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In October 2003, Randy Lastinger, director of network operations for National Background Data, made himself so valuable to the company that it had to quit using Linux. That's right. His bosses hired Lastinger, a seasoned open source veteran, to rescue them from the typical security woes associated with Microsoft products. They wanted out of the closed source environment. Lastinger fixed them up -- but then the company realized that if Lastinger went away there was no one there who could do anything with the Linux configuration.

A recent disagreement on the linux-usb-devel mailing list ultimately led to the removal of the Philips webcam driver known as 'pwc'. The driver contains two modules, an open source module that has long been part of the mainline Linux kernel, and a closed source module which ships separately. Craig Rogers explained on the lkml that the closed source module ships in object format and "provides decompression services for proprietary codecs that are used for higher-resolution modes in some Web cameras based on this chip family." A hook in the open-source module allows the compression module to register with the kernel.

Wednesday at aKademy provided KDE hackers with their first day without a special focus. The KDE PIM (Personal Information Management) developers had a discussion session, I led a Quality Team session on media and promotion work, and the usability playing ground continued; otherwise, developers roamed around chatting, hacking, partying and sleeping (a little). And if that didn't satisfy the KDE developer, he could always take some time out for one of three consecutive dinners or celebrate his exam results.

XPde is a Linux desktop that looks so frighteningly close to Windows XP I didn't recognize it as other than XP itself. From the XPde website: "It's a complete desktop environment for Linux on x86. It tries to make easier for Windows XP users to use a Linux box. Nothing more, no clipboard compatibility between Gtk and Qt applications, no emulation of Windows applications, no unification on the widgets of X applications, just a desktop environment." Well, you just have to see it to believe it. Here come the screenshots.

Novell Asia has urged the Philippine government to take a closer look at Linux, citing that adopting the open source operating system would be crucial to safeguarding the security and integrity of its computer networks.

ActivMedia has increased the computing power in its Debian Linux powered surveillance robot between 4 and 6 times, while raising power consumption marginally, according to SBC (single board computer) supplier VersaLogic, which will demonstrate the $30,000 "PatrolBot" at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston next month.

Developers of KDE have announced plans to simplify searching for files on the open-source Linux desktop environment by adding a Google-style search feature.

Peripheral maker LaCie released on Thursday a mobile hard drive loaded with MandrakeSoft's version of the Linux operating system.

There are a number of promising technical papers under consideration by the Internet Engineering Task Force which deal with the ever-growing problem of spam. Most of them seek to attack the spam problem obliquely rather than head on. These techniques avoid looking at message content in an attempt to determine if an email is spam or not. Instead, they focus on authenticating the sender. Since most spam comes from forged email addresses, eliminating such forgery would be a big step up in the fight against spam. In this article we'll look at the evolution of the current Sender ID proposals, and we'll also examine some of the non-technical barriers which might prevent any of the proposed solutions from ever working.

Telstra's recent cut-price desktop software deal with Microsoft has rapidly made its way into the marketing arsenal of at least one enterprising open source vendor.

Server maker IBM Corp. and commercial Linux distributor Red Hat Inc. say that they have jumped through the rigorous Common Criteria security certifications used by the U.S. government (and particularly the Department of Defense) to certify if a particular server and operating system stack is secure enough for deployment in sensitive situations.

Premier Linux advocacy organization creates executive legal role to focus on industry issues affecting IP, patents and copyright

In part I we examined some of the issues facing FLOSS in Eastern Europe. In this article we'll look more closely at how interested parties keep the playing field uneven and discourage the adoption of FLOSS solutions that might be more appropriate for this part of the world.

With security holes to the left of us and program incompatibilities to the right, SP2 is giving corporate IT departments more reasons than ever to consider a move to Linux desktops.

A conversation with one of the founders of YHD Software, the company supplying Emergency Response Network systems to the FBI and DHS.

Writing about aKademy can begin to feel a little like writing a soap opera guide without the romance (so far). To save your patience, this report from the first two days of the coding marathon will focus largely on the scheduled content, and in particular on developments in accessibility, usability and local KDE groups. The coding marathon lasts for five days, in between the developer conference and the user conference, and allows the project's hackers to work solidly for just under a week under the same roof, and spend time discussing and working on practical issues. Alongside the marathon, a series of tutorials are being run by some of the top hackers and professionals in their fields.

One XML's many uses is creating documentation. XML is incredibly well suited to producing output in multiple formats -- everything from HTML to PDF to JavaHelp. The most popular variant of XML for creating documentation is DocBook, but for all its power and flexibility, DocBook is difficult to learn, and the DocBook toolchain can be tough to set up. Consider instead AurigaDoc, an XML-based document engine that can output more than 10 commonly used document formats. Unlike DocBook, AurigaDoc is simple to learn; it uses a small number of tags, and yet produces clean and attractive output.