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Launched in January 2004, OSCAR looks at developing an open source weed identification software for the major weed species of Rice-Wheat crop systems which can be deployed on Simputers. The application will address extension workers, farmers/farmer groups, students in the Indo-Gangetic plains. The application will have 50 weed species in the database, their botanical characteristics, their incidence and ways to control them on field. It will also be ported in local languages like Hindi, Urdu and Bangla (if necessary in Punjabi and Nepali). The activities are designed in such a way that on one hand, the botanical/taxonomic work proceeds to enrich the database of weed species by collecting photographs for each character of every species, drawing the identikit and on the other hand, the development work progresses simultaneously benefiting from the botanical work.

The Ohio Linux Fest event schedule has been posted! The event is scheduled for Saturday, October 1, 2005 Columbus, Ohio and Chris Hicks from IBM is doing the opening Key Note. The event, by the way, is still FREE (as in beer). Enjoy!

As a software developer (one who works in C or C++), how would you respond to a move by OpenOffice.org to opensource the OpenOffice code by releasing it under the GNU General Public License (presently the software comes under the SISSL and LGPL)?

Your group has been tapped to come up with a new process. How do you effectively record and organize your team's ideas in those critical first meetings? Make flowcharts with Draw? Post-It Notes? Or use your laptop and a program called Freemind.

Technology vendors strive for lock-in. They lock us in with obvious tricks, such as Microsoft with its file formats, a monopoly mechanism as pervasive as its Windows desktop control. They control us with digital rights management (DRM, more properly called digital restrictions management) schemes that force us to break the law to make backups or even to quote from other works. They forbid us from tweaking or substituting, as ink-jet printer companies try to do when they misuse copyright laws to make life hard for other companies that want to sell us cheaper ink. They create cartels and impose rules like the DVD regional coding scheme, which keeps us from watching a movie we buy in Europe on a DVD player we bought in the U.S. Governments do their part. They use regulations to keep vital technology from becoming ubiquitous, such as the U.S. government's export-control restrictions that still give most e-mail messages all the data security of postcards. It just goes on and on.

Palm may buy back software spin-off PalmSource, according to rumors that have caused a 20 percent spike in the company's stock price, BargainPDA says. Unclear is how such an acquisition would affect PalmSource's focus on Linux mobile phones. PalmSource has struggled for the last year, after failing to interest PDA and phone vendors in Cobalt, its attempt at a multi-tasking successor to the venerable Palm OS. Long the marketshare leader for PDA OSes, Palm OS was supplanted in 2004 by Microsoft Windows CE in 2004, according to Gartner. At the same time, Palm OS benefits from a robust third-party software ecosystem and a tremendous amount of legacy vertical market software -- the single most important factor in PDA buyer considerations, according to Handango. Another bright spot for PalmSource has been industry reaction to the news that the company would embrace Linux, transitioning its Garnet and Cobalt APIs to libraries running on top of Linux. PalmSource executives Michael Kelley and John Cook said that the news actually increased interest in Cobalt, as well as doubling the number of attendees expected at the company's annual developer conference this year.

The European Parliament should pass a resolution urging the European Patent Office to ensure that it complies with the existing rules on the patentability of computer-related inventions, according to leading campaigner Florian Mueller. Mueller, founder of Nosoftwarepatents.com, was prominent in the debate over Europe's proposed patent Directive earlier this year. In an guest column today on EUobserver.com, he argues that the Parliament should also call upon the European Commission to start a new legislative process on the controversial issue.

Microsoft's annual Form 10K, filed late last week with the Securities and Exchange Commisson, included this new addition in a passage on the competition faced by the company's PC Windows division: "Competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating system products." For the record, that appears to be the first reference to the Mozilla Firefox browser as a competitive risk factor any Microsoft SEC filing. See Microsoft's 10K from last year for comparison. Also note that it's no longer plain old Internet Explorer -- it's "the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating system products." That follows the trend seen with the recent unveiling of the new "Windows Internet Explorer" logo. Having survived its U.S. antitrust case without unbundling the browser from Windows, the company is apparently trying to drive home its controversial position that the browser is not a separate product but rather a Windows feature. (See also Mary Jo Foley's earlier post on that topic.)

Columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols makes no bones about it: he loves Linux. "But Linux isn't for everybody," he says. In fact, he concedes, there are reasons to avoid a switch from Windows to Linux. "I use it on my servers, I use it on my desktops, and I use it on my entertainment center, where it powers my HDTV TiVo and my D-Link DSM-320 media player, which turns my network into a media library with terabytes of storage," Vaughan-Nichols writes at Linux-Watch.com. "Heck, I even run Linux on my Linksys WRT54G Wi-Fi access points, which hook the whole shebang together. "But Linux isn't for everyone. Seriously. Here are my top five reasons why you shouldn't move to Linux . . ." Huh? Yes, Linux-lover Vaughan-Nichols states it clearly: Linux is too complicated. It is a pain to set up. It doesn't have enough applications. It isn't secure. It's more expensive. But wait! There's more to the story than this. To find out how Vaughan-Nichols explains himself, read the full column at Linux-Watch.com, here.

You just got back from vacation, and the scenic vistas of Black Canyon of the Gunnison and sunset on the Ganges that seemed so awe-inspiring in person look flat and forgettable now that you're home looking at them on your monitor or, worse yet, on 4x6-inch prints. Open source software has some tools that can make your images come alive.

Vim, or "vi improved," is an open source text editor for multiple platforms. This article gives an overview of vim's latest improvements over vi.

If you learn Rexx, you’ll know a scripting language that runs everywhere from mainframes to handhelds—and everything in between. This article shows you why the Rexx scripting language is faster than developing code in traditional languages like C++, Java, or COBOL. If you want to learn a quick way to develop database scripts, start here. Rexx scripts not only manipulates DB2 data in the same manner as traditional languages, it can issue DB2 commands and use the administrative API to manage and control all aspects of DB2.

Friends of Mount Rainier Library will be giving away books, including hundreds graciously donated by the former Riverdale Bookstore. We have mysteries, classics, popular novels, nonfiction, and much more. FOL seeks further donations, especially children's books and books in Spanish. Everyone, especially those who may not find everything they want, are strongly encouraged to get a FREE county library card that day and get the rest of their favorite books through the Mount Rainier Public Library for FREE!

A complete identity management solution comprises a number of components. As such, it would be difficult for any single open source project to offer a plug-and-play identity management system. There are, however, a number of projects that offer components of such a system, particularly in the area of federation and SSO (single sign-on).

Sales of servers grew by 5.6 per cent in the most recent quarter to $12.2bn, according to a new study from analyst firm IDC. This marked a ninth consecutive quarter growth for the server market.

The KDE Users and Administrators Conference has finished after two successful days of talks, discussion and partying. Highlights from today include Boudewijn Rempt's Krita talk (PDF transcript) and Dirk Müller's update on Firefox/KDE integration. Transcripts for some of the talks are now available and unprocessed videos are being uploaded though edited versions will be available later. Over the weekend there have been several spontanious BoF meetings with initial brainstorming for KDE 4 including the control centre, script languages and IPC. The photos page has an increasing number of snapshots linked. Monday sees the start of the two day KDE Developers and Contributors Conference, live video streaming will be available from Fluendo's streaming server, see the schedule for exciting talks yet to come.

When Jorg Janke had trouble finding customers to buy his business management software, he took what at the time was a novel step: He started giving it away. The counterintuitive move attracted curious users who began experimenting with the free software, suggesting improvements and offering their own fixes for trouble spots. Some of the testers eventually became customers, using the software to help their companies coordinate inventory, orders and accounting.

I remember when I first heard about MEPIS. It seems as if I blinked, and all of a sudden everyone was talking about it. It's still less than two years old, and even MEPIS founder Warren Woodford says in this interview that he is surprised by the astronomic popularity of MEPIS.

LinuxChix Africa, a non-governmental organisation for women in open source, aims to promote awareness and use of free and open source software (FOSS) at a Software Freedom Day celebration on 10 September.

New take on simplifying chaos of open-source realm connects programmers to continuous stream of relevant software updates.