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we're always interested in efforts to apply open source principles to efforts outside the software realm. Drew Endy, an open source biologist currently working at Stanford, is a good example of why. Along with several researchers at MIT, Endy is working on synthetic biology and the engineering of standardized biological components and devices, known as BioBricks.

Microsoft plans to continue charging licensing fees from handset makers for using its mobile operating system and not follow the free offerings of Google and Nokia, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Tuesday. The pressure on Microsoft's high licensing fees has increased over 2008.

Lynis is a handy, simple-to-use security auditing tool by Michael Boelen, who also wrote Rootkit Hunter. It's free GPL-licensed software that can be used on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, PcBSD, Mac OSX, or Solaris.

Zivios is an open source web based identity management application featuring single sign on, certificate authority, user, group and computer provisioning with remote management of services. Zivios is an n-tiered PHP-5 application and uses MySQL and OpenLDAP as its data store, with OpenLdap being the primary back end for identity management and application integration and MySQL being used for panel specific data.

There are several definitions of "open access." One is making open source code available to a community of smart cookies who can debug and modify it using open source mechanisms. Another is offering up low-cost or free software development kits (SDK) to encourage creative applications for a given platform. Another is offering middleware that allows an application developed once to run on multiple platforms. And, finally, in mobile networks, open can mean using a phone and its applications on any carrier's compatible network.

The GIMP graphics program includes many new and interesting features in version 2.6. Among others is to offer developers integration with the Generic Graphics Library (GEGL) to allow non-destructive editing of HDR and RAW graphics that are rendered in up to 32-bit color depth per channel.

pfSense is a free, powerful firewall and routing application that allows you to expand your network without compromising its security. Started in 2004 as a child project of m0n0wall -- a security project that focuses on embedded systems -- pfSense has had more than 1 million downloads and is used to protect networks of all sizes, from home offices to large enterprises. pfSense has an active development community, and more features are being added in each release to further improve its flexibility, scalability, and, of course, security.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, says technologies such as Linux and open-source software can help enterprises cut costs during tough economic times. Zemlin says users should look to open source and Linux, systems management tools, and virtualization technology to keep budgets in line.

Improved version of our Bash CLI Weather script to get your world forecast! We're back from yesterday's insanity (you called my bluff and I hope my response was satisfactory ;) and, yeah, I wasted my entire evening watching the Vice Presidential debate and then making the mistake of discussing it with people who didn't agree with me. Politics and Religion... When am I going to learn? ;)

Uruguay is something of a dark horse when it comes to technology. It’s not a country that comes to mind immediately when you talk of technology but it is fast becoming a player. Now this just in: Uruguay has produced stamps featuring the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). The stamps apparently went on sale yesterday.

The Ubuntu team yesterday announced the beta release of Intrepid Ibex, or version 8.10 of the Linux operating system. The Inptrepid beta includes a number of new core technologies including Gnome 2.24, which was released just a week ago, X,org 7.4, also a new release, as well as built-in 3G support in the network manager.

Cisco has been talking about the "network as a platform" for a long time, but what does that actually mean, and what does the AXP network module have to do with it? The Cisco Application eXtension Platform (AXP) is made up of a hardware card (three different models), modified Linux software that runs on the card, and a program for software developers. You could also say that the AXP represents "network virtualization".

This decision finally explains how U.S. courts should analyze open source and open content licenses. The bottom line for us is that copyright law provides the remedies but contract law provides the analytical tools. [This pdf file was posted to the OSI license-discuss mailing list, with permission to rebublish -Az]

At a very early stage in the installation of the Ubuntu8.04 desktop I encountered some perplexing failures in the mount command and in my attempted alteration of the fstab file. Commands that had worked in Ubuntu's earlier LTS desktop failed both on the command line and when the file itself was executed. Moreover, with respect to the latter the results were similarly perplexing whether the file was executed during bootup or on the command line with the "a" option. Succinctly the problem is, I have not been successful mounting the external directories [1.] of the 6.06 desktop while on 8.04. Nonetheless, use of essentially the same commands work where I can see all the directories of 8.04 while running the 6.06 desktop. Moreover, with root level privileges on 6.06, I can copy, remove or alter files and sync in either direction. Those options are unavailable to me on 8.04.

Red Hat Thursday released a Linux software stack for compute-intensive IT environments that it said costs less than Microsoft's price for its comparable Windows offering. Red Hat charges a subscription of US$249 per node, or server, per year for Red Hat HPC Solution, a new offering that combines Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Platform Open Cluster Stack 5, clustering software it has licensed from Platform Computing. Red Hat HPC Solution also includes device drivers, a cluster installer, cluster-management tools, a resource and application monitor, interconnect support and a job scheduler.

PackageKit is a system designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier. The primary design goal is to unify all the software graphical tools used in different distributions. KPackageKit is the KDE interface for PackageKit. Today we talk with Packagekit-Qt and KpackageKit developers about new emerging possibilities in process of managing software on your desktop.

If the fact that the ParanoidLinux distribution (now in an "alpha-alpha stage") is based on a work of science fiction isn't unsettling, consider two key peripheral issues. The first unsettling issue is that in some censorship-centric areas of the world, an operating system granting a user anonymity could be literally life-saving.

After marking the GNU Project's 25th anniversary with an endorsement by Stephen Fry and the relicensing of OpenGL, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is concluding the month-long celebration by relaunching its high priority list, which enumerates as-yet unwritten or incomplete software needed to run a completely free computer system. Instead of being simply a page on the FSF's Web site, the list will become a campaign, and be actively promoted and discussed, and given a new emphasis in the Foundation's activities.

Obama is campaigning for change. McCain is campaigning for change. And now, Red Hat is campaigning for change. The software company will spend next week evangelizing the government’s growing need for open source. It’s a smart, timely move by Red Hat. Here’s why.

I love (g)vim! I've been using a lot of different text and code editors over the years. When I started with Linux my first editor was Anjuta. After that I've tried BlueFish, Screem, SciTe, (X)Emacs, Gedit and many more until I stuck with Kate. But in the end, every Linux programmer eventually drops whatever editor or IDE that he or she uses and switch to either Vim or Emacs. I switched to Vim. Vim is great all by itself, but there are a ton of scripts that you can use to expand vim make your life easier. Here are the vim scripts and settings that I use every day.