Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Why Free/Open Source Software Might Have Less to Fear than Non-Free Software (Groklaw)
Dan Ravicher, the guy who came up with the list of patents which might threaten the Linux kernel, has put up an article on Groklaw explaining why patents are much more of a threat to proprietary software than to free software. "Therefore, a permanent injunction is the only truly threatening remedy available for a patent holder bringing a patent infringement suit against Free Software. However, knowing that patents cannot cover functionality, and can only cover certain structure that accomplishes functionality, it is highly likely that before a patent infringement case is tried and appealed, the Free Software at issue can be designed around the asserted patent. Further, it is also highly likely that the Free Software community, a very participatory and technically sophisticated group, will be quite capable at finding prior art to challenge the patent's validity."
New U.N. open source agency: What value does it offer? (NewsForge)
NewsForge covers the United Nations sponsored International Open Source Network (IOSN). "The new U.N. open source initiative, which offers Internet primers on free and open source software and their use in education and government, kicked off last weekend by supporting the slightly publicized Software Freedom Day, which was Saturday. "On that day, we will make the world aware of the virtues of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and encourage its widespread use," the IOSN said on its site. "We will set up stations in public places to give away informational fliers and CDs with selected FOSS, including TheOpenCD and a Linux Live CD.""
Trade Shows and Conferences
Report from the KDE World Summit: Days four and five (NewsForge)
NewsForge continues its KDE World Summit coverage. "The Quanta+ tutorial marked a watershed in the status of this relatively young application. Developed originally as a simple Dreamweaver clone, Laffoon and his development team (including two developers that he pays himself) now have big plans to take on and completely outpace their proprietary competitors. Modelling the application around modern web site frameworks, Quanta+ will be positioned to allow Webmasters to develop and manage their web site holistically, thinking of it as a collection of data objects rather than as static HTML with a weak templating system."
Report from the KDE World Summit: Day six (NewsForge)
NewsForge reports on day six of the KDE World Summit (aKademy). "Wednesday at aKademy provided KDE hackers with their first day without a special focus. The KDE PIM (Personal Information Management) developers had a discussion session, I led a Quality Team session on media and promotion work, and the usability playing ground continued; otherwise, developers roamed around chatting, hacking, partying and sleeping (a little). And if that didn't satisfy the KDE developer, he could always take some time out for one of three consecutive dinners or celebrate his exam results."
Report from KDE World Summit, Day 7: The keyboards remained quite busy (NewsForge)
The series of reports from aKademy on NewsForge continues with this summary from day 7. "Though this shouldn't be taken as a decision of the project, it now looks likely that we will see a release of KDE 3.4, focusing on polish, usability and stability, out within six or nine months. KDE 4 will be some way off, and so those looking forward to a new multimedia architecture, integration with DBUS and HAL, and other major changes discussed in this conference will have some time to wait."
The SCO Problem
SCO director defends fight-back stance (ComputerWorld)
SCO may have muzzled its CEO in recent times, but it seems nobody got around to his Australian counterpart. ComputerWorld (Australia) has published a talk with Kieran O'Shaughnessy, SCO's Australia and New Zealand director, which looks like something from early 2003. "IBM has transformed Linux from a bicycle to a Rolls-Royce, making it almost an enterprise-class operating system. It took us 25 years to build our business and it took [IBM] four years simply by stealing code and then giving it away free."
Declaration of Randall Davis of MIT (Groklaw)
Groklaw has a copy of Randall Davis's declaration in the IBM case. You can get either excerpts and commentary in text format, or the whole thing in PDF format. "Mr. Sontag grossly exaggerates what is required to determine whether there is substantial similarity between Linux and SCO's allegedly copyrighted works. The materials necessary to the task have been available to SCO for years and tools capable of evaluating that material in a matter of months have also been available to SCO for years."
Groklaw also has some dates: on September 14 and 15 will be hearings on SCO's motions to compel discovery and to dismiss IBM's 10th counterclaim, and on IBM's motion to strike Sontag's declaration. The big IBM motions on copyright infringement and the contract claims are set for December 9.
Companies
AOL users offered Linux link-up (vnunet)
Vnunet reports on Linspire's continuing efforts to push the Linux desktop into the mainstream by adding dial-up service to ISP giant AOL. ""We've expressed to AOL that America Online dial-up support is the number one request we get from users and original equipment manufacturers, but they have yet to release anything," said Michael Robertson, chief executive officer of Linspire, in a statement. "We decided to build an open source dialler on our own, so the massive AOL customer base can now use a low-cost Linux computer with their AOL accounts.""
Microsoft Dismisses British Objections to Anti-Linux Ad (eWeek)
Several readers have sent in links to a variety of versions of a story about a recent Microsoft FUD campaign. To sum it up: Microsoft ran an advertisement that included a graph comparing the dollar cost per megabit-per-second of one Linux image running on two z900 mainframe CPUs with one Windows Server 2003 image running on two 900MHz Intel Xeon CPUs, "proving" that Linux is 10 times more expensive to run. This eWeek article contains the relevant facts. "Microsoft sources said Wednesday that a British regulatory agency's objections to an anti-Linux advertisement published as part of its controversial "Get the Facts" campaign are moot because the ad is no longer running."
XP SP2 Gives Reasons to Switch to Linux (eWeek)
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols suggests switching to Linux instead of upgrading to Windows XP SP2 on eWeek. "Take, if you will, please take it, Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2). I've worked a lot with SP2, and I didn't expect to see great security improvements from it. I know Windows too well to think that anything short of a complete redesign will actually make it approach Linux's levels of security. But I did expect to see some improvement. Boy, was I wrong. Yes, some things are better, but there are also a slew of new, exciting security concerns."
Novell Reorgs Around Linux, Identity (eWeek)
eWeek covers Novell's reorganization. "There are currently four product business units at Provo, Utah-based Novell: Nterprise, Secure iServices, Resource Management and SuSE. These four are being morphed into "two major units focused on our two core strategies," Stone said, adding that Identity Services would combine the existing Resource Management and Secure iServices teams, while the Platform and Application Services would now be a combination of the existing Nterprise and SuSE units."
Sun woos Wall Street with new OS (ZDNet)
ZDNet covers Sun Microsystems' new Solaris 10 operating system, and reveals an almost Microsoft-like marketing campaign concerning Linux TCO. "Solaris 10 provides a number of enhancements, said Stuart Wells, senior vice president of financial services at Sun. Dynamic Tracing, for instance, enables IT departments to more rapidly tune applications, which, in turn, can lead to higher performance and/or lower costs. Ultimately, Sun hopes that these sorts of additions will demonstrate that running Solaris -either on classic UltraSparc-based servers or Sun's Opteron boxes - is cheaper than running Linux, he said. One anecdote that will surely be retold on 21 September involves a large financial institution. The company has two employees dedicated to running a Solaris server farm and 42 managing a similar Linux one, according to Sun."
Via tunes up Xine Linux media player (vnunet)
Vnunet reports on a new Linux-capable media player platform and software project from Via Technologies. "Via Technologies has unveiled enhancements to its open source Xine project designed to make it easier for software developers to incorporate support for Mpeg-4 and Mpeg-2 hardware acceleration in Linux-based personal electronics devices. The developments apply to the Taiwanese chip firm's latest version of the player, Via Enhanced Xine Player 3.0 (VeXP 3.0), based on Via processor platforms that feature the Via CN400 or CLE266 chipsets and the accompanying source code."
Linux Adoption
California considers open-source shift (News.com)
News.com reports that a California state government panel is recommending Linux and open source. "Among the ideas in the panel's $32 billion cost-cutting recommendations: favoring open-source software over proprietary alternatives for new IT purchases. The report doesn't project cost-savings for such a move but describes open-source products as more flexible and secure than the proprietary code that dominates government systems today. State agencies "should take an inventory of software purchases and software renewals...and implement open-source alternatives where feasible," according to the report."
Cell Phones: Don't Count Linux Out (Business Week)
Business Week looks at the state of Linux-based phones. "So far, Linux phones haven't lived up to the hype. Motorola has delivered two handsets, both in China, with two more on the way. But only 1.1 million Linux-based phones are expected to ship this year, vs. 14 million using Symbian system, estimates researcher Strategy Analytics in London. Downsizing Linux to fit into mobile phones took longer than predicted, and the software has a ways to go before it equals the sophistication of Symbian's package or the mobile phone version of Microsoft Windows."
GNU believers (NewsForge)
NewsForge examines the increasing use of Linux and open-source software by religious institutions. "GNU's roots lie squarely with an atheist named Richard M. Stallman. Yet, GNU -- meaning GNU's Not Unix -- was born out of the Golden Rule -- a biblical precept that strikes home with pretty much every Christian. While Stallman's Kantian ethics would clash at various points with Christian theology, the Golden Rule is common to both. In fact, in personal correspondence, Stallman told me he believes the Christian Church should be one of the major advocates of free software."
Interviews
aKademy Interview: Will Stephenson of Kopete (KDE.News)
KDE.News interviews Kopete hacker Will Stephenson at aKademy. "What's new in the Kopete version that comes with KDE 3.3?"
Well, the first thing you'll notice is the new contact list, that is the main window you see when you start Kopete. It's a great piece of work - we now have animation, fading and different layouts.
More aKademy Interviews/Awards (KDE.News)
KDE.News continues a series of aKademy interviews with these three:- Eirik Chambe-Eng, President and Co-Founder of Trolltec
- Avi Alkalay of the Linux Registry Project
- Kévin Ottens and Peter Rockai of the Kalyxo project.
KDE.News also reports that Waldo Bastian has won the aKademy competition.
aKademy Interview: Bernhard Reister, FSFE (KDE.News)
KDE.News interviews Bernhard Reiter at aKademy. "Not everybody takes a huge interest in politics and I believe that it is normal that some people stay of the technical side of things and just develop software. On the other hand we need more people to engage themself politically for Free Software."
Resources
Create Self-Booting Movie CDs (O'ReillyNet)
Robert Bernier explains the process of copying DVD movies onto bootable Linux CDs in an O'Reilly article."Here are the steps you should follow: 1. Read the DVD and convert it into an AVI. 2. Break the completed AVI into files small enough to fit onto a CD. 3. Use K3b to create a new eMoviX project/CD for each AVI volume. 4. Burn away."
Vim Macros for Editing DocBook Documents (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal shows how to use Vim macros with DocBook/XML and other similar markup languages. "Recently, while helping Linux Journal convert its editorial process to use DocBook/XML for articles, I had occasion to convert some old Vim macros for use with the new process. The original macros were key maps or abbreviations for inserting Quark tags and special characters. The new editorial process involves marking or tagging a document in DocBook/XML. From there, a stylesheet is applied to convert the document either to Quark for publication in the print magazine or to HTML for publication on the Web site."
Reviews
XML-based documentation using AurigaDoc (NewsForge)
NewsForge looks at AurigaDoc for creating documentation. "Like many open source projects, AurigaDoc was designed to "scratch an itch." "We needed a documentation system for our internal use that would be able to generate output in a variety of formats," said Khurshidali Shaikh of AurigaLogic, developer of AurigaDoc. "We looked at some tools but they were very cryptic and difficult to use. At that time DocBook was not known to us.""
KDE 3.3: A Milestone for Linux on the Desktop (OSDir.com)
O'Reilly's OSDir.com has an article by George Staikos on KDE 3.3. "The month of August marks a major milestone for the KDE project. Along with the occurance of the KDE Community World Summit 2004, "aKademy", the KDE team has released version 3.3 of the K Desktop Environment. This is the quickest release cycle in recent history, coming roughly six months after the release of KDE 3.2. To put this into perspective, KDE 3.2 took over a year to complete. Does this mean fewer features, less polish, or more bugs? Certainly not!" (Found at KDE.News)
Miscellaneous
How open is open enough for electronic voting? (NewsForge)
NewsForge revisits e-voting. "Among those with apprehension about open source elections software and systems, somewhat surprisingly to some, is Australian developer and senior lecturer with Australian National University Clive Boughton, who helped design the eVACS open source, GPL election software used in Australian elections in 2001."
Email Sender ID: The hype and the reality (NewsForge)
NewsForge looks at sender authentication in the fight against spam. "Technical methods of verifying sender identification are going to go forward. Exactly which ones make it and which don't are the only real questions. But the non-technical barriers make it seem unlikely to this writer at least that they will have much of a lasting impact, given today's commercial environment."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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