Linux in the news

Mozilla ponders policy change after Firefox extension battle (ars technica)

A dispute between the NoScript and AdBlock Plus Firefox extensions has Mozilla thinking about changing its policies, as ars technica reports. "Maone funds the development of NoScript by placing advertisements on the extension's official website and by receiving donations from end-users. In order to prevent AdBlock Plus from undermining the financial sustainability of his project, Maone modified the NoScript website and circumvented the block. Palant responded by instructing the AdBlock Plus filter list maintainer—an individual known as Ares2—to add a filter that would specifically block ads on Maone's domain. Maone found new ways to work around the filters, but Ares2 consistently retaliated by adding increasingly draconian rules to the filter list."

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U.S. Trustee Moves to Convert SCO Bankruptcy to Chapter 7 (Groklaw)

Remember the SCO group? Groklaw reports that the government trustee has finally given up on the company and moved that its bankruptcy case be switched to chapter 7, which would simply liquidate the company and be done with it. "Incidentally, going into Chapter 7 would not necessarily end the litigation. In fact, it can't on its own. It would be up to the appointed trustee to try to figure out what to do, and the trustee's interest will not dovetail with SCO executives, I'm guessing. For one thing, he'll be wanting to pay the creditors. Like, for example, Novell. And the trustee has no power to terminate the IBM counterclaims. Then there is Red Hat. They are not necessarily willing to drop their claims, since the goal is to establish that there are no legitimate claims against Linux."

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Rockefeller Looking to Grant Open Source (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal reports that Senator Rockefeller has proposed a bill that promotes open-source health care software. "Thanks, in large part, to a little company called Standard Oil, Open Source isn't necessarily the first term to come to mind when one thinks of the name Rockefeller. However, that's exactly the term Mr. Rockefeller's great-grandson, Senator Jay Rockefeller, is pushing in Congress — attached to a bill to strengthen Open Source in health-care. The proposal in question, The Health Information Technology (IT) Public Utility Act of 2009 (Senate Bill 890), is the latest in a series of Open-Source-in-Health-IT bills aimed at taking health-care — or at least health records — digital, one way or another."

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How-to: using the new Facebook stream API in a desktop app (ars technica)

Ryan Paul takes a look at a new set of APIs that allow third-party software to interact with the Facebook activity stream. "Courtesy of these APIs, rich support for Facebook could soon arrive in your favorite Twitter client and other social networking programs. In this article, I'll give you an inside look at how I used the new APIs to add full support for the Facebook stream in Gwibber, my own open source microblogging client for Linux."

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Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

ZDNet.uk presents ten favorite development tools. "Without sound development tools, you will not be able to capitalise on the best qualities of Linux. Fortunately, there is no shortage of Linux and open-source development tools. But if you are a new user, you might not know which utilities to choose, so here are 10 outstanding tools that will help take your development to another level."

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Nagios forks to ICINGA (The H)

The H briefly covers a fork in the Nagios community. "The team behind ICINGA, including Michael Luebben, Hendrik Bäcker and Joerg Linge, all members of the Nagios Community Board, are promising that ICINGA will be fully compatible with the preceding version of Nagios. What they aim to do with ICINGA is to fix long standing bugs, make improvements to database integration and standardise the API for third party add ons. They expect to make the first release of ICINGA code by the end of May and a first stable version is planned for the end of October."

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Whatever Happened to OOXML? (ComputerWorld)

Glyn Moody observes that OOXML has not been as big a problem as many had thought. "All-in-all, I think things have gone much better in the office sector than I or many others feared when OOXML gained its 'approval' from ISO. OOXML has not caught on, and there is every chance that ODF will become a widely-used national and international standard."

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