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Software libre for Spanish juntaThe Spanish region of Extremadura has pledged to move all government computers onto open source software within the next year. Officials will be mandated to use the open document format standard for office communications over the same time frame.

Paranoia is becoming more common these days, and if you let yourself be engulfed by it, there's definitely not a shortage of things to be concerned about. We know that the governments have the technology to monitor our lives (wiretapping, satellites, other stuff we have no earthly idea about), but regular users are also using certain tools to invade our privacy.

[Hmmm... all that secret code. Wonder what else they're keeping secret? Never mind that, just replace your non-free OS with a libre OS, and you won't have to worry near as much about whether your software vendor is spying on you. - dcparris]

The second discussion draft of the GNU General Public License Version 3 has prompted some to question the Free Software Foundation's motives. eWEEK Labs' Jason Brooks finds the changes in keeping with the spirit of the GPL, but thinks some compromise may be in order.

[Oh, I get it. Let's all bow to master Linus. On the other hand, we can keep the DRM out of Free Software. I think someone's been taking lessons from Uncle Tom. - dcparris]

Traditionally on a Unix-like system like GNU/Linux you must mount a device such as a CD-ROM before being able to use it. This is one of the biggest complaints from newcomers, especially Windows refugees. The latest versions of the GNOME and KDE desktop environments offer automounting functionality, and some distributions (such as Ubuntu and its derivatives) have it enabled by default. If you choose not to use any of these environments, here's an alternative solution.

So far, Hewlett-Packard prefers the earlier GPL, raising the specter that two versions of the license will survive.

[Look, businesses have to realize that freedom trumps profit because freedom ultimately offers profit. Software patents just kill the golden goose - dcparris]

As the US computer manufacturer SGI reports, one of its Altix 4700 systems has outpaced the previous STREAM Triad benchmark record by a factor of 4, achieving a sustained memory bandwidth of 4.35 terabytes per second.

The ongoing discussion about the Reiser4 filesystem [story] continues on thelkml. Jeff Garzik discussed the complexity introduced by a plugin layer [story], suggesting it is really a second VFS, "furthermore, it completely changes the notion of what a Linux filesystem is. Currently, each Linux filesystem is a tightly constrained set of metadata support. reiser4 changes 'tightly constrained' to 'infinity'. While that freedom is certainly liberating, it also has obvious support costs due to new admin paradigms and customer configuration possibilities."Linux creator Linus Torvalds weighed in on the discussion, "as long you call them 'plugins' and treat them as such, I (and I suspect a lot of other people) are totally uninterested, and in fact, a lot of people will suspect that the primary aim is to either subvert the kernel copyright rules, or at best to create a mess of incompatible semantics with no sane overlying rules for locking etc."

It's been nearly a year since OpenOffice.org 2.0 was released, so I sat down with Louis Suárez-Potts, chair of OpenOffice.org's community council and community manager, at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Ore., last week to see what's on the OpenOffice.org development roadmap. Suárez-Potts says that development is moving along nicely, but it will probably be a while before we see OpenOffice.org 3.0.

Novell has decided not to use proprietary Linux modules such as the NVidia accelerated driver. My first reaction was that Novell was being needlessly idiotic. Then I readthis article on OSWeekly.com, by Matt Hartley. It calls out the leading Linux distributions for failing to band together to pressure hardware vendors to pre-install Linux. I've been saying basically the same thing for the past few years, so I heartily agree with this article. It was then that it occurred to me that Novell may have made the right decision, even if for the wrong reason.

Care2x is an open source web-based hospital information system (HIS). The development of Care2x started back in 2002 by Elpidio Latorilla. The software is released under the GNU General Public License. The latest version 2.2 is maintenance release. The most noticeable things it features are:New graphical installer (based on MirrorMed's installer).MySQL 5 support.Main menu visibility according to the user's permissions.Improved Arabian and Italian translations.Improved Turkish ICD10.

I've been covering the Free Software Foundation'sDefective By Designcampaign against Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies since its planning stages. Starting from scratch, in less than three months, the campaign has grown to 7000 members. This number is impressive, especially since the campaign introduces a degree of activism previously unknown in the free and open source software communities. What strikes me, though, is that, for all the loathing of DRM, how rarely the reasons for opposing it are spelled out. In some cases, the reason may be that people consider them too obvious to be worth mentioning, but, too often when I've probed, people haven't even heard of the possible objections. These objections begin with the fact that the case for DRM has yet to be made, and continues with arguments about consumer rights, privacy, competitiveness, and industry standards.

The eighth annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention wrapped up Friday with a half day of talks and a farewell address by Eben Moglen, general counsel for the Free Software Foundation and chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center, on the importance of software licenses. Moglen's talk provided a perfect end to an excellent conference.

Actuate's use of open source to enhance its own closed-source wares is fair play, according to Keith Gile, principal analyst at Forrester Research. "If all a developer wants is BIRT, then that is available for download with no strings attached."

IBM's virtualization technology has achieved one of the computer industry's most stringent security certifications. The Common Criteria's Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) is one of the highest levels of security certification for logical partitioning.

There's no mistaking the practical purpose behind a bootable live-demonstration Linux distribution for on-the-go technicians. As avid consumers of modern technology, many of us enjoy exercising our electronic toys as much as our minds. However, we sometimes lack the software tools necessary to troubleshoot, diagnose, and resolve problems as they arise. This article provides a gentle introduction to how a simple Knoppix configuration can become an indispensable item in a mobile technical toolkit.

The first beta version of Mandriva Linux 2007 has been released !

Available in four different flavours live/install CDs (KDE or GNOME, i586 or x86_64) or in a whole new dual architecture Installation DVD, get a glimpse of the next Mandriva Linux 2007 edition !

Note that not all of the new features have been implemented yet and that a beta version is not bug-proof, on the contrary. This is why we strongly encourage everyone to test and report any bugs or surprises they may encounter.

Databases are powerful tools, and -- like all powerful tools -- they can be abused if you don't know how to use them properly. Here are the five most common problems in database design, in the PHP code that accesses databases, and how to avoid them.

Recently releasing the 2.4.33-rc3 kernel, Marcelo Tosatti [interview] also announced a new 2.4 Linux kernel maintainer, "Willy Tarreau has stepped up to maintain the mainline v2.4 tree, and will do so starting from v2.4.34. He has devoted great effort to help maintenance for the past few years. His -hotfix tree is quite popular amongst v2.4 users, for instance. I feel very confident in his competence for the job, knowing his good common sense and great technical/communication skills." Willy began maintaining his -hf patchset against the stable 2.4 Linux kernel in February of 2005 [story].

In response to Marcelo's announcement, Willy replied, "hmmm... Like I once told you, I felt like you were trying to sell me your car, but you seem to have maintained it in very good state so I am confident it will not break after a few miles. I still hope that if I have any problem with it, you will come with your breakdown truck to rescue me :-) I hope I will get criticisms if I do things wrong. It's frustrating to work without feedback (either positive or negative)."

LinuxGenius, LLC, the makers of the popular LinuxCBT Open Source training series, is proud to release: UnixCBT featuring Solaris 10 Edition.

Source code addicts are getting their fixes better than ever. Google has launched a code repository, prompting grand-daddy Sourceforge.net to zoot up its offering, while new search engine Krugle offers a new way to find code.