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It used to be that companies could get away with stealing GPLed open-source code into their own software and no one would be the wiser. Those days are done. Oh, it still happens, but the SFLC’s (Software Freedom Law Center) recent legal actions on behalf of BusyBox’s principal developers have been putting the fear of open-source violations into unscrupulous software companies. In the latest chapter, SFLC has sued Bell Microproducts Inc. and Super Micro Computer Inc. for using BusyBox’s open-source software without honoring its open-source license.

Free-software advocate Richard Stallman has spoken out against the association of open-source software with London's "unethical" Oyster-card system. In an email sent to ZDNet.co.uk on Monday, Stallman criticised the use of open-source software, such as Red Hat Linux, JBoss middleware and Apache web-server software, in the online payment system for the Oyster contactless cards used on London's underground rail network.

The European Union competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, took a swipe at Microsoft on Tuesday by recommending that businesses and governments use software based on internationally accepted standards. Kroes has fought bitterly with Microsoft during the past four years, accusing the U.S. company of defying her orders and fining it nearly €1.7 billion, or $2.7 billion, for violating European competition rules. She did not mention Microsoft by name Tuesday, but encouraged computer users to avoid formats that, like many Microsoft products, are based on proprietary standards.

Scouts honor — the 98-year-old Boy Scouts of America (BSA) organization is adopting open-source software as a path to building better software to support the almost 3 million scouts and 1.1 million adults who make up the group. Faced with the need for a streamlined, organized way for its more than 121,000 local scout troops to find and use software for fundraisers, event registration, facilities maintenance and more, the Irving, Texas-based BSA last month launched a Web site to begin its BSA Open Source Initiative.

A simple how to on getting started with LVM for Linux.

Bernard Dalle explains what the attraction is, how his company Index Ventures sees no shortage of top-flight open source startups following investments in MySQL, TrollTech and Zend, and why he, too, hates software patents.

This guide explains how to set up mod_geoip with Apache2 on a Fedora 9 system. mod_geoip looks up the IP address of the client end user. This allows you to redirect or block users based on their country. You can also use this technology for your OpenX (formerly known as OpenAds or phpAdsNew) ad server to allow geo targeting.

The Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) project allows you install new filesystems without touching your Linux kernel. The filesystems run as regular programs, allowing them to use shared libraries and perform tasks that would be difficult from inside the Linux kernel. FUSE filesystems look just like regular filesystems to other applications on the machine. In this article I'll look at compFUSEd, which is a compressed FUSE filesystem. Using compFUSEd can save a significant amount of disk space for files that are highly compressible, such as many text documents and executable files.

IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory have built the world's first petaflop machine, a supercomputer named Roadrunner designed to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, IBM said Monday. A petaflop is equal to one thousand trillion calculations per second, and was a highly sought-after goal in the world of supercomputing. Scheduled for installation at Los Alamos in August, IBM says Roadrunner represents a breakthrough in hybrid computing, combining AMD microprocessors found in standard laptops and servers with the IBM Cell Broadband Engine chips that power Sony's PS3 gaming console.

The main post in the article is simply a rehash of what helios stated his blog about a certain school in California. Christian Einfeldt himself clarifies what he needs in order to convince the school in question to adopt a FOSS platform by commenting below the post.

Those of you who have enjoyed our series on theFreeBSD Desktop are due an update on the situation with the 7.0release. I recommend against it, for now.

Phoronix has more details about the much-anticipated Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a version of Ubuntu designed for UMCPs, that Canonical recently announced.

Hardware on Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows allows for gestures beyond point and click that create more-efficient navigation. Discover the tools needed to add this gesture support on Linux-enabled hardware. In this article, learn to enable swipe and pinch gestures for Linux applications by analyzing synclient program output for a Synaptics TouchPad.

OpenVZ is operating system-level virtualization based on a modified Linux kernel that allows a physical server to run multiple isolated instances known as containers, virtual private servers (VPS), or virtual environments (VE). The preferred term these days is container. Containers are sometimes compared to chroot or jail type environments but containers are really much better in terms of isolation, security, functionality, and resource management.

Computer users expect their systems to work well at all times, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case. If your system becomes slow, there certainly is something you can do about it. This article will help you understand what’s happening on the system, whether it’s the computer in front of you or a system you’re accessing remotely. Naturally, I presume you’re running Linux, and the tools described here are Linux tools. If you’re on some other weird system ( ;) ), your mileage may vary.

Four countries have appealed a decision to fast-track the international standardisation of a Microsoft document format, called OpenXML. Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela have complained that there was not enough time given to discuss improvements to the format. The format is used for spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Critics claim it is not fully compatible with other document formats.

Ubuntu is on the verge of enhancing its already good name as the most end-user friendly Linux distribution by coming out with its own mobile-optimised release, Ubuntu Netbook Remix. We're on the tip of a revolution and here's why.

You remember SeeBeyond Technologies? Rather successful application integration company? Lots of really big customers and $140m in annual revenue? Purchased by Sun Microsystems in 2005 for the knockdown price of $387m. Yes, well, Sun has released Java Composite Application Suite (CAPS) 6.0, an updated version of SeeBeyond's old Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) suite that takes that $387m investment and throws it to the wind, as open source code.

LXer Feature: 10-Jun-2008

In a recent article, Linux File Systems: Ready for the Future?, Henry Newman expands on what he feels are shortcomings in current GNU/Linux filesystems. Specifically, he believes current Linux filesystem technology cannot meet the demands that massive implementations of 100TB or larger require. He states he received some emotional responses trying to either refute his information or impugn his character, although those comments do not show on either of the article's pages. This prompted me to get the real scoop on how Linux filesystem technology is trying to keep pace with the ever-growing need for storage space.

If you are used to programming CGI, PHP, or any application not built on a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework, the learning curve for Ruby on Rails is steep. While I can't offer up best practices, I can offer up how-the-hell-do-I-get-started practices. I created a list of steps to ease the pain of getting started.