Showing all newswire headlines

A controversial new partnership between the South African government and the world’s leading software company, Microsoft, is at the centre of a heated debate about the best way to roll out IT access to poor communities.

The memorandum of understanding signed by the Department of Communications parastatal the Universal Services Agency (USA) and Microsoft aims to roll out free Microsoft software and training to telecentres in all 284 municipalities over three years.

However, critics claim that the agreement contradicts the Cabinet-level open-source strategy that was approved in June 2003.

No matter how many strides Linux makes toward desktop acceptance, we're still a long way from the day when we'll see the free OS become a true drop-in replacement for the commercial systems we use now. Case in point: Last week, the folks at Novell were kind enough to send along a copy of their latest OS release, Suse Linux 10.0. I've always thought Suse had an edge over Red Hat in the UI department. Plus, Novell describes this edition of its product as a home-user version targeted at "hobbyists and enthusiasts." So, naturally, I figured I'd install it on my desktop PC at home.

A Stanford-designed robotic car has driven away with the $2M prize in the second DARPA Challenge, a 175-mile race for autonomous vehicles held this weekend in the Mojava desert south of Las Vegas. Four of 23 vehicles completed the course, including several that used Linux.

The Ubuntu 5.10 release, also known as Breezy Badger, is not drastically different from the previous Ubuntu release, 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog, but it is an excellent distribution that is well worth a look for any user interested in a Linux distro for the desktop or server.

It's hard to compete with "free."

Some rivals of Web search powerhouse Google Inc. have already learned that lesson. Now, companies in a broader set of industries are grappling with how Google's ad-fueled expansion could potentially make it harder for them to charge for consumer services and products.

For three decades, the executive leadership at Microsoft Corporation has maintained a firm consensus on how to encourage innovative software development: you pay for it. User feedback, while helpful, is simply no match for the mighty dollar. Cash for code is king. “Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?” asked Microsoft founder Bill Gates rhetorically in a 1976 missive framing Microsoft’s worldview. Titled, “An Open Letter to Hobbyists” (see the sidebar of the same name to read the original letter in its entirety), the essay was, in essence, a cease and desist letter aimed at Altair aficionados who, according to Gates, were guilty of purloining Microsoft source code without paying for it. “Most directly, the thing you do is theft,” wrote Gates.

The Open Document Fellowship was launched on Monday to add momentum to what appears to be a growing movement to support the open standard for the production, storage and dissemination of documents.

Security Enhanced Linux, or SELinux, is an exciting security project that is reaching maturity and poised to revolutionize the way Linux security administration is performed. Originally developed by the National Security Agency and released as an open source project, but now breaking into the mainstream in Red Hat, Fedora, Gentoo, and the new release of EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0, it incorporates Mandatory Access Control into a base Linux system. This is a revolutionary advance, but is also very different from the standard Linux security model. This week in Hacks From Pax, I'll provide a basic introduction to the philosophy behind SELinux, and explain how it can add a powerful layer of security to your Linux system.

A mainstream launch to include gold partners is slated for January.

Ole’ Gatesy has realized he has no chance of pushing Windows to the business market anymore. They have realized it’s only a matter of time before they lose the position to the Windows alternatives.

Mad Penguin will be running a series of three interviews with people who are in the trenches in the work to bring out OOo 2.0. The first of these interviews, with Florian Reuter, covers some of the differences between the truly open XML found in OOo 2.0, and the closed MS Word ML found in the upcoming Microsoft Office 12, as well as the importance of simple end users in the process of improving the code with bug reports.

Mozilla.org last week released the second and final preview of version 1.5 of the popular Firefox Web browser. Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 is now available for download by website and Web application developers, Firefox extension developers, and the early adopter community, Mozilla said.

In July 2005, Warrington contacted Sirius, a local IT consultancy that specializes in providing open source software solutions. By the end of the summer break, Sirius project manager John Spencer had helped the school replace the aging Windows network with a cutting-edge Linux thin-client network that consists of 28 workstations and a server running the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP). The new system cost less than £15,000, which Warrington estimates is about 60% of the cost of a Windows equivalent, with no expensive licensing fees.

According to Tech Web and some other on-line publications, "For the second time in three months, Firefox's share of the browser market slipped, a Web site analysis company said Monday."

I don't believe a word of it.

Debian users have always boasted that their Advanced Package Tool (APT) was the best and fastest way there has ever been to install and delete software. They were right, except for two details: First, many computer users are scared of the command line -- and APT is a command line utility. Second, even for users not afraid of the command line, setting download repositories and other parameters was not easy unless you spent enough of your time administering computers to remember all the text commands it took to make APT do what you wanted. Then came Synaptic, which promised to make Debian software installs GUI-friendly. Not long after that came a version of Synaptic that didn't crash every time I tried to use it. And finally, in late 2004, Synaptic became so lovable that I would no longer want to have a desktop computer without it.

With all the buying that Oracle's been doing lately, it would have been fairly easy to overlook the supposedly small acquisition the company made on Friday. In fact, it didn't seem worth posting about. However, as the discussions about the acquisition are spreading, this small deal could actually be a very big deal.

Oracles OpenSource Evangelist Omar Tazi has this to say

Enterprise-Class Security Analytics Solution Cost-Effectively Accelerates Compliance and Investigation

The analytics firm NetApplications has released its September 2005 numbers, and Firefox has declined in share for the second time this year.

Firefox is a relatively new Web browser and currently the most popular browser built on the Mozilla platform. Users like the security and convenience features it offers. Developers like the Firefox attention to standards compliance, inherited from its Mozilla roots. The most recent version, Firefox 1.5 (currently in beta), comes with many features for XML developers.

The Linux-Mobile-Guide explains installation methods for laptops and PDAs and configurations for different (network) environments, security issues for portable computers and much more. The new issue is Version 3.18, dated Oct 10, 2005