Linux in the news

A Watershed for Open Source (Business Week)

Business Week looks back at 2005. "It was a year when CIOs signed off on open-source projects, a big change from previous years when that happened only after low-level engineers started such projects on their own initiative. It was a year when venture capitalists woke up to the new business opportunities of open source. It was a year when open source was the word on the lips of not just early adopters but of an early majority. According to a new study by consulting firm Optaros, 87% of organizations are now using open-source software, somewhere."

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Provisioning for the Next Year (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls reflects on the past, present and future. "In the old days--the mid-late 1990s--"world domination" was an article of faith. Now it's a fact of life. There are still struggles, of course. But the ones that matter most are not at the operating system level. Linux is solid infrastructure now. For many--perhaps most--computing purposes, it's a default first choice. That choice will only get easier to make as Linux evolves."

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An Evening with Jeff Waugh (Linux Journal)

The Linux Journal has a lengthy report from a talk by GNOME and Ubuntu hacker Jeff Waugh. "Apparently Mark [Shuttleworth] originally wanted, given that Ubuntu is Linux for human beings, the first release of Ubuntu to carry a tasteful, artistic picture of a naked woman. This caused everyone in the company and community to offer some version of 'this is a very bad idea'. So, the community got Mark to step away from that in stages. In the end Mark backed down. The upshot of all of this has been that the pictures used for release versions of Ubuntu depict at least one man, at least one woman, at least two races--and everyone is fully clothed."

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Seminar leads to ongoing forum for UK FOSS interests (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers a seminar for parliamentary staff members and representatives of local government in the UK. "When Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli agreed to deliver a seminar on "Open Source in Government" to parliamentary staff members and representatives of local government in the United Kingdom earlier this month, he planned to introduce his audience to some basic concepts. However, when he got there, he found that most of the audience was already familiar with the concepts. As a result, instead of educating people in public life, he may have done more than he hoped -- he may have helped to create an ongoing forum in which the free and open source software (FOSS) communities, political lobbyists, and members of the governing Labour Party and the opposition Conservative Party can work together to promote the use of FOSS in the governments of the United Kingdom."

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SCO's 4Q and Fiscal 2005 Results: Down, down, down they go... (Groklaw)

Groklaw summarizes SCO's press release on its fourth quarter financial results. One thing you can say about SCO, they know how to spin a press release. SCO stock was up today.

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SCO Asks to Amend Complaint in Novell Litigation (Groklaw)

Groklaw reports that the SCO Group is now trying to expand its complaint against Novell; the new version includes a number of new claims, including copyright infringement in SUSE Linux. There is a new list of stuff that SCO claims to own; in addition to the usuals (RCU, ELF, ...) it includes "the kmalloc data structure," IRQs, reference counters, semaphores, and more.

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Financial Institutions To Adopt Linux In Korea (EFY Times)

EFY Times covers the increasing use of Linux by the South Korean government. "The state-owned Korea Post and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NACF) have both said their systems will be up and running for Linux users before the end of this month as a part of the open source software fostering projects of the Ministry of Information and Communication."

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Dear MA, Please Note: EU Commission Threatens MS With $2.4 Million Daily Fines (Groklaw)

Groklaw examines the threat of a lawsuit against Microsoft by the EU, regarding the availability of standards information. "Dear Massachusetts (Governor Romney, Secretary Galvin, Senator Hart, et al):Are you watching this? Microsoft, as you may have heard, has been under pressure in Europe to make their APIs available to its competition for interoperability purposes. Now, so far, that has meant only that they have to do so for non-Linux competitors, as they were able to achieve a carve-out that leaves Linux and all FOSS out in the cold during the appeal. For all their other competitors in the server space, they were ordered to "to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers"."

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David Coursey's Massachusetts FUD (Groklaw)

Groklaw looks at the resignation of Peter Quinn, the man who spearheaded the adoption of Open Document Format in Massachusetts. "[E]verything I am hearing is that Massachusetts is firm in its decision to go with OpenDocument Format. If Microsoft can meet the Commonwealth's definition of openness, ha ha, they can qualify too, but that has always been the case. It was only Microsoft's intransigence that had them out in the cold, their refusal to support ODF, for reasons that make no sense to anyone, that shut them out. Now they're trying a workaround, and we'll see how that works out for them, but the ODF decision is firm."

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Legal fallout from Sony's CD woes (BBC)

Here's a BBC article by Michael Geist on the proposed Sony rootkit settlement. "The disclosure requirements provide a model for treating TPMs [technical protection measures] much like cigarettes and alcohol, with appropriate warnings on their potential negative consequences. The security measures may be the first step toward a comprehensive TPM approval and licensing system that places the security needs of the general public ahead of private commercial interests."

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Inside NetBSD's CGD (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly has published an interview with Roland Dowdeswell. "Security-minded laptop users live in fear of theft, not only of their computer but also of their precious secret data. NetBSD's CGD project is a cryptographic virtual disk that can protect sensitive data while acting like a normal filesystem. Federico Biancuzzi recently interviewed its author, Roland Dowdeswell, on the goals and implementation of the system."

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Interview with kde-redhat Project Leader Rex Dieter (KDE.News)

KDE.News has an interview with Rex Dieter. "Rex Dieter has been making the unofficial KDE Red Hat packages for some years now. Since this is a service depended upon by thousands of Red Hat users to get their required latest build of KDE, KDE Dot News interviewed Rex to find out how he got started, why the need for the project exists and how he makes the packages."

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Q&A with embedded Linux hacker Marty Fouts

David Beers talks with Linux kernel hacker Marty Fouts about PalmOS on Linux and general embedded topics. "DB: What in your view are the areas of the biggest challenges for engineers who are trying to turn Linux into a mobile device platform? MF: The biggest one is as much social as it is technical. Linux, especially in areas like power management that are important to embedded development, is a very quickly moving target." (Thanks to Atul Chitnis)

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Sebastian Trüg (People Behind KDE)

The People Behind KDE has an interview with Sebastian Trüg, author and maintainer of K3b. "What do you think is still badly missing in KDE? I think KOffice should get way more attention and developers. It is promising but far from being a full replacement (Hopefully Qt 4 will fix the font and printing problems)." (Found on KDE.News)

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Creating accessible applications with Eclipse: An introduction (developerWorks)

IBM developerWorks looks at the use of Eclipse and Assistive Technologies (ATs) to create accessible applications. "An accessible solution combines an enabled product and one or more ATs targeted for a user with an impairment. You create an accessible solution by enabling your product for accessibility during product design and development. This is analogous to enabling software for internationalization; that is, you build the infrastructure to facilitate the addition of functions later on. Then, when you deploy an accessible product in a work setting for people with disabilities, you can readily pair it with a complementary AT to create a complete solution. The AT interprets the enabled software and allows users to interface with hardware via a variety of alternative access methods."

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Bandwidth monitoring with iptables (Linux.com)

Linux.com covers bandwidth monitoring using iptables. "Most of the time we use iptables to set up a firewall on a machine, but iptables also provides packet and byte counters. Every time an iptables rule is matched by incoming or outgoing data streams, the software tracks the number of packets and the amount of data that passes through the rules."

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Optical character recognition is an uphill battle for open source (NewsForge)

NewsForge looks at optical character recognition (OCR) software. " If you use Linux, or another free operating system, and need optical character recognition (OCR) software, be prepared for a challenge. OCR is a tricky problem on any computing platform -- both because it is conceptually hard, and because the task does not lend itself to simple, easy-to-use interfaces. OCR is the use of visual pattern matching to extract text from an image -- usually a scanned paper document, but it could be a digital photo, a frame of video, or a screenshot just as easily."

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Embedding Python in Your C Programs (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal has this article on embedding Python code into C programs. "Including the Python interpreter in your program is extremely simple. Python provides a single header file for including all of the definitions you need when embedding the interpreter into your application, aptly named Python.h. This contains a lot of stuff, including several of the standard headers. For compiling efficiency, it might be nice if you could include only those parts of the interface that you actually intend to use, but unfortunately Python doesn't really give you that option. If you take a look at the Python.h file, you'll see that it defines several important macros and includes a number of common headers that are required by the individual components included later in the file."

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My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)

Linux.com covers one sysadmin's favorite tools, including OpenSSH, ps, netstat, lsof, vmstat, iostat, Pine, ping, traceroute and tcpdump. "There are, of course, many more tools that I need. As was mentioned in the original My Sysadmin Toolbox article, vim is a must have. Also dmesg, uptime, netcat, nmap, and even the who and last commands are all deserving of a spot in the toolbox."

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Latest Gaim Beta Arrives (eWeek)

eWeek takes a look at Gaim 2.0beta1. "After several months of delay, the first beta of the popular open-source IM client Gaim is now available. This new beta, Gaim 2.0beta1, now includes support for several IM (instant messaging) protocols, such as the SIP/SIMPLE protocols, Apple Inc.'s Bonjour, the older Zephyr protocol, Novell Inc.'s GroupWise Novell protocol and several more obscure protocols such as the Polish Gadu-Gadu."

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Linux-based Handheld Gaming Device: Gamepark GP2X (RealTechNews)

RealTechNews looks at a new Linux-based game platform that sells for under $200. "The machine comes with dual cpu cores, 64mb ram, 64mb NAND flash memory, SD card compatible slot, USB 2.0 connection, 3.5" TFT LCD screen and TV-out. Also, the devices supports playback of most codecs such as MPEG, MPEG4, DivX 3.11, 4x, 5x, XVID, WMV, MP3, OGG, WMA, JPG, BMP, PCX, GIF and others."

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KDE 4 Set to Make Device Interaction Solid (KDE.News)

KDE.News introduces the Solid project, which aims to make hardware - especially mobile, wireless, and hot-pluggable hardware - "just work" with KDE. It will be part of KDE4. "After a lot of hacking behind the scenes, a new initiative to improve KDE's interaction with network and hardware devices has been launched. Solid will provide a robust basis for the dynamic modern desktop in KDE, which needs to be aware of available hardware and networks, paving the way for innovative functionality." The Solid web site has more information.

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Presentations with Pylize (Linux.com)

Linux.com covers Pylize, a Python-based command-line tool for creating presentations. "In addition to a standard Python installation, Pylize depends on HTMLgen, a Python package used to generate HTML; Empy, one of the templating packages available for Python; and, optionally, the Python Imaging Library. The Python Imaging Library and HTMLgen have been packaged for a number of distributions (for example, there are Ubuntu and Fedora packages available). Empy comes with a standard setup.py which you can use to install the package with the python setup.py install command. To install Pylize itself, run the install.py Python script that comes with the distribution (after you've installed the prerequisites)."

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Great Gadget Smack-Down Round 4 (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices has published part four of its Great Gadget Smack-Down series. "Welcome to Round Four of the ultimate showdown between Linux and Windows in the arena of embedded and device computing! After three heated but inconclusive rounds, our combatants are pulling no punches in their all-out quest to dominate the hottest consumer electronics and industrial computing markets. Our smack-down aims to set aside the marketing hype and pit Linux versus Windows where it really counts -- devices on the street today."

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US Government Grants Site not Linux Friendly

The Grants.gov site, which offers information on applying for US Government grants, promotes the PureEdge Viewer software. Unfortunately, PureEdge only works for users running Windows, or a Windows emulator on an Apple platform. The PureEdge Support for Non-Windows Users document spells out the usage requirements. In this case Non-Windows really means Apple-Only. "Grants.gov recognizes that support to users of Non-Windows operating systems and the PureEdge Viewer is often required across a distinct segment of the grant applicant community. Although at this time, the PureEdge Viewer is only available for Windows based installs, Grants.gov offers support for Non-Windows platforms. Grants.gov is working with PureEdge in the development of a Non-Windows compatible viewer. PureEdge has committed to providing a platform independent viewer by November 2006." (Thanks to Eric Firing.)

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Do LUGs still matter? (NewsForge)

Joe Barr wonders if LUGs still serve a purpose. "There is no question that LUGs -- Linux User Groups -- have been important to the rapid growth and adoption of Linux. In the early years, a typical LUG brought together early adopters from every walk of life who had a missionary zeal for Linux. Today, most members are IT professionals. Given that, I wonder, do LUGs matter any longer?"

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