Linux in the news

OSDL patent commons gets chilly reception from the 'outspoken' (ZDNet)

David Berlind looks at OSDL's patent commons in this ZDNet Blog. "Likewise, when OSDL jumped on board this week with its patent commons announcement, some of the more outspoken proponents of open source questioned the extent to which such a move really moves the ball forward. Two of those individuals -- attorney Larry Rosen who literally wrote the book on open source licensing and Bruce Perens who earlier this summer joined SourceLabs as vice president of developer Relations and Policy -- were talking virtually the same language when I interviewed them separately. Preaching to the same choir, both men questioned the need to donate patents to such a commons in the first place."

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Lloyd's may offer open-source indemnity (News.com)

News.com reports that Lloyd's of London may soon underwrite open-source software against claims of intellectual property infringement. "John St. Clair, the chief operating officer of insurance firm Open Source Risk Management(OSRM), said on Friday that OSRM is working with "a number of" Lloyd's syndicates, which will start offering open-source insurance "within the next few months.""

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HP exec decries proliferation of open source license types (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld covers a LinuxWorld keynote from HP executive Martin Fink. "In a somewhat tongue-and-cheek request, Fink called on IBM to deprecate its IBM Public License in favor of the GPL. In return, he pledged to give an HP laptop loaded with Linux to IBM executives, including IBM Vice President Irving Wladawsky-Berger." (Thanks to Max Hyre)

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LinuxWorld San Francisco 2005

Groklaw has a report from Douglas Burns, who spent last week at LinuxWorld.

NewsForge has wrap up article with pictures.

Astaro Corporation has announced that the Astaro Security Gateway 420 appliance was awarded a Product Excellence Award in the category of "Best Security Solution".

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OSCON Was Cool! (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal has another look at this year's OSCON, by Russell J.T. Dyer. "What seems to make OSCON interesting, cool and fun is the collection of people attending and perhaps the location. As I mentioned in an earlier article on the Red Hat Summit, technology conventions now seem to be the dominion of big corporations. I don't mind companies being involved, I simply prefer community driven and aligned ones, such as like O'Reilly and MySQL. O'Reilly organizes OSCON and a few other conferences."

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Massive Linux handout set for French schools (News.com)

News.com reports on a plan to spread open source to secondary school students in the French region of Auvergne. "The project, which has been funded by the local government, will distribute 64,000 packs of CDs to students, according to Linux Arverne, a Linux user group involved in the initiative. The project aims to get students and their families more interested in free and open-source software."

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Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Groklaw looks into a patent infringement lawsuit filed by J2 and Catch Curve, Inc. against Mijanda. The dispute concerns FAX software. "Mijanda offers a fax to email gateway hosting service on Asterisk, a GPL licensed general purpose IP-PBX available under GNU/Linux. I believe one of the other companies involved is using Hylafax, which is another much older free software solution specific to faxing. The short list of free software packages that are potentially effected includes mgetty+sendfax, some of the fax stuff found in GNOME (and maybe KDE), hylafax, Bayonne, and Asterisk."

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Open-source allies go on patent offensive (News.com)

News.com covers moves by Red Hat and OSDL to build open-source patent repositories. "Red Hat will finance outside programmers' efforts to obtain patents that may be used freely by open-source developers, the top Linux seller said Tuesday at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here. At the same time, the Open Source Developer Labs launched a patent commons project, which will provide a central list of patents that have been donated to the collaborative programming community."

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Oops. That DVD should have caused the toilet to flush. (ZDNet)

ZDNet blogger David Berlind has found another silly patent: "InterVideo, located in Fremont, Calif., is asking the court to enjoin Dell from manufacturing, selling or importing products that infringe patents tied to its Linux-based InstantOn technology. The software allows a DVD to automatically start playing a movie when a user inserts a disc into a computer running an InterVideo program." The actual patent is relatively simple to read.

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Scyld Software's Becker on Linux, clustering, grid (LinuxWorld.au)

China Martens talks with Donald Becker. "Becker is the founder and chief scientist of Linux clustering vendor Scyld Software, a subsidiary of Linux workstation and server vendor Penguin Computing. Privately held Penguin acquired Scyld in June 2003. Becker founded Scyld (pronounced "scaled" or "skilled') back in 1998, building on work he did while at NASA (the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration) where he started the Beowulf Parallel Workstation high performance clustering computing project. NASA was interested in his project for helping in the modeling of climate data. IDG News Service caught up with Becker as he took a quick break from demonstrating Scyld clustering software at [LinuxWorld]."

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Interview with Chris Hessing, Lead Developer of xsupplicant (Linux Journal)

Matthew Gast talks with Chris Hessing about wireless security protocols, their implementation and their future. "CH: I feel like the security available right now is pretty good, assuming you're running WPA2 with AES. There are some weaknesses in various EAP flavors that need to be addressed, but that's well underway for the most part. What I'd like to do--and I don't know whether we can--is to get a universal EAP type. Something that allows you to use passwords, allows the storage of passwords in secure form and doesn't lock you in to any particular authentication server."

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LinuxWorld: Versora on migrating to Linux (Open Resource)

Open Resource interviews Jon Walker, CTO of Versora. "Q:What does an organization do with Windows-only apps when migrating to Linux? A:They have four choices, really. One is to port the applications, if they have access to the source code. Two is to re-write the application, which most organizations don't have the time luxury to do. A third is to discontinue the use of the application. And the fourth is to run a thin client, Win4Lin or emulator (in this case, if the applicaiton in question is on the codewaever list, you're in luck)."

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The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin - Chapter 17 (Groklaw)

Groklaw has published chapter 17 of the online book The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin by Dr. Peter H. Salus. This chapter is titled "Excursus: The GPL and Other Licenses."

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OOo Off the Wall: Recovering Hidden Treasures (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal finds ways to customize OOo 2.0. "It's a little-known secret, but what you see in the interface of version 2.0 of OpenOffice.org isn't what you have to settle for. Hidden throughout version 2.0 are dozens of pieces of functionality, each available in a few seconds by customizing the menus, toolbars or keyboard shortcuts of OpenOffice.org applications. Some of these hidden treasures are small tools useful only to users with certain work habits. However, perhaps the most useful customizations are older versions of tools that have been redesigned in version 2.0. In several cases, these older versions are designed better than their replacements. And, if nothing else, they often are more familiar."

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Book Review: Linux Desktop Garage (xyz computing)

xyz computing reviews Linux Desktop Garage. "Susan Matteson's Linux Desktop Garage (LDG) is a light read, aimed at the complete Linux novice. Matteson's goal is to explain to readers the absolute basics of Linux on the desktop, without getting bogged down into anything too complex or overly detailed. The author's casual style tries to keep things fun and interesting, as opposed to textbook reading, which a book about Linux can easily turn into. She is clearly trying to make the transistion to Linux less daunting than it otherwise would be, which is not a bad thing. The book comes with a a Gnoppix LiveCD.

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Sun's Linux killer shows promise (Register)

The Register has posted a lengthy review of Solaris 10, with many comparisons with Linux. "To attract the user base and developer interest that will really propel Solaris 10 forward, Sun would do well to think about it as a PC as well as a workstation. Generating enthusiasm and attracting a broad base of developers does involve giving people some fun in return, after all. Making SuSE Pro a fun distro and an excellent PC doesn't make it any less of a workstation, server platform, or development environment, a fact apparently lost on Red Hat."

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US Copyright Office Requests Comments on IE-Only Service (Groklaw)

Groklaw covers a proposal from the US Copyright Office. "There is a new wrinkle to the US copyright law. Hollywood usually gets whatever it wants, as you know, from Congress, but in this case, it only got most of what it wants. But the part that will interest you is this: they are asking if those making use of a new pre-registration system they are setting up will be inconvenienced if they make it usable only by Windows Internet Explorer for the time being." Comments on this proposal are due no later than August 22, 2005.

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Scottish police pick Windows in software line-up (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld reports that the Central Scotland Police is dumping StarOffice and returning to Microsoft Office. "In the past, when the agency deployed a new police application on StarOffice and Linux, the application had to be customized to work with the open-source software, [IT head David] Stirling said. It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station, he said. Perhaps most of all, the agency needed its systems to work smoothly with those at other agencies and criminal justice departments. Scotland's other seven police jurisdictions use Microsoft for their desktops and applications layer, he said. 'Even though we're one of eight police forces, we make up only 5 percent of the police officers. It's hard to have 5 percent driving the rest of the force,' he said."

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Linux entrepreneur tries again (News.com)

News.com takes a look at what Larry Augustin, former CEO of VA Linux, is doing these days. "Augustin is now CEO of Medsphere, a company that sells software designed to let hospitals manage patient records, pharmacy orders, medical procedures, billing and other responsibilities. That may sound like a dramatic departure from his last executive post, but the open-source philosophy is a unifying thread."

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