Linux in the news

Linus Digs Into Copyright Law and Notices Something Useful (Groklaw)

Linus has been diverting his attention to legal definitions, according to this Groklaw article:

"I ended up looking up the exact wording of the US copyright law for the definition of 'derivative', and guess what I find a few lines below it: 'The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.'"

No Linus posting would be complete without a bit of humor: "So . . . when he attacks the GPL as being somehow against 'financial gain', that notion that the GPL has of 'exchange of receipt of copyrighted works' is actually EXPLICITLY ENCODED in the US copyright law. It's not just a crazy idea that some lefty commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor. So if Darl calls that notion unconstitutional, he is actually attacking the US code as it stands today."

Comments (12 posted)

Microsoft aiming IBM-scale patent program at Linux? (Register)

The Register speculates on Microsoft's plans for patent enforcement. "Microsoft's actions so far don't constitute a full frontal attack on free software. It's often been rumored that Microsoft has a number of patents - the number varies - on the Linux kernel itself. But it has chosen not to pursue such an inflammatory tactic, just yet, and may not even need to at all in order to succeed."

Comments (31 posted)

Intelligent Documents Headline XML 2003 (O'Reilly)

Edd Dumbill covers the XML 2003 conference on O'Reilly. "At the opening of this year's XML USA conference in Philadephia, PA, smart XML documents were the star. Keynotes from Jon Udell of InfoWorld and Shantanu Narayen of Adobe focused on XML documents that conveyed the nuance of real world communication."

Comments (none posted)

Judge Tells SCO: No, *You* Have to Show the Code First (Groklaw)

For those who are curious, Groklaw has posted a transcript of the hearing on IBM's motions to compel in the SCO case. Scroll down past the first version; there is a more complete transcript appended to the article. There is a second article giving details on what SCO has been ordered to provide to IBM, and yet another article by a guest author on where things go from here. "SCO must now turn their reluctant eyes to The Code. Everything they now disclose, if they do, has likely been copyrighted and distributed under the General Public License --distributed BY THEM. They will then have to try to convince the Court to disregard their nine years of distributing Linux under the GPL, pleading incompetence, I imagine."

Comments (9 posted)

The Mouse That Roared (Motley Fool)

The Motley Fool sounds off on the latest developments in the SCO case. "More and more, SCO Group is like the mouse that roared. PR only goes so far. You have to back up with substance. The SCO Group has 30 days."

Comments (3 posted)

IBM says wins National Weather Service deal (Reuters)

Here's a Reuters article (via Forbes) on IBM's large Linux sale to the U.S. National Weather Service. "Refresh times for the weather service, which runs data-intensive applications, have been cut by four times to 62 seconds from 247 seconds, IBM said, speeding up data delivery and analysis.... Armonk, New York-based IBM also said that it cut maintenance costs for the weather service by 40 percent."

Comments (none posted)

Lindows.com Defends Netherlands Resellers against Microsoft (OSViews)

OSViews covers a Lindows.com initiative aimed at providing computer users in the Netherlands a choice of OS. "Lindows.com today launched ChoicePC, a rallying point for citizens of the Netherlands who object to the Microsoft Corporation's threats of legal action against Dutch resellers who are offering Lindows.com products."

Comments (8 posted)

Open source's local heroes (Economist)

The Economist has posted a story (subscribers only for now, that will change eventually) on another advantage of free software: translations. "The programmers who produce open-source software operate by different rules, however. The leading desktop interfaces for the open-source Linux operating system--KDE and GNOME--are, between them, available in more than twice as many languages as Windows. KDE has already been localised for 42 languages, with a further 46 in the pipeline. Similarly, Mozilla, an open-source web browser, now speaks 65 languages, with 34 more to follow. OpenOffice, the leading open-source office suite, is available in 31 languages, including Slovenian, Basque and Galician, and Indian languages such as Gujarati, Devanagari, Kannada and Malayalam."

Comments (6 posted)

SMBs turn to the Penguin (vnunet)

According to this Vnunet article one in four small and medium business in the UK have switched to Linux. "Major reasons cited for moving to Linux from proprietary operating systems were lower costs (38 per cent), followed by performance, security and reliability (all at 23 per cent)."

Comments (10 posted)

Followup Interview with Jeremy Hogan of Red Hat (LinuxQuestions.org)

LinuxQuestions.org has posted a followup interview with Red Hat's Jeremy Hogan.

"LQ) Do you feel that in the long run the lack of a freely downloadable RHL will hurt the "Red Hat brand"?"

"JH) No, I think Fedora will develop it's own distinct brand attributes, and people will gravitate, or opt-in to the solution that suits them. Again, with RHL you had both worlds under one name, so now it's easy to tell in a lot of respects what you should use if you want a freely downloadable (and I'd add installable, ISO'd etc) since Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available for download as well."

Comments (18 posted)

McBride letter continues SCO's Linux attack (InfoWorld)

We can't resist: InfoWorld talked with Linus about the latest SCO open letter. "If Darl McBride was in charge, he'd probably make marriage unconstitutional too, since clearly it de-emphasizes the commercial nature of normal human interaction, and probably is a major impediment to the commercial growth of prostitution."

Comments (17 posted)

Mozilla Thunderbird Features Summary (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine mentions the availability of a new Mozilla Thunderbird review: "David Tenser writes: "What's so good about Mozilla Thunderbird anyway? I've written a document covering the most important reasons to use Thunderbird as your default mail and news client. As always, I appreciate feedback and I'm sure there are many features I've missed.""

Comments (none posted)

Review: StarOffice 7 -- innovation in action (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews StarOffice 7. "Although it is possible to crash StarOffice, the breaking point is higher than with most office suites. When a document exceeds 30 megabytes in Microsoft Office, a crash and, often, file corruption, is imminent. By contrast, in my experience, StarOffice remains stable to the limits of a computer's virtual memory and RAM -- and then rarely corrupts files. On the rare occasions when files are corrupted, the fact that the native format for documents is zipped XML files means that the content, at least, can often be retrieved."

Comments (none posted)

Ximian XD2: The Way Things Ought to Be (OfB.biz)

Open for Business reviews Ximian XD2. "Ximian Desktop is fairly non-invasive. While it offers to replace the distribution's login manager with its own variant of GNOME's display manager, it does not force it on you, should you wish to continue using another one. Once I logged into my account on the test box, Ximian offered the choice to preserve my old GNOME settings or replace them with Ximian defaults. My KDE desktop files were also found and placed in a folder on the new Ximian desktop - a nice added touch."

Comments (12 posted)

Yopy 3700 Product Review (Linux Journal)

The Linux Journal reviews the Linux-based Yopy 3700 PDA. "Overall, there are far fewer free and non-free applications available for the Yopy than there are for the Zaurus, mainly due to the distribution choice. It also is not easy to connect the Yopy to a Linux machine, and there is no Java environment. I would have preferred a Qtopia/OPIE-based distribution, if only for the amount of software available."

Comments (none posted)

Developers take Linux attacks to heart (News.com)

News.com looks at the recent attacks on free software infrastructure sites. "'Personally, I worry a lot more about just plain bugs,' Torvalds said. 'Whatever kernel weakness people find is much more likely to be just a silly bug--like the one Debian got bit by--than some clever cracker doing bad things.'"

Comments (none posted)