Linux in the news

A Question of Choice (Linux Journal)

Glyn Moody takes a look at the Initiative for Software Choice. "So let's look a little closer at this Initiative for Software Choice. It certainly has an impressive list of members - hundreds of them. They mostly seem to be small companies, and nothing wrong with that. But wait, there are couple of bigger fish among the minnows: EDS is there, and a certain outfit called Microsoft."

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FSF should separate GPLv3 changes (Linux.com)

Bruce Byfield thinks that GPLv3 changes should be looked at separately, not as one huge change. "The trouble with GPLv3 is that it contains the accumulation of 15 years' worth of changes. Some of these changes, such as improvements in the clarity of the language or attempts to make the license more acceptable in a variety of international jurisdictions or to cover BitTorrent downloads, might be accepted with hardly a dissenting comment, if they could be agreed upon separately. Even those who prefer the GPLv2 would probably admit that such changes are necessary improvements that make the license easier to understand and use."

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ApacheCon 2006: The state of the feather and more (Linux.com)

Linux.com covers The ApacheCon US event. "ApacheCon US 2006 kicked off its general session this morning in Austin, Texas, following two days of tutorials. Apache Software Foundation (ASF) president Sander Striker opened the proceedings with his "State of the Feather" address. Cliff Stoll, the hacker-catching, planetary astronomer, author, and volunteer 7th grade science teacher, followed Striker with a keynote address which included a demonstration of how he taught a 7th grade science class to measure the speed of light."

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ApacheCon 2006 wrapup (Linux.com)

Linux.com has a report from ApacheCon. "ApacheCon 2006 ended its week-long run in Austin, Texas, on Friday. The event proved that Linux is not the only brightly shining star in the world of free and open source software. Most of the sessions on all three days of ApacheCon were technically oriented. Not being a server guy, I stayed away from those and sat in on business or licensing-related talks."

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How the EV1 Deal Went Down (Groklaw)

Groklaw has a worthwhile bit of SCO history in the form of a declaration from Robert Marsh, the guy who bought a big SCOsource license for EV1Servers.net in 2004. "Mr. Langer or others representing SCO told me that a lawsuit against EV1 or our customers could result in a temporary restraining order or an injunction mandating an immediate shut-down of EV1Server.net's Linux servers. I take great pride in the consistency and reliability of our hosting infrastructure, qualities for which EV1Servers.net are well-known in the industry. A shut-down, or even the possibility of one, would have been severely damaging to our hosting business. I felt pressure and urgency to avoid that outcome."

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Why iXsystems bought PC-BSD (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers the acquisition of PC-BSD by iXsystems. "PC-BSD is a desktop-oriented distribution that masks the stability of the FreeBSD kernel behind an easy-to-use package. Its graphical system installer and point-and-click PBI package management system have been drawing in users who've never tried a BSD-based operating system before. This week the project was acquired by iXsystems, a high-end enterprise hardware solution provider. While the community is expressing skepticism of the move, the developers of PC-BSD and iXsystems both say that this partnership can only take the distribution forward."

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Oracle Isn't a Linux Company (Motley Fool)

The Motley Fool is not impressed with the rumors that Oracle might launch its own Linux distribution. "[Larry] Ellison has long been known for veiled threats, and I think that's what we have here. Why? Threats don't cost much and Oracle has a lot to lose -- 80% of the Linux database market at last count. That means his company has to work with Ubuntu whether it wants to or not. If, in doing so, Larry wants to make Red Hat or SuSE a little nervous, great."

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My first 10 years with Linux (Linux.com)

Joe Barr looks back at a decade of using Linux. "I have now officially entered my second decade using Linux and free/open source software in a meaningful way. I began dabbling with Linux as early as 1995, but in June of 1996, I began using it for real when I created my first Web site. Today, my Linux desktop takes care of all my personal computing needs, both at work and at play. Here's one man's story of how he and Linux matured together."

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Jaroslaw Staniek (People Behind KDE)

The People Behind KDE have an interview with Jaroslaw Staniek. "I am the person behind the "Qt-KDE Wrapper" project (started in 2003), currently known as KDElibs/win32, and Kexi project's maintainer (a database environment competing with MS Access) since 2004, now part of the KOffice suite. As logical and technological integration between KOffice applications improves, there are increasingly more bits shared between Kexi and KOffice, so there are things I develop for KOffice as well. The KoProperty library, is one of them, as well as the KexiDB high-level database connectivity library (one of the main Kexi selling points.)" (Found on KDE.News)

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boris zbarsky answers your questions (Asa's weblog)

Asa Dotzler has an interview with Mozilla developer Boris Zbarsky, with questions suggested by readers of Asa's weblog. "crf asks "What are some of the suckiest things about the mozilla project? How do you think those things could be improved?" Hmmm... I think one of the suckiest things is the undocumented ugly legacy codebase we're dealing with. We're sort of working on improving that." (Found on MozillaZine)

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Interview with Matt Zimmerman (Behind Ubuntu)

Behind Ubuntu inteviews Matt Zimmerman, chair of the Ubuntu Technical Board. "Q: What are you working on for Edgy? A: I hope to implement a couple of new features, including the Common Customizations specification, which simplifies the process of making the most common post-installation customizations, and Easy Codec Installation, which guides the user through finding and installing multimedia codecs to view content."

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Developing High Performance Asynchronous IO Applications (O'ReillyNet)

O'ReillyNet looks at asynchronous IO and spam. "Why do spammers send billions of email messages advertising ridiculous products that most of us would never in our lives consider buying? How can someone possibly make money from this endeavor when the vast majority of spam either gets filtered out or at the very best read and discarded by a disgruntled end user? What makes spamming profitable is huge volume."

Comments (2 posted)

Become a better blogger with UNIX (IBM developerWorks)

Michael Stutz presents some tips on using UNIX tools for writing blogs. "UNIX and weblogs, or blogs, have a lot in common. Besides being the native environment of most Web servers and the preferred environment for many Web developers, UNIX can be an ideal environment to blog with because of its Web and text-processing power. Take advantage of the command-line tools and features inherent to UNIX to make you a better blogger. Here are a few tips to help you do just that."

Comments (14 posted)

CLI Magic: Use cURL to measure Web site statistics (Linux.com)

Linux.com looks at cURL. "cURL is a handy command-line network tool whose name stands for "client for URLs," but think of it as a "copy for URLs" -- it can copy to or from a given URL in any of nine different protocols. Although cURL is sometimes misconceived as an updated wget, that's wrong. The two utilities do share some features and options, but are distinctly different tools; wget is for downloading files from the Web, and is best used to mirror entire sites or parts of sites -- which is something that cURL alone can't do."

Comments (2 posted)

Django Djumpstart: Build a To-do List in 30 Minutes (sitepoint)

James Bennett has written a jumpstart article on Django, a Python-based a rapid web development framework. "Say hello to Django. In this article, I'll be walking through the process of creating a simple application -- a to-do list -- with Django; this tutorial will only cover a small portion of what Django can do for you, but it'll be a good start and (hopefully) enough to whet your appetite for more."

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The GIMP's next-generation imaging core demonstrated (Linux.com)

Linux.com covers a public demonstration of the Generic Graphical Library (GEGL). "GEGL was first proposed in 1999, but the GIMP's existing code base has remained in place over several revision cycles since then. As recently as summer 2005, GEGL appeared for all practical purposes dead in the water. Then Kolas took a determined interest in resurrecting the project, and over the next few months he, Sven Neumann, and Michael Natterer studied the code base and got it into working shape again. Kolas presented their work at the 2006 Libre Graphics Meeting in March."

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Crossing borders: What's the secret sauce in Ruby on Rails? (developerWorks)

IBM developerWorks looks at Ruby on Rails from a Java perspective. "Ruby on Rails seems to be a lightning rod for controversy. At the heart of most of the controversy lies amazing productivity claims. Crossing Borders author Bruce Tate has come to understand that Rails isn't a better hammer; it's a different kind of tool. This article explores the compromises and design decisions that went into making Rails so productive within its niche. Then it looks at Rails-inspired ideas that should get more attention within the Java community."

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At The Sounding Edge (Linux Journal)

Dave Phillips looks at Ardour, Common Music and Csound5. "Ardour is much in the news these days. A new version of Ardour2 (beta 5.1) is now available, chock full of feature improvements and bug fixes. Experimental support for MIDI is included, thanks to Dave Robillard and the Google Summer Of Code project. Potential users should note that this release is still a beta version, and the developers need your feedback, so download it today and be sure to report your experiences to the Ardour mail-list. See the program's Web site for download and installation details."

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Linux gaming/PMP handheld gets more hackable (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices looks at the latest new hardware from Gamepark Holdings. "Gamepark Holdings is shipping a breakout board for its GP2X, a sub-$200 Linux-based handheld gaming platform and portable media player (PMP). The "Breakout Board" adds standard PC I/O, helping hobbyists build GP2X-based home DivX systems, MAME cabinets, MP3/OGG sound systems, or classic computer set-ups, the company suggests. The "Breakout Board" adds an RS-232 serial port and a JTAG port, which can be used for debugging and reflashing GP2X units."

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Review: Slackware goes to 11 (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews Slackware 11. "I did notice that Slackware includes a little more multimedia support than other distros right out of the box. Most distros these days shy away from shipping MP3 support, or support for QuickTime movies, but Slackware includes both. Slack not only allows MP3 playback, but includes LAME for MP3 encoding as well."

Comments (3 posted)

Opening doors to open source for women (IT Manager's Journal)

IT Manager's Journal has some tips for women who want to get involved in open source software. "Pia Waugh, president of Software Freedom International, says finding a way to get involved in the community is the first step, and there are several avenues available. "I think some of the women initiatives, such as Debian Women, GNOME Women, Fedora Women, and Ubuntu Women, are great ways to start getting involved. [Women] can find great mentors there, information, and it gives them a launch pad into the wide world of FOSS. These organisations don't segment our community, they give yet another road in, and the more roads we give people to getting involved, the more people will follow them."

Comments (1 posted)