Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
OIN Gets More Patents to Protect Linux Environment (Groklaw)
Groklaw reports that the Open Invention Network has bought some new patents, with the express purpose of protecting Linux. "Anyone can license them royalty-free, so long as they agree not to assert patents against "the Linux environment." These three are added to the 39 valuable web services patents that OIN got from Commerce One last December, and there are two more patents announced that have issued from that purchase."
Oregon lab plays Web host to the stars of open source (NewsForge)
NewsForge looks at the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University in Corvallis. ""Gentoo wouldn't be where it is today without the support of the OSL," says Gentoo Linux Board Member and Infrastructure Lead Kurt Lieber. "They've been a long-time supporter of ours, offering free hosting, bandwidth, use of hardware, etc. They've also established a very robust, scalable mirror infrastructure with ~1Gbps of capacity. We rarely have download issues now when we release new versions of Gentoo." Lieber says OSL services have been exemplary, "and in fact, it's better than what I would expect from commercial vendors in a lot of respects."
Trade Shows and Conferences
DebConf6: Hot, spicy, and working hard to satisfy Debian users (NewsForge)
NewsForge reports on DebConf6. "In many ways, Debian is more of a social movement than a free software distribution. One of the greatest tenets of this movement is that quality control is more important than release schedules, feature requests, and even usability. If a free software package is accepted as one of the 15,000+ currently supported as part of the main Debian distribution, it is a virtual guarantee that it is stable, does what it is supposed to do, and interacts correctly with other Debian-endorsed software packages. A free software developer -- individual or corporate -- whose work becomes part of Debian can rightfully point to that inclusion with pride."
Battling DRM outside Seattle WinHEC conference (NewsForge)
NewsForge has a report and pictures from the anti-DRM protest at WinHEC. "As chilly Seattle rain drifted down, the 'DRM Elimination Crew' marched back and forth in their suits, handing out brochures like 'Microsoft Vista - DRM'd and Defective By Design,' 'DRM IS Digital Restrictions Management,' and 'Restricting you the User,' to curious passers-by."
Companies
Small step for NASA, giant leap for Linux (Salt Lake Tribune)
The Salt Lake Tribune covers Linux Networx. "Over the past month, [Linux Networx] has contracted with NASA and now ATK Launch Systems for customized editions of some of its most advanced creations. Terms, including expected installation dates and costs, were not disclosed. But the deals likely run into the millions of dollars."
Sun Inches Toward Eclipse (eWeek)
eWeek reports on Sun's moves toward supporting the Eclipse development platform. "Sun Microsystems and the Eclipse Foundation are actively working together after years of competition and grudging respect for each other's efforts. In an interview May 17 at the JavaOne conference here, Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, said Eclipse has recognized its first committer to an Eclipse project from Sun. "As of today we have our first committer from Sun," Milinkovich said. "They have committed code for the Eclipse platform for enabling SWT [Standard Widget Toolkit] for the Solaris x86/Motif.""
Can Ubuntu jump from community to commercial? (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch takes a look at how Canonical makes money with Ubuntu. "Specially, Shuttleworth has said, in his Ubuntu wiki, that Canonical "will never introduce a 'commercial' version of Ubuntu. There will never be a difference between the 'commercial' product and the 'free' product, as there is with Red Hat (RHEL and Fedora). Ubuntu releases will always be free." However, "There are proprietary apps that are certified for Ubuntu. Some Ubuntu-derivatives, like Impi (a South-African customized business Linux distribution) are targeted toward vertical markets that demand specific software, currently proprietary, which they bundle.""
Linux Adoption
Wireless NAS gadget dumps Windows for Linux (LinuxDevices)
LinuxDevices looks at Iomega's switch to Linux on one of its NAS devices. "Iomega has switched its wireless network attached storage (NAS) system from Windows Storage Server 2003 to Linux, and dropped the price from $1,300 to $900. It has also reduced RAM from 256MB to 64MB, and added wireless access point capabilities and automated USB camera downloads, reports ExtremeTech in an in-depth review of the "StorCenter 1TB.""
Linux at Work
$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
ZDNet looks at the latest OLPC prototype. "Other details about progress on the systems appeared on the OLPC site over the weekend. For instance, a team from Linux vendor Red Hat has trimmed the software distribution from 400MB to about 250MB, uncompressed. 'There is still low-hanging fruit left to pull out of the image, including bitmap fonts we don't use (7MB), the X font server (1MB) and Perl (30MB),' the site says."
Legal
Cranky customer forces Amazon patent review (NewsForge)
New Zealander Peter Calveley is challenging Amazon.com's one-click shopping patent, according to NewsForge. "Calveley got irritated with Amazon last year when, he claims, the company took too long to ship a book he ordered and paid for. "They insisted that they sent it via UPS but there was no tracking number," he writes in a blog entry. "UPS, when I called them, insisted that there had to be a tracking number!" A few weeks later he received the book, but felt that the slow delivery merited revenge in the form of "utu," an ancient part of Maori Law, which says that exacting payment from others for wrongdoing is an obligation."
Interviews
People Behind KDE: José Nuno Coelho Sanarra Pires (KDE.News)
KDE.News introduces this People Behind KDE interview with José Nuno Coelho Sanarra Pires. "When did you first hear of KDE? I first heard of KDE about 1997, when I was at the University. At that time, I was getting tired of using the simpler window managers on Linux (fvwm, twm, and so on) and I started looking for some desktop environment which could at least be a little bit similar to Windows. When I started to investigate something about it, I saw the Trolltech's page for Qt and then I saw some info about a project which was getting born at that time, KDE. When I saw the screenshot, I said: "That's it; this is something that deserves to be seen". I guess it was the 1.0beta3 at that time."
OpenSync - Synching on the Free Desktop (KDE.News)
KDE.News interviews the developers from OpenSync and KDE PIM. "As you are now getting close to version 1.0 of OpenSync, which is expected to become the new synchronisation framework for KDE and other free desktops, we are quite interested in the merits it can provide for KDE users and for developers, as well as for the Open Source Community as a whole."
Two Ruby developer interviews (O'Reilly)
O'Reilly is running two interviews involving the Ruby language. The first interview is entitled Zed on Ruby, Rails, Mongrel, and More and the second is an Interview with Luis Lavena.
Resources
Fresh From the Linux Kill (ServerWatch)
Carla Schroder discusses the killing of processes in a ServerWatch article. "Man page authors tend to wobble between addressing end users and ace programmers. That's why you see statements like "the do list is executed as long as the last command in list returns a non-zero exit status." Which is as helpful as saying "send the process a SIGHUP". But not to worry, for today we shall peel off the mask of mystery that covers these deep dark subjects."
Mirror Your Web Site With rsync (HowtoForge)
HowtoForge mirrors a website with rsync. "This tutorial shows how you can mirror your web site from your main web server to a backup server that can take over if the main server fails. We use the tool rsync for this, and we make it run through a cron job that checks every x minutes if there is something to update on the mirror. Thus your backup server should usually be up to date if it has to take over."
Hide and Go Seek with Writer Content (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal covers ways to hide information inside an OpenOffice.org document. "Why would you want to hide content in an OpenOffice.org Writer document? The most common reason is to maintain two similar versions of a document within the same file. For instance, if you are a teacher preparing an exam, you might want to use the same file to print a version of the exam to distribute to students, and another one, complete with answers, to give to markers. If necessary, you can view the complete document on the screen, but when printing or sharing files, you can hide or reveal content depending on what you want each audience to see. By using Writer's hide functions, you no longer need to worry about multiple versions of a document remaining in sync."
Reviews
CLI Magic: Viewing pictures on the console with fbida (Linux.com)
Linux.com views pictures on the console with fbida. "Fbida (previously known as fbi) is an image viewer for the Linux console. Some people -- console veterans included -- might find the idea of viewing pictures on the console a little bit silly; why not just use X Windows and a graphical viewer or even a photo editor? The answer to that question varies from "running X on my server is not an option, but I'd like to be able to view some pictures while I'm waiting for the compilation of a new kernel to finish" to "because I can." Pick your excuse and read on to find out more about fbida."
Miscellaneous
The Curious Incident of Sun in the Night-Time (Groklaw)
Groklaw has Richard Stallman's article about the change in Java licensing. "Why did this non-incident generate a large and confused reaction? Perhaps because people do not read these announcements carefully. Ever since the term 'open source' was coined, we have seen companies find ways to use it and their product name in the same sentence. (They don't seem to do this with 'free software', though they could if they wanted to.) The careless reader may note the two terms in proximity and falsely assume that one talks about the other."
New program will train FOSS trainers in India (NewsForge)
NewsForge reports that the Computer Society of India (CSI) is organizing a FOSS training program for the faculty of various IT schools in India. "Initially the program, which is being conducted along with the Center of International Cooperation for Computerization (CICC), Singapore and CDAC Chennai, is focusing on the southern region of the country. But according to CSI's H.R. Mohan, similar seminars are being planned for other regions of India."
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