Linux in the news [LWN.net]

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Red Hat Makes History With Patent Settlement (Groklaw)

Groklaw discusses Red Hat's patent settlement with an eye toward compliance with the GPLv3 license. "You've probably been wondering why I've been quiet, when there is news about a patent settlement between Red Hat and Firestar and DataTern in the JBoss litigation. It's because I wanted to be positive I was correct that this is the first known settlement involving patents that is harmonious with GPLv3. It is. It's also harmonious with GPLv2, of course, but this is history in the making, friends. They settled a lawsuit brought against them in a way that licenses patents without violating the GPL."

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Ari Jaaksi of Nokia Wants to Educate the Linux Community (Technocrat)

Bruce Perens discusses comments by Nokia's Ari Jaaksi on DRM and intellectual property rights issues under Linux. "The key is knowing how to draw bright lines between different parts of the system. That's a legal term, and in this case it means a line between the Free Software and the rest of the system, that is "bright" in that the two pieces are very well separated, and there is no dispute that one could be a derivative work of the other, or infringes on the other in any way. All of the Free Software goes on one side of that line, and all of the lock-down stuff on the other side."

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Linux Adoption

Why Linux Failed at Walmart -- And What to Do About It (Datamation)

Matt Hartley opines on problems selling Linux machines at big-box stores. "Stop selling junk to those who don’t want it in the first place. From Xandros to Linspire, even more recently gOS: In each instance, I have watched in amazement as otherwise perfectly good Linux distributions were bundled with extremely low-end hardware and sold to people who honestly were not in the market for what was being offered."

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Legal

Attorney James Grimmelmann has put together a detailed history of issues surrounding access to the law as a way of looking at the state of Oregon's attempts to assert copyright privileges on its legal code. He concludes with a set of principles for access to legal code which has a lot of similarities with our principles regarding source code. "The right to distribute: Once primary legal information is online, anyone should be able to pick it up and republish it as they see fit. That could be coordinated with other materials in larger collections, it could be pushed out to mobile devices, it could be reformatted or sliced and diced in some clever new way."

Comments (9 posted)

Interviews

Interview with Marten Mickos (ODBMS Industry Watch)

Roberto Zicari interviews Sun's database group head Marten Mickos. "Q1. It appears as if the positioning of MySQL has been refocused more predominately on the Web applications / SaaS / ASP market in the last year or so. Would you agree with this, and if so, what does that mean regarding the potential of MySQL to penetrate further into the enterprise? Marten Mickos: Great question. We believe that enterprises will move to web-based architectures, and with that wave, MySQL is penetrating the web market. Goldman Sachs stated in 2006 that "the shift to more web-based applications in the enterprise is unstoppable". The percentage is still relatively low (10-20% I think) but it is growing."

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Resources

Get ready for Firefox 3.0 (developerWorks)

developerWorks has a web developer's guide to the many new features in Firefox 3.0. "The reason for all the excitement around Firefox 3.0 is that it promises an impressive array of improvements for the Web user and developer alike. It's an important milestone because Web developers have often used Firefox as a favorite development platform, even though they know they have to make eventual concessions toward cross-browser compatibility. Firefox's popularity among developers stems from the vibrant community, the rigorous standards support, and the constant innovation in the platform. The platform's innovation gives developers a head start on Web trends, and its standards support means that even on the cutting edge of these trends, Firefox offers transparency in its features that accelerates adoption and improves compatibility. Firefox 3 has even more to offer."

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Getting down to basics: Running Linux on a 32-/64-bit RISC architecture - Part 1 (Embedded.com)

Embedded.com has the first in a series of six articles about running Linux on MIPS-based systems. This installment provides definitions of Linux terms as a basis for the rest of the series. "To get to grips with any artifact you need to attach some good working meaning to the terms used by its experts, and you are particularly likely to be confused by terms you already know, but with not quite the same meaning. The UNIX/Linux heritage is long enough that there are lots of magic words: thread, file, user mode and system calls: interrupt context, Interrupt service routine (ISR), scheduler, memory map/address space, thread group, high memory, libraries and applications. "

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Visualizing time-dependent data with distortion portals (developerWorks)

developerWorks creates an SDL-enabled application that allows you to create distortion portals in sequential image frames to explore the relationship of data sets through time. "There are many ways to visualize data as snapshots, or sequential images showing trending and time progressions. Few options exist for exploring the relationships between data sets through time with an interactive interface. This article demonstrates code and techniques to create what I call "animated distortion portals" in the data to provide time-dependent visualizations of various parts of the image. Additionally, certain aspects of the code are presented that allow for effective visualization on slower-computing platforms without sacrificing usefulness. The code presented here will allow new insights into application-flow models and usage patterns by exploring various data sets and how they move through time."

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Companies, Developers Contributing To The X Server (Phoronix)

Phoronix has dug through the X.org source repository to see where the changes are coming from. "The biggest software company contributing to the X server has been Red Hat, with the second largest contributor being Tungsten Graphics and they had more than three times fewer commits than Red Hat. Novell / SuSE was in third. Combined, these software vendors had made up nearly 33% of the total commits over the past nine years."

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Reviews

Hands on: Flock 2 steps up the social browser game (ars technica)

ars technica reviews the Flock 2 beta release. "While Flock is based on the Firefox code base, the most noticeable addition is a toolbar of socially-themed icons to the left of the bookmark bar. This toolbar is perhaps the most important launching pad for Flock's strengths as a social web browser, as it can open various sidebars and media bars that act as portals to services like Flickr, Twitter, del.icio.us, Blogger, YouTube Facebook, TypePad, Gmail, and more."

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Movie download device runs embedded Linux framework (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices takes a look at Roku's Netflix Player. "Roku's Netflix Player (pictured at left) was announced last month as a way to reduce tech support calls for Netflix. The device is designed as an embedded Linux alternative to the Netflix Instant application, which runs on Windows PCs. Subscribers can visit the Netflix website using a laptop or PC and add movies to their Instant queue. The selected items can then be browsed using a TV or projector, using the Player's remote control. The remote can also be used to control playback, rate movies, or stop a movie for later resumption."

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