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RALEIGH – Red Hat will soon no longer have to say “Nyet!” (no) but "Da!" (yes) to Russian speakers seeking extensive support in their native language for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Computer Associates International, Inc. today pledged open access to key innovations covered by 14 of its U.S. patents -- and counterparts of these patents issued in other countries -- for individuals and groups working on open source software. CA also announced it has reached a long-term, patent cross license agreement with IBM, creating an exchange of license rights and releases between the companies. In making its patent pledge to the open source community, CA is joining IBM in encouraging other companies to create an industry-wide "patent commons" in which patents are pledged royalty-free to further innovation in areas of broad interest to developers and users of information technology. IBM made a similar pledge earlier this year.

MontaVista Linux Professional Edition 4.0 (Pro 4.0) integrates the latest Linux 2.6 kernel with the most advanced hard real-time capabilities required to develop a wide range of embedded products, from networking and communications, aerospace and defense to consumer devices and medical electronics. Multiple industry analyst firms, including Venture Development Corporation (VDC), have sized the 2004 embedded software market at approximately $1 billion. Although this market has traditionally been served by a variety of real-time operating system (RTOS) products, VDC’s Embedded Software Strategic Market Intelligence Program 2004 reports Linux is clearly on the rise, now commanding the largest share of current projects by more than 50 percent over the largest proprietary RTOS.

Despite its name, ThinkFree Office 3.0 is a proprietary office suite. Written in Java, it has found a niche on the Windows and Macintosh platforms, especially in China, Korea, and Japan. It comprises three applications: Write, a word processor; Calc, a spreadsheet; and Show, a presentation program; as well as a separate Setup program. It is available in both desktop and intranet server editions. Recently, its developers released a GNU/Linux version. Unfortunately, judging from the pre-release code that I reviewed, the results are subpar.

Lukasz Kosewski provided an update on his efforts to create a hotswap infrastructure for libATA, allowing the driver to properly handle hotplug interrupts. He notes that along with the generic infrastructure he plans to include, "a specific implementation of this infrastructure in the Promise SATA150 and SATAII150 line of controllers." He began working on this in late July, noting that at this time drivers for the formentioned hard drives "mostly work", and he has continued to clean up the infrastructure based on suggestions from libATA author Jeff Garzik [story]. Lukasz went on to note, "once the infrastructure is accepted, anyone with a hotswap-unsupported controller and some time on their hands will easily be able to integrate hotswap in; that is the whole goal of an infrastructure." He added that alternatively if provided with a controller and documentation, "I will add the support and test the b'jesus out of it".

Jeff Garzik commented, "once the infrastructure is there, I'll probably add support for several controllers myself." He went on to explain that some controllers don't have an explicit hotplug interrupt, but can still support hotswapping. Alan Cox [interview] was concerned about Parallel ATA (IDE) support, "for PATA we may need to reprogram both drives so please be sure that is allowed for. Also much PATA is 'warm swap' not 'hot swap' as we have to perform actions in software prior to the swap."

Stories about Microsoft losing ground to Linux in China are overblown, says Tim Chen, chief executive of Microsoft China. Instead, Microsoft likes to cast gains against Linux as evidence that China's technology industry is maturing and moving toward the proprietary-software approach championed by Microsoft. China is an important battleground in Microsoft's competition with Linux and open-source software because of the country's size, its influence on the tech industry and growing pool of software developers. Three of Asia's leading Linux vendors, including Beijing-based Red Flag Software, recently released a new version of their Asianux 2.0 server platform. But Chen asserts that Microsoft is gaining ground in the country's booming business-software market, and said changes are under way. "I think Linux in China really has an issue with their business model," Chen said. "Linux, the Chinese companies, are not making money."

'You get it all with Linux, there's no downsides', according to a government procurement official in New South Wales

In an address to delegates at a New South Wales Department of Commerce exhibition on Wednesday, official Cameron Parle touted the benefits of open source to state departments and agencies, at one stage referring to wearing his own metaphorical "red hat", a reference to the Linux vendor of the same name. "There's no doubt you can deploy Linux in any situation, it's truly robust and flexible," he said.

On virtually any street in Shanghai or Beijing, you can buy a Hollywood DVD or hot new CD for $1 or less. Vendors peddle Microsoft Office, Windows XP, and every other popular software applications out of cardboard boxes jammed full of discs. Entire markets in the major cities are dedicated to selling knock-offs of designer goods for pennies on the dollar. If you're interested in high finance, $200,000 worth of annual derivatives data is available from online vendors for $500 a year. According to Jones Day intellectual property rights lawyer Xiang Wang, the Chinese case law on many aspects of intellectual property rights is not yet well developed, and cases can take years to settle. The Business Software Alliance—a trade group including software giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and IBM—alleges that 90 percent of all software used in China is pirated and that software vendors suffered $3.5 billion in losses last year due to Chinese piracy. The Chinese government has started to realize that this is an obstacle to economic development. And if anybody pays attention to economic development these days, it's China. Now, China is beginning to look at open source software as a way out of the intellectual property quagmire that doesn't involve paying high costs. Linux is a keystone in this strategy.

The South Korean postal service is migrating around 4,700 desktop computers from Microsoft Windows to Linux. The migration is expected to save the government-run organisation 850 million won (£450,000) per year, according to an article in The Korea Times last week. The computers, which are in 2,800 post office branches, are provided to allow the public to access the internet free of charge. Korea Post also plans to be using Linux for its internet banking and payment system by the end of the year, according to the report. The South Korean government has funded a number of open source initiatives over the last few years. In 2003, the government announced a plan to replace a significant proportion of proprietary software on PCs and servers with open source alternatives by 2007. Earlier this year, the government said it would provide more than £1.5m to government agencies to encourage them to adopt open source software.

Although the city of Munich aims to deploy as much open-source software as possible, it has no intention of abolishing Microsoft products altogether, according to Schiessl. "We will continue to use the company's products in areas where it makes more economic sense, for instance, to run department-specific applications on Windows than on Linux. Contrary to what many people have said and written about our decision to use open-source software, we have no political mandate against Microsof

New version of the popular free software desktop environment offers convenience and capability.

Software Freedom Day (South Africa) is almost upon us, and there are plenty of geeky events happening around the country and the continent, intended to spread the good news of free software and introduce non-geeks to the welcoming world of open source.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Microsoft Corp. has filed a second appeal against a European Union ruling ordering it to share code with open-source software companies, officials said Wednesday. The company's spokesman Tom Brookes said the new appeal before the EU's second-highest court comes in the wake of a June agreement with the EU head office to let the courts decide the source code issue. He said Microsoft planned to defend its view that the interoperability protocols -- server software which helps Windows-powered computers communicate with other computers and software -- are Microsoft's intellectual property and should not be shared or given away for free.

Bob Sutor, IBM's Vice President of Standards and Open Source, just release his comment to The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On behalf of IBM, Mr. Sutor says, "We support the recommended guidelines, especially the technology specifications for the OASIS Open Document Format."

Within the context of Microsoft's spastic, flailing response to desktop-neutralizing events from both Google and The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Dave Rosenberg has posted an interesting (Freudian) analysis of Microsoft's behavior.

Version 2.12 of desktop for Linux and Unix is released with two new applications, a new theme engine and improved multimedia performance.

Ten days of presentations, workshops, and chaotic coding sponsored by Trolltech, Novell/SUSE, HP, the local governments of Andalucia, and Malaga can only mean one thing: aKademy 2005, the KDE community's annual conference. Held in Malaga, Spain, aKademy 2005 included a Users and Administrators Conference, a Developer Conference and a Coding Marathon. Users, developers, and local visitors with an interest in open technology were treated to a display of stable desktop software and glimpses of cutting-edge innovations to come.

Latest Edition Is the First to Include Input From the Recently Launched openSUSE Project

Apache 2 offers a number of new features and improvements over the Apache 1.3 series, but the upgrade can seem daunting to those who haven't had much (or any) experience with Apache 2. I recently had to go through an upgrade from Apache 1.3 to Apache 2.0 on Debian Sarge, and it's not as difficult as you might think.