Linux in the news

Recommended Reading

Why tech firms are out of tune (BBC)

BBC News is running a column from the Consumer Electronics Show; the author is not entirely impressed with what he saw. "And [Carly Fiorina] claimed that the way entertainment is 'created, distributed, managed and consumed' is changing forever, in ways that highlight 'the power of democracy', and are about 'giving power the people.' Then she went and spoiled it all by committing HP to putting digital rights management software in every one of its consumer devices, encrypting any recorded content stored on HP systems so that it can't be transferred to other computers or players, stopping people copying their old videos to DVD, and even making sure that HP home computers can't record broadcast television programmes."

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Altruistic individuals, selfish firms? (First Monday)

First Monday takes a look at the structure of motivation in open source software. "A growing body of economic literature is addressing the issue of incentives for individuals who take part in the Open Source Software (OSS) movement, while empirical analyses focus on individual developers but neglect firms that do business with it. During 2002, we conducted a large-scale survey on 146 Italian firms supplying OSS in Italy and this paper compares our data on firms' motivations with data emerging from surveys made on individual programmers. Our objective is to analyse the role played by different classes of motivations (social, economic and technological) in determining the involvement of different groups of agents in Open Source activities." (Thanks to David A. Wheeler)

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Trade Shows and Conferences

Australia conference: value, support, security and standards (OpenSector)

Open Sector reports on the Open Source in Government conference, going on now in Adelaide, Australia, with pointers to stories on ZDNet and Computerworld.

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The New Economy Hack: Turning Consumers into Producers (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls searches for open source news at Macworld, on Linux Journal. "Sure enough, I couldn't even find mentions of Darwin or open source among any of the breakout sessions. (Maybe they were there and I missed them; still, the point is the same.) That's a far cry from three years ago, when a session on Yellow Dog Linux packed one room while nearby Darwin sessions spilled into the halls."

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Second Osnabrueck Meeting Boosts PIM Development (KDE.News)

KDE.News covers progress by the KDE Personal Information Management (PIM) team at a recent German hackfest. "This year the plan was to make a a roadmap for future KDE-PIM Development. The developers took the opportunity to discuss complicated issues in detail and sit together for brainstorming or in order to fight evil bugs."

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The SCO Problem

SCO's Missing Risk Factor (Groklaw)

Groklaw points out that SCO's regulatory filings are missing one important "risk factor" for its investors. "If you look through the SCO SEC filings as I have been doing, you may find, as I have been finding so far, that SCO appears not to have listed receiving those letters from Novell or mentioned that Novell was still contesting SCO's copyright claims on UNIX as a risk factor in their recent filings."

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SCO's Motion to Compel Discovery (Groklaw)

Groklaw covers some of SCO's moves in its case against IBM. SCO presented a Motion to Compel Discovery and Memorandum in Support of its Motion to Compel. " SCO says it needs all versions back to 1985 "in order to analyze the ways in which AIX has changed and the ways in which its structures, methods and information based on UNIX have evolved. The evidence adduced from this discovery is likely to identify evidence of infringement and/or contract violations by IBM by improper contributions of such items to Linux.""

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SCO's "Notice of Compliance" Says They Have Not Yet Fully Complied (Groklaw)

According to Groklaw, SCO has posted a Notice of Compliance that states that they have not fully produced the evidence required by the court order. "The notice claims they have fully complied with the court's order with respect to answering Interrogatories 1-9, 12 and 13, but they reserve the right to supplement after they get more code from IBM. However, they say they have *not* produced all the documents requested by IBM, specifically files of certain directors and officers. Because of the holiday, they didn't have time to fully review them yet. That is another way of saying they have not fully complied."

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SCO takes Linux licensing overseas (News.com)

News.com reports on efforts by SCO to broaden the scope of their licensing quest to a worldwide arena. "Companies outside the United States that use Linux could already buy a license from SCOsource under the existing license program running within the United States. But the explicit offer of licenses worldwide brings with it the implicit threat of legal action for those who do not comply. The first lawsuits are now only weeks away, according to Sontag. "I would expect within the next few weeks we will have a number of Linux end users who we will have identified and taken legal action (against)," Sontag told ZDNet UK. "We will probably see that ramping up over time.""

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Companies

Software makers team on Asian Linux (News.com)

News.com reports that Red Flag Linux and Miracle Linux are working together to create "Asianux". "The companies confirmed that they will base upcoming product releases such as Red Flag DC 4.1 and Miracle Linux 3.0 on Asianux but did not reveal when these products will be available. The two companies also aim to set up a joint support center at Oracle's Beijing facility to provide technical assistance to Chinese customers using Asianux-based products. U.S.-based Oracle is a majority stakeholder in Miracle Linux and a longtime partner of Red Flag on the mainland."

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Court: No Microsoft claims via Lindows site (News.com)

News.com reports that claims submitted through the MSfreePC site will not be recognized. "In November 2003, Microsoft asked the court to reject any claims filed via MSfreePC, saying the Lindows site violated the terms of Microsoft's settlement by using so-called digital signatures to process submissions. (Digital signatures are online validation agreements used to verify individuals' identities.) Lindows argued in response that Microsoft only opposed the site because it hoped to escape paying as much of the settlement as possible by making the claims process "arduous and time-consuming" for Californians."

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Novell offers legal protection for Linux (News.com)

Here's a News.com article on Novell's new protection offer. "Under Novell's plan, the company will provide customers with protection from copyright infringement lawsuits to the tune of $1.5 million, or a factor of 1.25 of their software purchase price. To get the protection, customers must buy SuSE Linux and support from Novell and sign a licensing agreement..."

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Linux Adoption

Linux Here, Linux There, Linux Everywhere (Groklaw)

Groklaw examines several situations where Linux is gaining strength, including on IBM executives' desktops. "The Inquirer has a leaked internal IBM memo, they say from IBM CIO Bob Greenberg, asking all IBM executives to switch their desktops to Linux by the end of next year. After they do it, don't you suppose that will be the end of FUD along the lines of "Linux isn't ready for the desktop"? Everyone will just know that if IBM runs Linux on the desktop, so can any other business."

This ZDNet article looks at the IBM decision in more depth.

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CA and Linux (IT-Director)

IT-Director reports that a company known as CA is switching to Linux. "There are two reasons why it is worth taking note of CA with respect to Linux. The first is that CA believes, as I do, that Linux is going to become the standard OS. I know this because I heard Yogesh Gupta, the CTO of CA, say so at the last CA World. The second is that CA believes that it can generate a respectable revenue stream from Linux."

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Migration from Windows to Linux saves thousands (IT Manager's Journal)

Ryan Benner explains the monetary details behind his company's switch to Linux. "Nearly three years ago I rebuilt my company's corporate network, comprising six geographically dispersed offices and approximately 300 users, using a budget smaller than what most system administrators and IT managers make in a year. Our migration to Linux servers and software was a success, and offers a lesson for other administrators."

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Legal

Massachusetts Open Source Vs. Proprietary Battle Brews (TechWeb)

TechWeb looks into efforts by Massachusetts Senator Marc Pacheco to derail his state's Open Source/Open Standards Policy. "Pacheco, a Democrat, said the new policy is "perceived to be an exclusionary policy that excludes proprietary software." He is chairman of the Post Audit and Oversight Committee and said he has received "lots of calls" from software companies whose business revolves around proprietary software, many of whom are concerned that they will be locked out of Massachusetts' $80 million IT budget."

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Mass. Softens Stance on Proprietary Software (eWeek)

eWeek reports that the Massachusetts IT policy has been weakened in regards to the use of open-source software. "Essentially, rather than focus on open source as a priority, the new policy demands that new IT investments be open standards compliant. The state's new Enterprise Open Standards Policy defines open standards as: "Specifications for systems that are publicly available and are developed by an open community and affirmed by a standards body." The policy gives HTML as an example of such a standard and adds: "Open standards imply that multiple vendors can compete directly based on the features and performance of their products."

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Interviews

Linux for poets (Linux.com)

Linux.com interviews fiction writer and Linux user Valerie MacEwan. "Microsoft can't get it right and the people who listen to me (or other Linux voices) are the ones who've been hacked, attacked, wormed, virused, and have had to spend $100s on security software. That's one of the biggest things that drove me back to Linux in 2003. I priced all the Norton, AdAware, and more programs and the combined cost was unbelievable. And there, on the shelf next to it was SuSE 9 Professional for $79 and I knew once I put it on my computer and learned how to drive it (mainly, got it to find my Sony digital camera, my laser printer, and my scanner), my odds for keeping other people out of my computer were more in my favor."

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FOSDEM interviews

The FOSDEM Website has two new interviews dedicated to BRASS and to JOnAS. In this interview Roger Butenuth talks about accessibility to Linux for blind users. Then Florent Benoit introduces JOnAS, an open source J2EE application server.

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Reviews

GStreamer - Where We Are and Where We Are Going (OS News)

Christian Schaller writes about GStreamer on OS News. "The core concept in GStreamer is that of a pipeline system which your media streams through. This means you have one or more sources which can be anything like a file, an URL or a hardware device. Depending on how you construct your pipeline you can then have lots of things happening to that media stream before it ends up in one or more sinks at the other end of your pipeline. The sinks can be like the sources; a web stream, a file or hardware device; all depending on what plugins and elements you have installed."

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The Return of Mini Book Reviews (Linux Journal)

In this Linux Journal article Pat Eyler presents mini reviews of Computer Science & Perl Programming, Games, Diversions & Perl Culture, Essential CVS, and The Linux Development Platform.

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Miscellaneous

Suddenly, competition is in (Haaretz)

Haaretz examines what the Israeli government is up to with Microsoft and free software. "The treasury began investing in open code more than a year and a half ago, when its relations with Microsoft were still smooth. Now, entangled in a dispute with the giant, the Finance Ministry is enjoying kicking Microsoft where it hurts, even though it really has no real intention of replacing Windows with Linux, or Office with Open Office." (Thanks to "Dewd").

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Relicensing of Majority of Mozilla Codebase to Begin Soon (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine reports on the relicensing of the Mozilla codebase. "Over the coming months, the majority of the Mozilla codebase will be relicensed under an MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license. The change will mean that developers building products based on Mozilla will be able to choose whether to use the code under the terms of the Mozilla Public License, the General Public License or the Lesser General Public License."

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