Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Open, but not as usual (Economist)
The Economist has published a lengthy report on open source business. "The way open-source projects organise themselves is critical to ensuring their quality. Rather than harnessing a magical, bubbling-up of creativity from cyberspace, many open-source projects have established formal, hierarchical governance. 'These are not anarchistic things when you look at successful open-source projects - there is real structure, real checks and balances, and real leadership taking place,' explains Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School." The article overrates SCO, however, and mistakenly claims that copyrights are a bigger problem for free software than patents.
Imagining the Maximum Net (Linux Journal)
Doc Searls compares the Internet to the Interstate Highway System. "Here's a question: should the decision to build the Net to maximum capacity--the broadest we can make broadband--be based on whether or not today's carriers can think of a way to pay back the cost of building it? While we're answering that, let's ask if the Net should be private at all. Are the rivers and seas private? How about the Interstate Highway System?"
The Next Web? (XML.com)
Simon St. Laurent discusses the evolution of the world wide web on O'Reilly's XML.com. "It sometimes seems like widely popular web-standards innovation halted around 2000, and the last few years have been a period of very slow catch-up. Various visions of a new Web, a better Web, have come and gone, leaving behind useful parts but not yet transforming the Web. Are we on the edge of the next big thing? It may make sense to look at the last few big things, comparing their visions with what's happening today."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Eclipse conference offers ALM, rich-client technologies (LinuxWorld.com.au)
LinuxWorld.com.au covers EclipseCon 2006. "EclipseCon is the annual technical conference of the Eclipse Foundation for open source tools. ALM projects being touted include the Compuware-led Corona and ALF (Application Lifecycle Framework), led by Serena Software. ALF addresses the issue of integration and communication between developer tools across the lifecycle; Corona enables Eclipse-based tools to integrate with ALF, according to Eclipse. Also known as the Tools Services Framework, Corona provides frameworks for collaboration among Eclipse clients."
Novell BrainShare 2006: Day one (NewsForge)
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier reports from Novell's BrainShare 2006 conference in Salt Lake City. "What the audience didn't see Monday morning is probably the most interesting presentation of all. Because the keynote ran long, the demo of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 was dropped from the presentation. However, the press had an opportunity to see the presentation after the keynote during the scheduled press briefing. Nat Friedman, Novell's vice president of Linux desktop engineering, and product manager Guy Lunardi walked through SLED's new features -- including new OpenOffice.org support for Visual Basic macros, Beagle search, and Xgl/Compiz enhancements for the desktop. Novell has had videos of Compiz demos online for some time now, but it's not quite as impressive as seeing it in person."
PS3 Conference Report - Date and More! (1up.com)
1up.com looks at the Playstation 3. "[Sony President Ken Kutaragi] did offer some tantalizing new details about the system, though. PS3 will include a 60GB hard drive (which is upgradeable) with Linux preinstalled. According to Kutaragi, developers should create games for the PS3 with assumption the hard drive will be present in the system (his slide was titled "HDD is required!"). He also revealed that the system will be backwards compatible with the entire PS1 and PS2 libraries, and that games will be displayed in high-definition resolutions when played on the PS3 (similar to what the Xbox 360 does with compatible Xbox 1 titles)."
Companies
Mandrake founder Gael Duval to sue Mandriva over firing (NewsForge)
NewsForge had an "exclusive IRC chat" with Gaël Duval about the changes at Mandriva. Mr. Duval stated that he intends to file suit against Mandriva in response to his being laid off. "Duval said that last year Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon asked him to leave the company. Instead, Duval agreed to move from his long-time position as vice president of communication to head a new 'community department' intended 'to improve Mandriva's image in the open source arena.' Now the company has terminated that effort."
Fired, simply fired.
Gaël Duval talks about leaving Mandriva and some plans for the future. "I've been working for one year during lost hours on a new project of Open-Source operating system called "Ulteo" (the concept has been proposed to Mandriva at the end of 2004, but not "selected"). I hope that I can launch a first version of the product in the next weeks. If this concept can prove itself to be valid, it could imply an important change in how people are using Linux in particular and operating-systems in general. Check contents and subscribe at http://www.ulteo.com if you want to learn more in the future." (Thanks to Alex Fernandez)
Linux Adoption
Free software in developing countries vital to future prosperity and good governance (eGov monitor)
The eGov Monitor has published this report from the United Nations University, looking at the role of free software in developing countries. "The growth of free, open-source software presents developing countries with an opportunity to escape from technological dependence on developed countries, but also a challenge to build up local expertise, United Nations University experts say."
Legal
Creative Commons License Upheld by Dutch Court (Groklaw)
Groklaw reports that a court in the Netherlands has upheld the Creative Commons license. "Sander Marechal, who found and translated the News Picks story about the court decision upholding the Creative Commons license in the Netherlands, now sends us the news in English and in much greater detail, from a blog entry "Dutch Court upholds Creative Commons license," on the Creative Commons Canada website. I think you'll find it interesting because it includes a translation of a chunk of the ruling, and since Creative Commons Canada provides the information under the Creative Commons 2.5 Canada license, I can provide it to you in full. The significant piece is this: the Creative Commons licenses are quite new, so there has been very little in the way of case law so far, so this is a significant development, as you will see."
Interviews
Free software's white knight (ZDNet)
ZDNet UK talks with Eben Moglen, legal counsel for the Free Software Foundation. "While working at Columbia, he tackled his first major legal case relating to software freedom. Moglen explains that while "trawling a bulletin board" in the early 1990s he came across Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the e-mail encryption program written by Phil Zimmerman. Moglen was impressed with the software, but realized that Zimmerman was exposing himself to potential legal issues, as U.S. legislation restricted the export of cryptographic software. "I wrote an e-mail message to him (Zimmerman) saying, 'Congratulations, you're going to change the world, but you're also going to get into a ... load of trouble. When you do, call me,'" Moglen said. "I was just two weeks ahead of the police.""
Novell's Messman Aims To Fuel Linux (CRN)
Computer Reseller News interviews Novell CEO Jack Messman. "[Red Hat] had a six- to eight-year head start, and they've got the brand name and attacked a piece of the market that was ready for Linux: edge servers and small-business customers. But the Linux market is moving toward us in the enterprise, where we have strengths. It's a leapfrog strategy. We'll leapfrog Red Hat in the data center and consolidate backward. Red Hat is not the ultimate enemy, competitively. It's Microsoft."
Resources
Lessons on Data Preservation From the Audio Industry (Groklaw)
The Sound Man looks at audio formats and standards, on Groklaw. "In my world standards have allowed professionals to be creative using the the tools they choose, to share material, and to pass work from person to person without much fuss. Manufacturers have worked together to allow this. The audio community has demanded it. No one wants to be incompatible in our industry. Investments in existing equipment can run into millions of dollars. Who would dare use a non standard format? Such a machine would be of no use in our studio. It would not work with the equipment we already have."
Encrypt filesystems with EncFS and Loop-AES (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at encrypted filesystems. "Encrypted filesystems may be overkill for family photos or your résumé, but they make sense for network-accessible servers that hold sensitive business documents, databases that contain credit-card information, offline backups, and laptops. EncFS and Loop-AES, which are both released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), are two approaches to encrypting Linux filesystems. I'll compare the two and then look at other alternatives."
KMFL lets users change keyboards on the fly (Linux.com)
Linux.com covers KMFL (Keyboard Mapping for Linux). "KMFL is a joint project of SIL International and Tavultesoft. SIL is an international Christian organization devoted to the study and preservation of minority languages. SIL's recent free software releases include high-quality Unicode fonts such as Gentium and Charis, and Sil's new Open Font License has received Free Software Foundation approval. Tavultesoft, a small software company in Hobart, Australia, is best-known for Keyman and Keyman Developer, two long-established Windows programs that provide the same functionality as KMFL, but under proprietary licenses."
Resynthesizer changes your pictures (NewsForge)
NewsForge looks at the Resynthesizer plugin for the GIMP. "It is alarmingly simple to use. Draw a selection around the object you wish to remove from the picture, and run smart remove selection. Resynthesizer will fill the selection area with intelligently generated texture drawn from the surrounding image data."
My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)
Mikhail Zotov has a list of tools for non-professional system administrators who manage Linux machines in a home or small-office network. "Finally, a few words on recovery tools are in order. Anyone administering a Linux machine has probably faced a situation when it was necessary to boot from media other than the hard drive. Perhaps you installed Linux on your colleague's machine but forgot the root password after a few days, or you installed a new kernel but didn't run lilo before rebooting the machine, or severe problems with the root partition were detected during boot."
Reviews
Cultured Perl: Perl books, Part 1 (developerWorks)
IBM developerWorks reviews two Perl books, Higher-Order Perl: Transforming Programs with Programs and Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom. "Both Higher-Order Perl: Transforming Programs with Programs (shortened to HOP in this article), by Mark Jason Dominus and Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom (shortened to RSPW in this article), by Randal Schwartz have some things in common. Obviously, they are both about Perl, and their authors are well known in the Perl community. In addition, both books are collections of interesting techniques for Perl rather than discussions of a single software package."
Review: GNOME 2.14 (Linux.com)
Linux.com reviews GNOME 2.14. "Some of the interface changes in the new version, such as the addition of icons to dialog windows, are the equivalent of the gingerbread on the gables of Victorian houses -- decorations that do nothing for functionality. Others, such as the renaming or repositioning of menu items, increase the consistency of the interface, but will probably be unnoticed by most users, except as a mild irritation because something's different. Aside from these changes, GNOME 2.14 offers a solid core of improvements in usability, with an increased simplicity in general design, a help system that is finally more than minimally useful, and an acceleration of some key elements of the desktop."
LilyPond Helper Applications: Development Status (Linux Journal)
Dave Phillips looks at several LilyPond GUIs on Linux Journal. "Last month I presented a brief update about the LilyPond music typesetting software. This month I look at three graphic front-ends that can make LilyPond easier to use for beginners and for users who simply prefer the more familiar interface of standard music notation. Denemo, NoteEdit and Rosegarden all provide GUIs that imitate conventional Western music staff paper. Each program also provides palettes or menus for note and rest types, expression marks, instrumental articulations and other standard music notation symbols. In these programs the interface is designed to resemble the tools and elements of standard Western music notation."
Smart Unicode typefaces released under free license (NewsForge)
NewsForge looks at some new open-source fonts. "SIL International, a non-government organization specializing in linguistics, has released two new typefaces under a free license. The fonts, Charis SIL and Doulos SIL, are early examples of what SIL intends as a new standard for typefaces. Each font includes a broad range of Unicode-based characters and symbols, and is designed for use with so-called smart font technologies. Charis SIL and Doulos SIL are basic typefaces -- proofs of concept, you might say. Charis SIL is based on Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed for laser printers. The resemblance is so close that Charis SIL includes Charter's license in the copyright notice. It is available in four weights: roman, bold, italic, and bold italic. Similarly, Doulos SIL is designed for compatibility with Times Roman, one of the most widely used serif typefaces. Only a roman weight is included."
YaKuake - An easy access console for KDE (NewsForge)
NewsForge takes a look at YaKuake. "YaKuake is a pretty simple tool. The first time you run YaKuake during a KDE session, it pops up a small dialog saying "Application Successfully started! Press Alt+` to use it..." and then it disappears into the background. If you use Konsole, YaKuake can take its settings -- background, font, schema, history, line spacing, transparency, and so forth -- from Konsole, or not, as you prefer. Like Konsole, YaKuake features tabs, so it's possible to have multiple consoles running in a single instance of YaKuake."
Miscellaneous
FOSS community, disabled users must learn to communicate (NewsForge)
NewsForge reports that the FOSS community and disabled users have a serious communication problem. "An example of the need for better communication between the FOSS community and disability advocates emerged last year, when government officials in Massachusetts announced their intention to transition to the use of OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument). FOSS supporters celebrated the announcement, noting that the switch would reduce public expenditures, guarantee perpetual access to data, and end discrimination. FOSS supporters, however, were unprepared for criticism from organizations that fight discrimination against the disabled, such as the Disability Policy Consortium (DPC) and the Bay State Council for the Blind (BSCB)."
Has Linux patching surpassed Mac and Windows? (ZDNet)
ZDNet's George Ou looks at the advantages of the automatic Linux patch updating systems. "Recent vulnerabilities in Adobe Macromedia Flash and Mozilla Firefox that can affect multiple operating systems highlight a weakness in the Mac and Windows auto-update process because they're primarily focused on patching Apple and Microsoft specific issues. Most modern Linux distributions on the other hand like Redhat and SuSE have automatic update mechanisms that patch across the entire spectrum of software since Linux by its very nature is made up of a collection of applications from different sources."
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