Linux in the news

Microsoft's document gambit moves ahead (ZDNet)

ZDNet follows the battle around the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Office Open XML document formats. "Jeff Kaplan, the founder and director of Open ePolicy Group, which advocates for the use of "open technologies" in government, said that governments are seizing upon Microsoft alternatives out of self-interest. "Governments are leading to move to ODF because they want control over data and to break their data lock-in. They see it as a matter of sovereignty, and they are uncomfortable with continued dependency on one company," Kaplan said. He added that the expected Ecma standard certification of Office Open XML will increase confusion in the marketplace."

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Novell's 'Danaergeschenk', by Georg Greve (Groklaw)

Groklaw has an article by Georg Greve of the Free Software Foundation Europe on OpenXML adoption. "German is an interesting language, and many of its words have made it into English. Novell's recent deal with Microsoft is begging to add another one: Danaergeschenk. The term translates to "Gift by the Danaer" and has the same roots as "Greeks bearing gifts," which goes back to the siege of Troy. Novell's Danaergeschenk to the world is the recent announcement to implement OpenXML support in OpenOffice.org."

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Seymour Papert badly injured

Seymour Papert, a long-time AI researcher and one of the inspirations behind the One Laptop Per Child program, has been hit by a motorcycle and badly injured in Vietnam. This Boston.com story has some more information. Best wishes.

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What's up next in Linux desktop standardization? (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux.com covers the Desktop Architects Meeting. "Over the past week, some of the Linux desktop's foremost developers gathered together in Portland, Oregon at the OSDL (Open Source Development Labs) Desktop Architects Meeting to work further on bringing order to the Linux desktop. According to John Cherry, the OSDL's Desktop Linux initiative manager, there was a good turnout of about 45 developers from the community, including major Linux vendors such as Novell and Red Hat, and ISVs (independent software vendors) like Google and Adobe."

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Cory Doctorow keynotes LISA '06 (Linux.com)

Linux.com reports from the 20th Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference. "The 20th Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference continued Wednesday with the LISA award ceremony, a keynote by none other than Cory Doctorow, noted sci-fi author, former Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) employee, and consumer privacy advocate, and a slew of technical sessions. Of specific interest to systems administrators (the audience LISA seeks to attract) was that Tobias Oetiker and Dave Rand won the SAGE Outstanding Achievement award for their work on MRTG and RRDTool."

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Microsoft Office lock-in and the deal with Novell (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal's Nicholas Petreley discusses vendor lock-in and Microsoft Vista. "I can't urge you strongly enough to read the article entitled How Vista Lets Microsoft Lock Users In. It details how Microsoft has built into Vista the "trusted computing" ability to lock down Office files via DRM such that no unauthorized document reader will be able to decrypt and read them. This is perhaps one of the biggest hidden weapons Microsoft has in its arsenal that could sabotage Linux and OpenOffice.org if Microsoft succeeds in its attempt to plug SUSE and all Novell's "interoperability" bonuses. Think of this, if you will, as the Tivoization of Office files, only with malicious intent."

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Microsoft desperately wants my love -- and yours (Linux.com)

Robin 'Roblimo' Miller has a humorous account of a recent trip to the Microsoft corporate headquarters. "I spent December seventh, eighth, and ninth in Seattle as Microsoft's guest. Microsoft flew me there from Florida at its expense, put me up in a nice hotel, provided decent food, and comped me and four other invitees to this "special conference" with presentations about the marvels of Vista and other recent or upcoming Microsoft products. They didn't quite play the old Beatles song "Love Me Do" in the background, but it was the event's unstated theme. And, as a free bonus, Microsoft gave me a free Zune to pass on to a developer who wants to put Linux on it or make a utility that will allow it to interact with a PC running Linux."

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Open Source Code behind PoloMercantil

Roberto Sedycias, IT Consultant for PoloMercantil has written an article on the use of open source software for the electronic auction site www.polomercantil.com.br. "As we started the project of the electronic auction www.polomercantil.com.br, we knew that the proprietary software costs would be too high for our financial resources. Our only option then was to make use of Open Source Code softwares."

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Open Invention Network's Jerry Rosenthal Answers Your Questions (Groklaw)

Groklaw interviews Jerry Rosenthal of the Open Invention Network. "What would an OIN defense look like? Typically, our first action would be to contact the organization that is claiming patent infringement. Our goal would be to have a conversation where we allow them to license our IP in return for a license to their patents. If necessary, we might demonstrate how their products might infringe on our patents. Legal proceedings for patent infringement would be our last resort. While we can adequately handle the latter, our goal is to build the Linux ecosystem with the former."

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Interview with Fred Trotter: the Medsphere saga (Free Software Magazine)

Free Software Magazine interviews Fred Trotter, editor of LinuxMedNews. "Recently Medsphere, supposedly an "Open Source" Medical Software Company, has sued its founders Scott and Steve Shreeve. Why? Medsphere claims that the Shreeves illegally released Medsphere software to Sourceforge. An "Open Source" Software company is suing its founders for releasing code under a free license... that's a bit like Ford suing its employees for making cars. Recently Fred Trotter has come forward with evidence that he claims makes the Medsphere lawsuit baseless. Read on for an email interview with Fred Trotter regarding who did what in the Medsphere lawsuit, and why every free software developer should care about what is happening to the Shreeves."

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For open source networking, no open source guru required, Vyatta execs say (NetworkWorld)

NetworkWorld talks with Vyatta execs about the Open Flexible Router. "Open source router company Vyatta debuted earlier this year with a Red Hat-style alternative to Cisco and Juniper offerings: the Open Flexible Router, an open source-based WAN router and firewall stack, freely downloadable, with service and support offerings available for purchase. Since then the company has generated buzz in the network industry, while releasing products such as a pre-installed appliance-like version on Dell servers. Vyatta CEO Kelly Herrell and chief strategy officer Dave Roberts recently told Network World Senior Editor Phil Hochmuth what Vyatta is, and is not, and what it hopes to become. (The following is an edited transcript.)" (Thanks to Peter Link)

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Directory services made easy with Fedora Directory Server (Linux.com)

Paul Virijevich introduces FDS in a Linux.com article. "Directory services play a vital part in today's networks by helping administrators manage network users and resources. Until recently, the only choice for deploying a secure and easy-to-use open source directory server was OpenLDAP. While it gets the job done, it lacks the polish of commercial alternatives. Now Fedora Directory Server (FDS), Red Hat's open source LDAP server, makes setting up an enterprise directory server on Linux simple."

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Linux radio suite powers independent broadcasters (Tectonic)

Tectonic (South Africa) takes a look at the Campcaster suite for radio station automation. "'Campcaster provides features that used to be only available in extremely expensive commercial radio systems,' says Sava Tatić, Managing Director of the Media Development Loan Fund's Center for Advanced Media, Prague (CAMP), which coordinates the Campware Initiative. 'We believe there is a strong north-south aspect to using and extending Campcaster,' Tatić says. 'Every time a station in North America or Europe adapts and extends Campcaster, stations in places like Sierra Leone benefit.'".

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DHS gears up for research phase of open source bug hunt (Linux.com)

Linux.com looks at a security project that has used the Coverity bug checker to perform security audits on open source software. "It's been nearly a year since the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the "vulnerability discovery and remediation open source hardening project," a $1.24 million, three-year grant through its research and development arm, the Directorate for Science and Technology. Now, the security project is entering its research phase."

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LinuxBIOS ready to go mainstream (Linux.com)

Bruce Byfield follows the progress of the LinuxBIOS project. "Throughout the project's history, support from chip manufacturers and OEMs has been mixed. When the project started, Minnich remembers, information from Intel was readily available. Now, information about Intel chips is closely guarded, and the company prefers to promote its mixed source Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) as the next generation of chip technology. By contrast, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was slow to support LinuxBIOS, but is now a major contributor to the project. Among OEMs, supporters include Acer, Advancetech, SIS, Momentum Computer, and Newisys. The project also works closely with OpenBIOS, a project with similar aims. Currently, Richard Smith, BIOS release manager for OLPC, says, "There are about 30 chipsets in the [repository] tree with various degrees of completion. The AMD boards are supported particularly well.""

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Mozilla commits to collaborating with Linux distros (Linux.com)

Linux.com reports that the Mozilla Foundation has agreed to make changes to its development and distribution processes that will accommodate the needs of Linux distributors. "The sheer number of changes made independently by the distros made merging patches upstream difficult, if not impossible, and led to secondary problems like debates over usage of the Mozilla trademark. Furthermore, the current Mozilla policy is to accept only security fixes for stable code branches. Since many distros must continue to support older Firefox releases shipping with their own long-term-support releases, even patches that provide major stability fixes would not propagate upstream."

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