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The Linux Box is proud to announce that we have already launched the second phase of our contest. The dust has barely had a chance to settle from the first phase in which it was decided that PCLinuxOS and MEPIS were cowinners for which distributions the rest of this multiphasic contest would be based around. You can find a full press release here announcing the winners of Phase I.

Linux seller Red Hat and chipmaker Intel have released prototype Linux software to support a security technology designed to curtail the spread of viruses.

Ingo Molnar has announced the availability of the following kernel patch, nx-2.6.7-rc2-bk2-AE , which makes use of the 'NX' x86 feature pioneered in AMD64 CPUs and for which support has also been announced by Intel. (other x86 CPU vendors, Transmeta and VIA announced support as well. Windows support for NX has also been announced by Microsoft, for their next service pack.) The NX feature is also being marketed as 'Enhanced Virus Protection'. This patch makes sure Linux has full support for this hardware feature on x86 too.

"Customers don't want lock-in slavery anymore," argues David Mohring. Sun should, he says, open-source license the J2SE, J2EE, and J2ME framework libraries and release a fork of the Solaris Kernel under the GPL license.

Shortly before releasing the first version of Asia’s first and only standardised Linux OS, Oracle has announced the formation of a new business unit focused on Linux in the Asia-Pacific.

Network Associates,the provider of intrusion prevention solutions, announced the availability of McAfee LinuxShield, providing anti-virus protection for Linux-based platforms. "Most new viruses, worms, and blended threats are targeted at Microsoft operating systems, but invade the enterprise via a series of non-Microsoft platforms such as routers, firewalls, and Linux platforms," said Eric Hemmendinger, research director, security and privacy, Aberdeen Group.

"I think they're wasting their time," Harvard Research Group vice president of Linux strategy Bill Claybrook told LinuxInsider. "If they had released the source code for Solaris four to five years ago, like they first talked about, ... and directed it to Intel, they would have killed Linux, because right now Solaris is a better operating system than Linux."

Will they, won't they? Yesterday, Sun's own Java technology evangelist was being reported as having said they would; now Java co-creator James Gosling - and almost everyone else in Santa Clara who came in contact with the media - says Sun won't be open-sourcing Java. Not yet anyway - though it's under fierce and continuing debate within the company.

A "gift economy" is a social system in which status is given by how much one shares or gives to one's community, as opposed to an "exchange economy" where status is given to those who own or control the most stuff. In today's world we're used to the latter economic philosophy, as it has been closely affiliated with the capitalist system since at least the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the corporation. But the Industrial Age is over -- this is the Information Age now, and things are changing.

Linux seller Red Hat and chipmaker Intel released prototype Linux software this week to support a security technology designed to curtail the spread of viruses.

Microsoft's new policy for licensing its patents has supporters of open-source software worried that the company will use a broken government system for protecting intellectual property to beat back gains Linux and other competing software have made in the marketplace.

This was a letter I recently wrote to Sun's head of global communications, Russ Castronovo, after reading his interview with Chuck Talk on orangecrate.com, and then reading the ongoing pro-/anti-Mono arguments over at PlanetGnome. Now that Sun seems to be on the brink of making the decision to open-source Java (or not to), I thought it would be an appropriate time to take action.

The entire Mozilla community is waiting with breathless anticipation as we wait for news of when Firefox 0.9 will be released. Many wonder how much more the project will go behind schedule.

Since the SCO Group began threatening to sue organizations that run Linux, some commercial Linux vendors have stepped forward to assure customers that they would protect their interests should the court find in SCO's favor. While it's still an open question whether anyone will ever need such indemnification, major vendors Novell, Hewlett-Packard, and Red Hat have programs in place to protect their customers.