Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Bug stamp-out list for November 17, 2006

As the CEO of open source database company MySQL AB, Marten Mickos has overseen enormous growth in his company. Some even say the plucky MySQL is starting to threaten industry heavyweight Oracle, though that contest is still very much David and Goliath. At the very least, MySQL, as a major building block of the LAMP stack, earns bragging rights as the leading open source database.

"I'm not buying a new PC, not yet," said the angry NewsWireless reader. "I need a new computer, and I found one online - but it comes with Windows Vista! I don't want that!" Sadly, it seem that in their enthusiasm to be seen to be as far up on Microsoft's beautiful unique marketing as possible, several online PC stores have been advertising "With Windows Vista!" for their computers. This is, to put it gently, an exaggeration.

Nokia's Network Business Group has selected Red Hat Linux as the primary OS for its carrier-grade server platforms, Red Hat reports. Nokia will integrate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on multiple FlexiPlatform products this year, with Red Hat providing onsite consulting, support, certification, and training services.

Application performance guru Kirk Pepperdine (pictured) added his two cents to the ongoing Web discussions about Sun's announcement last week that it is open sourcing its implementation of Java. He pinpoints the Classpath exception as being the key valve that "leaves business free to build upon yet protects the underlying implementation."

If you've got Java-support in your browser, you can try out several free operating systems at Free OS Zoo. This is an experimental feature, using a system called FLOZ.

[The response-time is slow, but it is still cool to try. - Scott]

Intellectual Property is a term widely abused in the software industry by firms such as Microsoft and SCO using it to scare people into not using certain products in favor of their own. This disparaging tactic has even been given a name: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). It seems that anyone nowadays can make bold, unsubstantiated claims of IP infringement without actually having any proof simply to hurt another products reputation and destroy healthy competition. In this article, we will explore what intellectual property is and why every computer user should care when unreputable companies abuse legal systems in order to gain an unfair business advantage.

Feisty Fawn, aka Ubuntu 7.04, is scheduled for release on Apr. 19, 2007. According to Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's founder, "The main themes for feature development in this release will be improvements to hardware support in the laptop, desktop and high-end server market, and aggressive adoption of emerging desktop technologies. Ubuntu's Feisty release will put the spotlight on multimedia enablement and desktop effects."

An Austin, Tex., network management company has set out to build an open-source community around network inventory management tools. This week at the Gartner Enterprise Networking Summit, AlterPoint, Inc. unveiled ZipTie, an open-source project that the company said it will seed with some foundational technology from its DeviceAuthority network management product, while continuing to sell its more advanced management tools under commercial licences.

South Africa native and current London resident Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical Ltd. and the Ubuntu Linux distribution, told DesktopLinux.com Friday in an interview that widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop -- so long-awaited by many people -- "is just a matter of time, IMO."

Michael Tiemann objects to the distinction between "open" and "free" software we suggested in the article entitled 'Take your covenant and shove it', Samba tells Novell.

Avocent reports that its first-ever digital signage product has won an innovation award at IBC (International Broadcasters Convention) in Amsterdam this week. The Linux-powered MPX1000 HD Multipoint Extender distributes audio and HD video content from one or more sources to up to eight synchronized display/output devices.

Red Hat won't be hanging its hat at the Nasdaq for much longer. The Linux software distributor has applied for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange and expects to be traded on the big board on Dec. 12. Its new trading symbol will be "RHT."

The One Laptop Per Child project has manufactured a first set of 200 notebook computers. The devices will be distributed as test units to government officials and software developers. The units are "very close to the final hardware builds of the machine", Christopher Blizzard wrote on his blog. Blizzard is a software developer with Red Hat who is developing the OLPC's Linux operating system. Software developers can use the software to test their applications for potential compatibility issues.

Web hosting provider VPSLink.com (http://www.vpslink.com) has announced the addition of new versions of Fedora Core 6, Debian Etch, and Ubuntu 6.10 (edgy) Linux to its service offerings. Each technology will be available through each of VPSLink’s hosting plans.

Some time toward the end of this year, FortiusOne plans to open a public data repository and social network for data sharing to encourage the creation of dynamic online map mashups that combine multiple data sets

In its attempt to educate its existing customers as well as prospective clients about the evolving role of Linux, Novell organised a multi-city event. We had covered the Mumbai leg in an earlier issue. Here we write about what happened at Delhi and Bangalore—there were different speakers in each city.

In the second part of his interview with News.com, Bill Gates talks about his favorite feature in Vista, why he'll keep pushing for a new file system and the role of open-source software.

Books about management techniques rarely mention how to lead computer programmers. The few that do sooner or later reach for a cliché and compare the effort to herding cats -- J. Hank Rainwater, for instance, uses the phrase as his title. Partly, the comparison reflects how much the topic is outside the corporate mainstream. However, the comparison also reflects the conflicting nature of the job. The typical IT department represents a separate culture within a company, and a successful manager must both understand that culture and act as a bridge between it and the rest of the company, trying to explain each to the other.

Last week at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, I spoke with Carl Ritchell, co-founder of System76. For years I've been seeking the Nirvana of a company that would ship me professional, high-quality, Linux-only hardware. Various large companies offer half-hearted Linux options. Several sketchy-looking resellers offer brand-name hardware with Linux installed over the top, but it's either a distro I don't want, or it's all old hardware.