news is that a lot of hw manufacturers are actually doing the right thing. Intel in particular has improved wrt open source a lot, and for that reason I tend to suggest that when buying a machine, just make sure that you buy one with Intel graphics and wireless. That takes care of the two biggest annoyances right there. But Intel certainly isn't the only one, and we're doing fairly well in general - with just a few dark spots."

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Companies

Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2 available for Linux (ars technica)

ars technica reports on the availability of the latest Flash beta for Linux. "During the development of Flash Player 9, Adobe sought to make the program's infrastructure truly cross-platform compatible so that future versions of the player wouldn't have to be ported to Linux after every release. Adobe hoped to ensure that future Flash player releases could be issued simultaneously for all major platforms. Adobe's success in this respect is illustrated by the availability of this latest Flash player beta for Linux at the same time that it's available for Windows and Mac OS X."

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Linux Adoption

FSF links up with environmental groups (Linux.com)

Linux.com reports that the Free Software Foundation is connecting with environmentalists. "Continuing its efforts to connect with social activists, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released an open letter signed by major environmental organizations. The letter urges activists to reject lockdown technologies in general and Windows Vista in particular as hostile to their ethics and the causes they support, and to support free software instead. The letter is only the first in a series that the FSF plans to release in the coming months, each of which will be crafted to make an ethical or pragmatic appeal to a specific group's concerns."

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Legal

BitTorrent Admin Monitored by US Government, Forced to Dump Linux (TorrentFreak)

TorrentFreak covers a forcible change of operating system to enable monitoring. "'I had a meeting with my probation officer today, and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me, that is part of my sentence. However, their software doesn't support GNU/Linux (Which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on.'" (Thanks to Ludo Stellingwerff).

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Amazon, Google, Yahoo, And Others Sued For Automating Their E-mail (InformationWeek)

Here's an InformationWeek article about this week's software patent silliness. "The lawsuit charges the companies with implementing systems that 'comprise interpreting electronic messages with rule base and case base knowledge engines' as described in the patent held by the plaintiff, 'Automatic message interpretation and routing system.'" The patent claims are quite general and could easily describe packages like Mailman.

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Can developers reclaim donated IP? (Linux.com)

Linux.com muses on the ownership of (so-called) intellectual property, including a discussion with Richard E. Fontana, of the Software Freedom Law Center. "'Intellectual property is property; like any other form of property, ownership can be transferred to someone else. With respect to copyrights (and also patents and trademarks), an outright transfer of all rights to someone else is called an "assignment." Ownership generally means the ability to exercise all rights associated with a form of property, so to convey ownership of copyrights you would assign them. (If you transfer fewer than all rights to someone else, that's a "license.") You can assign copyrights to someone else in return for compensation, or you can assign them as a gift. In the US, at least, an assignment must be in writing and signed by the person conveying the copyrights.'"

Comments (25 posted)

Resources

Linux vs. BSD, What's the Difference? (O'ReillyNet)

Dru Lavigne compares Ubuntu 7.04 to PC-BSD 1.4 on O'Reilly. "Linux mavens are usually pretty sure they'll never go back to (or start using) Windows. They may like Mac OS, but usually don't jump ship for that either. But how about the other open source Unix descendant, BSD? Dru Lavigne offers a basic primer on what's different in PC-BSD for a Linux user, and what's better."

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Can hypervisors circumvent GPLv3's 'anti-tivoization' clause? (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices has a guest whitepaper authored by Bruno Zoppis, a Trango product manager. "This guest whitepaper explains how a hypervisor can be used to leverage GPL software while isolating it from proprietary code, in order to ensure compliance with the requirements of the GPL. It was written by a TRANGO Virtual Processors product manager, and uses that company's hypervisor as an example." (Thanks to Phil Endecott)

Comments (24 posted)

Reviews

Documentation Coverage Testing With dcov (Linux Journal)

Pat Eyler takes a look at a documentation coverage tool for Ruby, on Linux Journal. "How often have you thrown up your hands in disgust at the poor quality of documentation for an open source project? Wouldn't it be nice if someone put together a documentation coverage tool that worked like test coverage tools? Well, you're in luck--dcov is here (at least for Ruby code)."

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Discontent with LiveContent (Linux.com)

Linux.com takes a look at the Creative Commons' LiveContent mini-distribution and finds it lacking. "The CD is a modified version of the Fedora 7 live CD. Bypassing the login screen, it boots directly to a customized GNOME desktop, with a Firefox browser opened to a welcome page -- and that is where the trouble with the presentation begins. Instead of beginning with a concrete explanation of the CD or explaining what Creative Commons and free software are, the welcome page begins by repeating the vague rhetoric of the project wiki. It does not even encourage users to make free use of the material on the CD. If I were someone who had never heard of either Creative Commons or free software, I wouldn't know what to think."

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Comprehensive integrity verification with md5deep (Linux.com)

Mayank Sharma looks at md5deep on Linux.com. "Most of the ISO images and other software you grab off the Internet come with a message digest -- a cryptographic hash value that you can use to verify their integrity. While almost all Linux distributions come with utilities to read and generate digests using MD5 and SHA1 hash functions, the md5deep utilities can do that and more. md5deep computes MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, Tiger, and Whirlpool digests across Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, *BSD, Solaris, and other operating systems. It can recursively traverse directories, computing sums for files under subdirectories as well."

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UFRaw 0.12 could make new converts to open source RAW photo conversion (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews UFRaw 0.12. "There is more to UFRaw than just new tools and icons, though. As hinted at above, UFRaw is color-managed, and this release is the first to support display profiles and display profile rendering intents. That makes it possible to use a fully color-managed workflow for your editing session; something not to be taken lightly."

Comments (1 posted)

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