Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

First, the complaint. We'll have to wait for the answer to know specifically what Google's defenses are, but I know some of you are asking why the GPL isn't blocking Oracle's copyright claims, at a minimum, let alone the patents. Because Google apparently didn't use the GPL'd version. We'll see if Google's clean room workaround stands up. I'm sure they considered their steps super carefully, but as we saw in the SCO saga, you can still get sued even if a plaintiff is pretty sure he'll lose in the end. I am puzzled why corporations that understand so much about openness still struggle with the GPL. It would protect you, you know. Oracle distributes Linux, after all. Think about it.

Just as LinuxCon ended, Oracle announced that it has filed suit for patent and copyright infringement against Google for its implementation of Android; as an Oracle spokesperson said, “In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement … Android (including without limitation the Dalvik VM and the Android software development kit) and devices that operate Android infringe one or more claims of each of United States Patents Nos. 6,125,447; 6,192,476; 5,966,702; 7,426,720; RE38,104; 6,910,205; and 6,061,520.” (some more details in the copy of Oracle complaint). Apart from the slight cowardice of waiting after LinuxCon for announcing it, the use of the Boies Schiller legal team (the same of SCO) would be ironic on its own (someone already is calling the company SCOracle).

The latest release of Puppy Linux, version 5.1, is codenamed "Lucid Puppy" as it is now binary compatible with the packages available for Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx. The announcement and release notes say that because of this compatibility the time now taken to produce "packages that are tested and configured for Lucid Puppy is extremely short". Lucid Puppy can now be downloaded (direct download) as a 130MB Live CD ISO file. Work on Puppy Linux 5.1 has focussed on improving the "lean and fast" distributions user interface, with friendlier dialogues and enhanced graphics, along with upgrading the many packages and tools of the distribution.

Over the past few days there's been a lot of discussion surrounding our announcement of a policy proposal on network neutrality we put together with Verizon. On balance, we believe this proposal represents real progress on what has become a very contentious issue, and we think it could help move the network neutrality debate forward constructively.

As a society, we are all about numbers -- How much, how far, how fast. In IT, it is all a numbers game. Teraflops to compare computing power, TPC results to compare databases, analyst numbers to compare penetration -- We are all about the numbers. And as a wise man once said, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. And after sitting through not one but two presentations about the numbers, I am more convinced than ever that numbers are best left to the accountants.

At the Linux Foundation's annual LinuxCon event this week, Columbia University law professor and Software Freedom Law Center founder Eben Moglen explained that the prospects for software patent reform are bleak and that the time has come for the free software community to start finding ways to solve its patent problems by using the patent system itself.

Android is a great little mobile operating system for the modern smartphone, but it can feel a little bewildering and complex to the newcomer. Google's quest to make everyone feel at home by providing layer upon layer of option screens and hundreds of tweakable settings can leave people a little lost, plus there's your widgets to worry about, the Home screen layout and much more hidden beneath Google's green bonnet.

In October of 2000, IBM CEO Louis Gerstner announced that the company would investing $1 billion in Linux development. This announcement came off the heels of two substantial developments in the industry. Google, unknown at the time, appeared with Linux servers in 1998, and Dell announced they would begin pre-installing Linux on select servers in 1999. A few years later in 2004, Big Blue made a formal declaration of sorts in a series of television commercials that culminated with a commercial that aired during Super Bowl XXXVIII, announcing their commitment to a partnership with the Linux community. While intended as a signal to their competitors and the market at large, the message had an unexpected effect on an unexpected audience.

F-spot, shotwell, solang -- some distros are arguing about what should be the default "simpler than GIMP" image editor. But there's one that never seems to get mentioned and deserves a look: fotoxx. Despite a name that sounds like a wrinkle treatment, this little image editor is lightweight and doesn't have many dependencies -- great for a netbook or other modest machine. And it's jam-packed with great features.

KDE software has traditionally been strongest in Europe and South America. With the growth of events such as Camp KDE and many key contributors calling North America home, KDE is increasing its presence in this region. Among upcoming highlights, KDE will be at Ohio Linux Fest on September 10-12 later this year.

The debate about "open core" has reignited in the open source community; "Open core" is where a vendor has a core of open source software which they sell with their own, proprietary, closed source extensions. Some of these vendors, such as SugarCRM and Eucalyptus describe themselves as open source companies, but critics point out that they have proprietary code providing important or essential features. This, the companies say, is a business model which attracts venture capital and creates revenue streams.

After several delays and many months behind schedule, Debian 6.0 appears to be one step closer to release. As of August 6, the testing branch is now frozen except for fixes and translation updates. This puts Final on track to possibly be released by the end of the year.

It’s been a bumper beta 24 hours here on the brewing-browsers El Reg desk, after Google shoved out a Chrome 6.0.472.33 build yesterday. A developer build of Chrome 6 has been available since June, and now Google has effectively promoted most of that code to beta status for Windows, Mac and Linux fans. But there are exceptions.

Besides features like SystemD replacing SysVInit and a much faster JPEG compression/decompression library, one of the other proposals for Fedora 14 was to actually ship it on time. Red Hat's Fedora project has had a poor track record lately of shipping their alpha, beta, and final releases on time and none of the past five releases at least have actually made it out on their due date. John Poelstra, the Fedora Program Manager, sought to change this with Fedora 14, but the entire release schedule has already slipped.

One the coolest file systems in User Space has got to be GlusterFS. It has a very unique architecture that allows it to be configured for specific storage requirements and scenarios. It can be used as a high-performance parallel file system, or a cloud based file system, or even a simple NFS server. All of this in user-space. Could GlusterFS represent the future of file system development for Linux?

New Versions of the KDE Development Platform, the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, and many applications are released today with the version number 4.5.0. The KDE team focused on the usability, performance and stability of many previously introduced new features and technologies. Below, find the 3 separate announcements for each of KDE's products: The Development Platform, the Applications Compilation and the Plasma Workspaces.

Linux is broadly available on mobile devices, but competing implementations could lead to problems down the road for developers and confusion for customers, according to a Qualcomm executive.

Make no mistake about it: Open source developers can be a very passionate bunch. At the LinuxCon conference, the topic of why Google Android code is not part of Linux was the subject of some intense discussion. One such discussion became so heated that a panelist wound up telling a combative audience member to "shut up" before asking them to leave.

While Linux 2.6.36 development continues apace, a number of new stable releases iron out various quirks in previous versions. New versions of PowerTop and graphics drivers for AMD and NVIDIA graphics chips offer numerous enhancements and bug fixes.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is preparing a "Zeen" Android e-reader that interfaces with a new HP printer, says an industry report. Meanwhile, HP has postponed its WebOS-based "Hurricane" tablet to 1Q 2011, and the company -- beleaguered by the recent resignation of CEO Mark Hurd -- lost the lead designer of the WebOS-based Palm Pre, say reports.