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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Building on Richard Stallman's Greatest Achievement (Linux Journal)Over at Linux Journal, Glyn Moody looks at efforts to project Richard Stallman's copyright hack (the GPL) into the World Trade Organization (WTO). "The similarities are clear. Both copyright and the WTO have both been instruments of control that seek to limit what people — and peoples — can do in their respective spheres of creation and trade. Both have steadily accreted powers over the years, until they have become hugely problematic for those who wish to see knowledge and products based on knowledge made as widely available as possible. So the idea that Stallman's hack might be applicable is certainly attractive — exciting even."
Trade Shows and Conferences Microsoft: Judge us by our deeds on open source (The Register)The Register covers comments by Microsoft's Robert Youngjohns at the Open Source Business Conference. "Microsoft has made a "tremendous commitment" to systems and file interoperability, according to its head of North American sales and marketing. Robert Youngjohns on Wednesday called interoperability between Widows and Linux and support for open-file formats and open-source languages like PHP a business imperative. He added Microsoft should be judged by its actions with support for PHP, not by its words - presumably statements by senior management on alleged violations of hundreds of Microsoft patents by Linux and open source."
Companies Intel Turns Over Its Linux Operating System (NY Times)The New York Times reports that Intel will be handing control of the Moblin distribution (recently reviewed by LWN) to the Linux Foundation. "Intel will maintain strong control over the software since it employs the top Moblin developers. But that could change over time as outside developers show interest in the software."
Linux maker a "tempting" takeover target (Reuters)Reuters reports that Red Hat Inc. is ripe for a corporate acquisition. "Citigroup said Red Hat Inc, which posted strong quarterly results on Wednesday, is a potential takeover target as the Linux software maker's strategy attracts the attention of larger technology firms. Citigroup and RBC Capital raised their price targets on Red Hat, which also forecast full-year results in line with market estimates. "We believe Red Hat is a tempting acquisition target," Citigroup analyst Brent Thill wrote in a note to clients."
Legal Microsoft, TomTom Settle Patent Infringement Battle (eWeek)Microsoft and TomTom have settled their patent dispute as reported by eWeek. TomTom will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money to license the patents, while removing code covered by the FAT patents over the next two years. "According to Microsoft, the agreement includes patent coverage for Microsoft's three file management systems patents provided in a manner that is fully compliant with TomTom's obligations under the General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). TomTom will remove from its products the functionality related to two file management system patents (the "FAT LFN patents"), which enables efficient naming, organizing, storing and accessing of file data, Microsoft said. TomTom will remove this functionality within two years, and the agreement provides for coverage directly to TomTom's end customers under these patents during that time." While Microsoft and TomTom say this is all GPLv2 compatible, there may be others who disagree.
TomTom - 'Settled, But Not Over Yet' says SFLC (Groklaw)Groklaw covers the Software Freedom Law Center's response to the TomTom settlement. From SFLC: "Today's settlement between Microsoft and TomTom ends one phase of the community's response to Microsoft patent aggression, and begins another. On the basis of the information we have, we have no reason to believe that TomTom's settlement agreement with Microsoft violates the license on the kernel, Linux, or any other free software used in its products. The settlement neither implies that Microsoft patents are valid nor that TomTom's products were or are infringing."
Interviews From ext3 to ext4: An Interview with Theodore Ts'o (Linux Magazine)Over at Linux Magazine, Jeff Layton interviews ext4 hacker Ted Ts'o. Layton stays away from the recent ext4 controversy, instead looking at the design goals and future plans for ext4. "One of our primary design goals was that it should be painlessly easy to upgrade from ext3 to ext4. You might not get all of the benefits of ext4 unless you do a backup/reformat/restore of your filesystem, but you would get at least some of the benefits by simply remounting the filesystem using ext4 and enabling some of ext4's features."
Resources Music Notation Software for Linux: a Progress Report, Part 1 (Linux Journal)Dave Phillips looks at the status of the five most active notation software projects. "The essential requirements for all music notation programs include various score layout functions, data entry methods, music symbol palettes, audio output support modes and options for printing the finished score. Basic programs may include only a limited subset of the possible features, while more professional software offers more features for greater control over the details of a work. Of course, with greater control comes greater complexity. The designers of music notation programs work hard to balance ease of operation with the proliferation of features."
Reviews 8TB NAS runs Linux (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices takes a look at Seagate's soon to be released NAS device. "Seagate is readying a four-bay network-attached storage device for small businesses that runs embedded Linux and stores up to 8TB. The hot-swappable BlackArmor NAS 440 offers an iTunes server and DLNA-compliant media server, RAID 0/1/5/10, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, and four USB ports, says Seagate. With the BlackArmor NAS 440, Seagate has launched its first homegrown, small business NAS device, re-launching a BlackArmor brand that it picked up when it acquired Maxtor in 2006."
Miscellaneous A New Memory Tool for the Web (Ben Galbraith's Blog)Ben Galbraith is Mozilla's Co-Director of Developer Tools. In this blog post he ponders various gaps in the tool-chain with regard to memory tools. "To be clear, most web pages and web applications don't push the browser's memory limitations enough to cause performance problems related to either of the scenarios above. As stated at the outset, this blog entry is about those web applications that need to treat the browser as a high-performance run-time, which in the context of this entry means that they have much-larger-than-average memory requirements." (Found on Linux Journal)
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