Linux in the news

Seven tips to help FOSS companies succeed (NewsForge)

NewsForge has some tips on how to make money with open source software. "The business community wants to know that a company is a reliable partner, a message that can be easily lost in the static of lingering suspicions about FOSS. By contrast, the FOSS communities want reassurance that the company does not simply exist to exploit their volunteer labor. They'll also ask questions about when the company is going to make contributions to the community -- usually code, but possibly also cash and marketing or the sponsorship of a conference. They want proof that the company is a credible member of the community."

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Sowing the Seeds of Open Source Advocacy (O'Reilly)

Jono Bacon suggests techniques for advocating open-source software on O'Reilly. "Within the open source community, advocacy is as critical as contributing source code, patches, or documentation. Although advocacy is not a technical contribution, it is critically important to spread the message of open source to other people in a language that is cohesive to their context. It is easy to preach to the converted when advocating open source to people at Linux user groups and trade shows, but standing in front of a board of executives who care little about computers--let alone a facet of computers, such as open source--is quite a challenge."

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KDE at FOSDEM 2005 Report (KDE.News)

KDE.News covers the KDE events at FOSDEM 2005. "FOSDEM is Europe's biggest meeting of Free Software developers and KDE turned out in force at it last weekend. As well as talks in the main track on KDE and KDevelop, the KDE Developers' room hosted a series of other talks. We also ran a stall and still found time for some hacking."

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Success Story: KDE for Science (KDE.News)

KDE.News looks at the use of multi-headed machines at the Tübinger Perception Conference 2005. "This setup was a little bit special, because one PC served 3 GeForce graphic adapters with 2 TFTs and 1 old SGI monitor, 3 keyboards and 3 mice attached. Under normal circumstances, you can only attach 1 monitor, 1 keyboard and one mouse to a computer."

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A Linux Nemesis on the Rocks (Business Week)

Business Week has a surprisingly complete article about the slow implosion of the SCO Group; it includes a report of today's announced restatement of SCO's 2004 numbers. "Well, the mouse that roared is barely squeaking these days. A string of recent setbacks raises grave questions about SCO's finances, its court case, and its management."

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Bumbling Bully (Forbes)

Remember the long series of unpleasant Daniel Lyons stories about SCO in Forbes? It seems that even Mr. Lyons is figuring things out. "After two years, SCO still hasn't provided any evidence to back up its claim against IBM, something a judge recently chided it for. Now we find out it can't even handle basic accounting.... So maybe there is no big conspiracy. Maybe these guys are just in over their heads."

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Declaration of SCO's Chris Sontag of December, 2004 (SCO v. IBM) (Groklaw)

GrokLaw has posted a declaration by Chris Sontag in the SCO case. "Here's Chris Sontag's latest declaration, in which he tries to support SCO's accusation IBM broke the law when it downloaded, from SCO's website, GPL'd Linux kernel code IBM itself wrote and owns the copyright on. IBM at the time was looking for evidence of copyright infringement, by the way. You know, like SCO's hero, the RIAA? SCO was in violation, IBM says, of the GPL by distributing that code in the first place, and hence SCO had no right to distribute that code to anyone, because they were violating IBM's copyright by so doing."

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Novell and SCO (Finally) Agree to Postpone Until May (Groklaw)

Groklaw reports that the next hearing on the SCO/Novell case (on Novell's motion to dismiss) has been pushed back to May. "I guess SCO decided, after reading the Novell motion, not to fight, and they stipulated eventually. But first they forced Novell to go to the expense and effort of drawing up a motion that both sides must have known Novell couldn't lose from day one. Just totally unnecessary. So it's May 25th at 3 PM, on stipulation by the parties, and so ordered by Judge Kimball."

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The Canopy-Noorda Answer (Yarro v Canopy) (Groklaw)

For those of you following along with the mess at the Canopy Group: Groklaw has the Noordas' side of the story from the court. "These Canopy lawyers thought of everything to throw in there. Like the song says, you have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them, and a settlement must have looked mighty good after Yarro, Mott and Christensen's attorneys read this Answer and realized the mountain they'd need to climb in this litigation to prevail."

It's worth noting that the Deseret News has posted an article stating that the rumors of a settlement in this case are premature.

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Wind River aims for open-source expansion (News.com)

News.com gives an overview of Wind River's open source makeover. "A week ago, Eclipse project organizers said they planned to expand Eclipse into the embedded-software arena. But Wind River's effort isn't a shoo-in. The company has weeks of work ahead in navigating a complicated approval process for top-level projects, said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, adding that he expects Wind River's project eventually to be approved."

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Donors, takers size up free open source certificate support (NewsForge)

NewsForge looks at the GoDaddy.com offer of free SSL certificates to open source projects. "We thought it might be interesting to see what kind of response GoDaddy got, what it is doing to filter out the open source noise from the truly open source projects, and what it really takes to cash in on open source authenticity to score a free Turbo SSL Certificate from the Arizona company. Conversely, what must open source projects do to take advantage of this kind of free support -- whether it be SSL certs, hosting, or other services that can put more time and energy back on the code -- without compromising any control?"

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Software patents make a mockery of European ideals (ZDNet)

ZDNet UK has run a critical column on the adoption of the software patent directive. "This affair has highlighted the mandarin mechanisms of Europe at their baleful worst. The killer argument that won the day for software patents? 'We are adopting the position for institutional reasons so as not to create a precedent which might have a consequence of creating future delays in other processes.' Lay down your keyboards, ye knights of open source; you have lost your freedom in a noble cause."

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The Spam Assassin Behind SpamAssassin (OSDir.com)

OSDir.com has an interview with Daniel Quinlan. "When most of us get email offering questionable herbal alternatives to Viagra or dubiously low prices on Adobe software, we simply delete it, having accepted long ago that receiving at least some unsolicited email comes with the price of using the Internet. But for Daniel Quinlan, it motivates him to figure out how to stop it -- for not just his sake but everybody else's. It's his job: He works as an anti-spam architect for an email security provider. And his paid work also carries over to his contributions to SpamAssassin, of which he currently chairs this free software's Project Management Committee."

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Conversation with a successful Linux services entrepreneur (NewsForge)

Here's a NewsForge interview with Con Zymaris. "Con Zymaris runs Cybersource, an IT service company in Melbourne, Australia. Cybersource started as a one-man Unix shop in 2001 and has gradually evolved into a decent-sized Linux/FOSS-based business that serves a client base Zymaris says is now 20% government, 20% corporate, and 60% small/medium-sized businesses."

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An Introduction to Embedded Linux Development, Part 4 (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal presents Part 4 in a four part series of articles on Embedded Linux Development. "We continue with the particular SBC that we used in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, the LBox from Engineering Technologies Canada Ltd. (Engtech). Despite the use of a specific SBC here, much of the material has broader application and should be useful generally for using the Background Debug Mode (BDM) with Motorola microcontrollers."

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Rev up your presentations with masks and movement (NewsForge)

NewsForge shows how to use OpenOffice.org and the Gimp to create truly obnoxious animated presentation slides. "Using masks and animating the resultant graphics along a path is an appealing way of getting an idea across to your audience. It's straightforward, clean, and high-impact."

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Review: Blender 3D (NewsForge)

NewsForge has published a review of Blender 3D, a three dimensional content creation and animation suite. "Modeling in Blender is quite fun, especially if you're doing organic modeling and using Blender's Subdivision Surface option. You can use optimal iso-lines for mesh editing, which makes it easy on the eye. Add to this the option to model meshes using vertex, edge or face, selection mode, and many tools such as extrude, bevel, cut and spin, screw and warp, noise and smooth, subdivision, and much more, and you have a complete modeling toolkit."

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An open source cookbook (NewsForge)

NewsForge has a review of two open-source recipe managers. "There are a number of different open source cookbook-related applications currently under active development in the community; a few of them even actually deal with food. If you're hungry for some open source code that will help feed you, Gourmet Recipe Manager and PHPRecipeBook are two applications that can help satiate your appetite."

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2005 Text Mode Browser Roundup (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal takes a look at text mode browsers. "Considering the speed and convenience text mode browsers offer, even over SSH connection from half a continent away, text mode browsing is supremely useful. So let's take a look at the current state of text mode browsers."

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Review: VIA Epia MII-12000 motherboard (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews the VIA Epia MII-12000 Mini-ITX form-factor motherboard. "It's quiet, it's small, it's powerful enough for everyday desktop use and versatile enough to be a set-top media device or small home server. It takes PCMCIA cards, IDE drives, DDR memory, and a standard ATX power supply, yet it's smaller than a laptop computer. It has a built-in DVD decoder (no more DeCSS!) and with its built-in RSA chip it can encrypt and decrypt data faster than the most powerful Athlon 64 system."

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Red Hat exec takes over Open Source Initiative (News.com)

News.com reports that Michael Tiemann has taken over as president of the Open Source Initiative. "[Russel] Nelson was named OSI president Feb. 1, taking over from co-founder Eric Raymond. Tiemann took over Feb. 23 and will continue in his role at Red Hat. "We thought that Michael would be a better president," Nelson said of the change, declining to share further details. Nelson will remain a board member and active in the group, he said."

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Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble (eWeek)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols worries about the future of Firefox in eWeek. "Here's the long and short of it. If the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox friends like Google don't start spending money - right now - to hire more programmers, more project managers and more servers, it won't matter how many ads in the New York Times Firefox supporters take out, Firefox will have already reached its high tide of popularity and we can only wait for the ebb to begin." (Thanks to Steven G. Johnson).

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Security patches issued for RealPlayers (News.com)

News.com mentions the availability of security updates for RealPlayer and Helix Player on Linux and other platforms. "RealNetwork's patches, released Tuesday, address vulnerabilities in the software that could allow an attacker to run arbitrary or malicious code on a person's computer when a malicious WAV or SMIL file is processed. Secunia, a security information company, rated the vulnerabilities as critical."

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