Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom (OfB)
Open for Business looks at Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom. "To me FOSS as Richard Stallman has set in motion with the GNU GPL is about the greater good of humanity as opposed to the selfish greed of a few people. The GPL has insured the freedom of users while showing that the closed development model has real flaws. Let's not lose site of what's important. Our community provides the moral center at probably the most pivitol point in history. 500 years ago the printing press ended the dark ages with an unprecedented sharing of ideas. The internet offers dramatically more potential."
Foolproofing Open Source (Business Week)
OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen has written a BusinessWeek column on the GPLv3 process and software patents. "The idea is that a pool of software licenses and software patents (issued and pending) are held in something like a virtual trust for the benefit of both developers and users of open-source software. In general, the vendors who make this pledge are promising not to litigate against people and companies whom they might otherwise sue... We like this idea so much that we're about to take it one step further. We're establishing an OSDL patent commons project that aims to centralize the good works of these vendors, as well as future individuals and organizations who may wish to pledge patents."
Trade Shows and Conferences
OSCON: Sun, Yahoo, Google -- and maybe you (NewsForge)
NewsForge presents coverage of the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. "After two days of tutorials, O'Reilly's OSCON Open Source Convention began in earnest yesterday by highlighting some unusual approaches to open source software development and use, including Sun's contention that OpenSolaris should be compared to Linux less on ideology and more on a technical basis. Sun COO Jonathan Schwartz asserted that his company's recently opened operating system was bringing more competition and choice to the community and that beyond ideological differences, was comparable to Linux. "Let's compare them," he said. "It's no longer about competing with a social movement. Let's get the politics out of the way we talk about competition.""
Business for Geeks at OSCON 2005 (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet covers Marc Hedlund's tutorial on starting a small business and getting funding, at OSCON 2005. "Marc Hedlund, O'Reilly Media's entrepreneur-in-residence, says that if you are like most engineers, you will have twenty slides about the product and maybe one describing the team. Hedlund explains that this is not the way to raise money. There are many practical decisions you will need to make if you want to start up a business around a product or service."
OSCON 2005: Know When to Fold 'Em (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet covers an OSCON keynote comparing the development of origami to the development of open source software. "But much about origami changed as we entered the modern era of folding about fifty years ago. Akira Yoshizawa created new figures of artistic beauty. His new creations were certainly groundbreaking and pushed the art in new directions, but Lang explained that an even more important contribution was Yoshizawa's language for communicating designs. "He developed a written instructional language. A way of presenting origami information. This was the Hypertext Transfer Protocol of origami. It was created in 1950 and we've had 50 years to build on it.""
Getting in touch with the feminine side of open source (NewsForge)
NewsForge wraps up OSCON with a look at a panel discussion about women in open source (or the lack thereof). "One key theme of the discussion was the fact that women in open source tend to be involved in management, marketing, and leadership roles, but they do not tend to excel in the more technical aspects of software development, with some notable exceptions, including Allison Randal, a key Perl developer and president of the Perl Foundation."
Linux World - the articles
Here is a small selection of today's LinuxWorld articles:- Linux fans to flock to Moscone from the San Francisco Chronicle.
- Business Trumps Technology at LinuxWorld. eWeek looks at the wheelings and dealings.
- LinuxWorld outgrows original outfit. News.com takes a look around the show floor.
- March of the (Linux) Penguins. Dr. Dobb's Journal also takes a look, but registration is required to see the full article.
Linux Shows Its Maturity (IT-Director)
IT-Director looks at some corporate announcements from LinuxWorld. "These announcements, and many others at the show, accurately illustrate just how rapidly Linux has moved from being a techie's plaything to become a mature, enterprise-class operating platform. The suppliers of Linux solutions are now moving beyond the development of pure technology features into delivering usable solutions to mainstream business issues."
Database start-ups bet on open source (News.com)
News.com reports on the state of open source database systems from LinuxWorld. "The growing number of technology companies betting their businesses on open-source database products reflects a gradual shift in corporate spending patterns, according to analysts and industry executives. With many companies familiar with Linux, the Apache Web server and open-source development tools, databases are an obvious next step."
On the Extreme Fringe of XML (O'Reilly)
Roger Sperberg covers the Extreme Markup Languages 2005 conference on O'Reilly. "The "X" in XML stands for "extensible." It doesn't stand for "expert" or "extreme." But when I think of XML I always think of the Extreme Markup Languages conference as the place to become expert in XML. I say it's where the graduate seminars in XML are held."
The SCO Problem
So, Now What Happens to SCO? (Groklaw)
Groklaw considers the future of SCO. "Novell's recent Answer and Counterclaims has some asking, now what happens? What does it mean? To help you out, I found two articles that I think grasp the possibilities. First, there's Frank Hayes's article, Novell to SCO Group: Drop Dead. At least one reporter has comprehended the magnitude of what Novell has done, I see, and found a simple way to express SCO's worst case scenario. Hayes begins like this: "You might not know it from some of the coverage, but The SCO Group now appears to be facing annihilation in its lawsuits against IBM, Novell, Red Hat and Linux users AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler.""
Linux Adoption
What's Driving Global Linux Adoption? (LinuxWorld.au)
LinuxWorld takes a look at some the driving forces behind Linux adoption. "India is home to more than 22 languages, many with unique alphabets. The impact this has on the production and distribution of textbooks for schoolchildren or the ability for local governments to collaborate on larger initiatives is gigantic. India sees opportunity in utilizing Linux and other open-source technologies to educate its population. With low overhead investment, Linux provides a pathway to e-education, enabling access to information for all students -- students who speak different languages and students who live in remote areas of the country. In the same way, Linux can enable e-medicine, e-governance and e-business throughout India."
Legal
Will Congress Ban Municipal WiFi? (O'ReillyNet)
O'Reilly covers new legislation that could disallow municipal wireless systems in the US. "The recently introduced U.S. Senate bill, called the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act of 2005, may spell the end for municipal wireless. Among other things, the bill says that when there is a case of competing bids between a private company and local government, preference will be given to the private company. Richard Koman reports on the implications of this bill and what it could mean for consumers long-term."
Suspicions fade over Linux trademark move (ZDNet)
ZDNet Australia looks into a legal situation involving the Linux trademark. "Linux Australia (LA) has moved to reassure the community that letters sent out by a lawyer acting on behalf of Linus Torvalds are part of a legitimate process to ensure the open source software's creator maintains control of the 'Linux' trademark. Perth-based lawyer Jeremy Malcolm has recently written to Australian Linux vendors asking them to relinquish any legal claim to the name Linux and purchase a licence for its use from the worldwide trademark owner. LA's president Jon Oxer acknowledged there had initially been some suspicion about the legitimacy of the letters and pointed worried community members to his recent blog entry on the subject."
New legal code (Spectrum)
IEEE Spectrum returns to the software patent debate with a suggestion. "There is no sensible means of reconciling an industry that has massive independent invention with a law that makes independent invention a liability. So what's the solution? How can we protect programmers and companies that invest in developing innovative new software from being ripped off--without tying the entire software industry up in red tape? The answer is copyright." (Thanks to Mark H. Weaver).
Who'll Fill the Gap in the Gateway Security Market? (eWeek)
Here's an eWeek article about the Trend Micro antivirus patent and a possible open source victim. "In fact, ClamAV is a particularly interesting problem, at least if Trend Micro decides to pursue it. ClamAV has become somewhat popular among the 'roll your own gateway security' crowd, and I think it's fair to say that ClamAV's main application is as an SMTP proxy. I would be surprised to see Trend go after ClamAV itself, and the ITC wouldn't be the place to do it, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that letters have been sent to some of the other commercial redistributors of ClamAV, such as Apple." (Thanks to Barry Gould).
Interviews
People Behind KDE: Nuno Pinheiro
The People Behind KDE present an interview with Nuno Pinheiro. "In what ways do you make a contribution to KDE? In as many ways as I can, but the thing I mostly work on is making Crystal icons. I also help as much as I can in making artistic documentation. I did some logos for realy cool projects, like Plasma, and also some layouts for KDE related web sites, like this one ;). Together with Robert Wadley we are making a Crystal icon set for OpenOffice.org. This work is mostly done now and it will enter a new development cycle, because many of the icons have to be improved. And last, I'm working with David Vignoni on a new icon set named Oxygen. I'm very excited about this."
Mitchell Baker Quizzed on Mozilla Corporation (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine points to an interview with Chief Lizard Wrangler Mitchell Baker. The interview focuses on the creation of the Mozilla Corporation, is available as a podcast or MP3 download.Featured Artist: Bastian Salmela (KDE-Artists.org)
KDE-Artists.org features an interview with Bastian Salmela. "Bastian Salmela, (aka basse) is best known in the KDE community for his Konqi artwork and his Magical Rope animated short. He also very active in the Blender community. Bastian is a long time Linux user who has done work on several games and recently has been selected as a lead animator for Orange "the Open Source movie project"."
Resources
New Audio Libre Article on LinuxSampler and QSampler
Linuxaudio.org has a new Audio Libre article (in PDF format) on the LinuxSampler project and QSample entitled: Breaking out of the loop - LinuxSampler and QSampler.
Reviews
The Arrival of NX, Part 3 (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal continues an examination of NX technology. This article delves into NX Compression, NX Cache and NX Roundtrip Elimination. "Before, we asked, "How important is round-trip elimination?" Now that you understand the basics of how X works across the network, the importance of being intolerant towards unnecessary roundtrips is obvious to you. You now should be aware of how much the latency of any link, especially a slow one, weighs in to make a remote connection feel slower with every additional roundtrip that takes place. Every roundtrip saved is a little boost for GUI responsiveness."
Dia straights (and curves and network diagrams) (NewsForge)
NewsForge reviews Dia, a diagram creation program. "Are you designing a new program and need to put a process into a flowchart? Do you need an entity relationship diagram for a database? Do you need to document the management structure for a new department? If so, try Dia, a useful and usable open source diagramming application available for both Linux and Windows."
Nexuiz: Open source deathmatch (NewsForge)
NewsForge reviews the game Nexuiz. "Nexuiz is free software, so anyone can download, modify, and share it as they see fit. It's put together by volunteer programmers and artists, and for the most part they did a great job on it. The program itself is stable, and it worked on most of the distributions I tested it on. The sound and animation are decent, though not up to modern standards. Playing Nexuiz will give you a Quake 3-like experience in terms of gameplay, graphics, and sound."
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