Linux in the news

40 years of Unix (BBC)

The BBC covers the history of Unix, which celebrates its 40th anniversary. "The computer world is notorious for its obsession with what is new - largely thanks to the relentless engine of Moore's Law that endlessly presents programmers with more powerful machines. Given such permanent change, anything that survives for more than one generation of processors deserves a nod. Think then what the Unix operating system deserves because in August 2009, it celebrates its 40th anniversary. And it has been in use every year of those four decades and today is getting more attention than ever before." (Thanks to Paul Sladen).

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Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Christopher Smart comments on the state of Linux and web media in a Linux Magazine article. "The situation on the Linux desktop is particularly horrible. Thanks to the lack of a free and open framework for multimedia, users need closed source applications and patent encumbered codecs to view content on the web. This is outrageous! Imagine if sending an email required a proprietary application which had to be compatible with the recipient’s system? What if to view a plain HTML website one had to pay royalties? Imagine further that these were controlled by a single company. If such a world had existed in the past, then the Internet would not have become the useful medium that it is today. We must make sure this doesn’t happen in the future."

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SCO v. Novell appellate decision: $$ from Sun deal affirmed as Novell's; rest remanded for jury trial (Groklaw)

Groklaw has a report on SCO's appeal of the summary judgment for Novell. It was a partial victory for SCO, remanding the issue of the UNIX copyright ownership back to the court in Utah to be decided by a jury. "The issue was whether it is appropriate to decide matters on summary judgment, and this court thought the APA was complex enough and ambiguous enough that a jury trial is more appropriate. Here's the heart of it all: 'But so long as sufficient evidence could lead a rational trier of fact to resolve the dispute in favor of either party, granting either party's dueling motions for summary judgment would be inappropriate.'" It would seem that the bankruptcy trustee for SCO, who has not yet been appointed, will get to decide where things go from here, but we haven't heard the last of this case.

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Updegrove: So What About Those XML Patents, Anyway?

Andy Updegrove writes about the XML patents owned by Microsoft and i4i. "As always, we come back to the usual elephant in the software bedroom. Do patents really do any good, or only harm in the marketplace? They didn't help little i4i much. Microsoft apparently destroyed its business despite it's patent application, and i4i hasn't received a dime yet. Would i4i have launched its business around its technology even if it hadn't been able to get a patent? Of course it would have. Another new software company (if not more) makes a similar decision every day. Always has, and always will."

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Analysis: How Moonlight 2.0 Fits into Novell's Linux and Open Source Plans (Linux.com)

Over at Linux.com, Todd R. Weiss analyzes Moonlight, looking at how it fits into Novell's (and Microsoft's) plans. "Creating an open source version of Silverlight became important to Novell two years ago, said Joseph Hill, Novell's product manager for the Mono and Moonlight 2.0 projects. That's when Microsoft announced that it would be using its .Net development environment to create Silverlight content, Hill said. That was important to Novell, he said, because millions of .Net developers were already out there and could then use Silverlight to add rich Web features. That scenario meant that Linux desktop users would ultimately be left in the cold because all of that .Net-created content wouldn't be optimized to give them the same rich experiences. And when Microsoft said it wouldn't build Silverlight and .Net tools for Linux, Novell worked out an arrangement with Microsoft to provide those pieces, by creating the Moonlight project."

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Public Citizen: Federal court using scare tactics to block sharing of public records

Public Citizen looks at the response of the U.S. federal court system to the Firefox "RECAP" extension, which enables sharing of court documents. "Please be aware that RECAP is 'open-source' software, which means it can be freely obtained by anyone with Internet access and could possibly be modified for benign or malicious purposes. This raises the possibility that the software could be used for facilitating unauthorized access to restricted or sealed documents." Of course, the courts could nullify this "threat" by simply making public documents, well, public.

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On the PySide - interview (KDEDot)

Jos Poortvliet talks with Matti Airas about PySide. "I'm having the time of my life being able to work in Nokia's Maemo division, surrounded with top-notch talents and a can-do atmosphere. :-) I've been working with the PySide project from the very beginning and am now acting as a "liaison officer" between Nokia and INdT, helping them with the PyMaemo and PySide efforts. I've been a Linux user since, what, 1997 and have contributed to various FOSS projects. I did a PhD on speech processing (go figure!) before joining the Nokia Python team."

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64-bit Chrome takes centre stage in Linux land (The Register)

The Register takes a look at a 64-bit Linux port for the Chrome browser. "Google engineers have been beavering away at a 64-bit version of the company's Chrome browser for the Linux platform. According to Chrome developer Dean McNamee, Mountain View's V8 team has been tinkering with a Chromium Linux 64-bit for several weeks now. V8, in case you were wondering, is the web kingpin's JavaScript engine."

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Introducing Guitarix (Linux Journal)

Dave Phillips takes a look at Guitarix. "According to its developers Guitarix is a monaural amplifier designed for creating the distorted sounds typical of thrash, heavy metal, blues, and other rock guitar styles. In fact, Guitarix is capable of much more than distortion sounds. In this article I'll remove the software speaker grill and pull out the virtual chassis to take a closer look at the sonic possibilities of this "simple mono amplifier"."

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Health Check: Mono (The H)

Over at The H, there is a look at the Mono project, including its history and current status. "And much of the current controversy around de Icaza and Mono surrounds the adoption, or proposed adoption, of Mono as a framework for the rapid development of applications for GNOME, and the proprietorial nature of the technologies that Mono uses. The story is rife with irony, not least because .NET was Microsoft's attempt to undermine Java, and the free software movement had its own issues with the proprietorial nature of Java."

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