Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The Linux Foundation has announced sessions for its Collaboration Summit, scheduled for Apr. 14-16 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. This year's event features a full-day workgroup on MeeGo, as well as discussions of Linux topics including toolchain, cloud computing, printing, filesystems, ISV porting, and open source compliance.

Social networking and voting site Digg is rewriting its underlying software infrastructure in an effort to improve performance and scalability. Part of that effort involves moving away from the MySQL database that has helped to power Digg since its creation. In MySQL's place, Digg is going with an open source NoSQL non-relational database called Cassandra that was originally created by Facebook. As part of the migration effort from MySQL to Cassandra, Digg developers built a tool to help move data from one database to the other. The tool could soon be open source, helping other developers make the same move.

On Sunday at SCALE 8x, Inkscape developer Jon Cruz presented a talk entitled "Why Color Management matters to Open Source and to You," putting the need for color management into real-world terms for the average Linux user, outlining current development work on the subject at the application and toolkit levels, and giving example color-managed workflows for print and web production. Color management is sometimes unfairly characterized as a topic of interest only to print shops and video editors, but as Cruz explained at the top of his talk, anyone who shares digital content wants it to look correct, and everyone who uses more than one device knows how tricky that can be.

Open Source For America (OSFA), an organisation created to promote the use of open source in government, has denounced the IIPA's "Special 301" call saying it is irresponsible and misleading. The International Intellectual Property Association (IIPA) had called for the US Trade Representative to place countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and India, on a "Special 301" watch list, normally reserved for dictatorships or repressive regimes, because the governments advocate the use of open source. OSFA say that this request is "both irresponsible and misleading in its characterisation of OSS".

Firefox 3.6—the latest version of the popular open source Web browser—was officially released in January, but there are still many users who have not yet updated. In an effort to increase awareness about the availability of version 3.6, Mozilla announced today that it will start rolling out upgrade notifications to its users through the browser's built-in update system. According to Mozilla's statistics, the new version has already been downloaded over 100 million times since its release in January. That doesn't include the significant number of existing users who have already migrated to 3.6 by using the browser's built-in upgrade system without being prompted to do so.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at a conference in Abu Dhabi this week, confirmed that the Chrome OS operating system is on track for delivery in the second half of this year. While we already know that it’s headed for netbooks, there are new reasons to believe that its brightest future may be as an adjunct OS on netbooks and tablets. Google is taking several big gambles with its upcoming OS, not the least of which is that it will require users to work with all data in the cloud. That will rule out countless applications and utilities that are, in some cases, beloved to users, and there is a good chance that Google’s cloud-only gamble could backfire. But what if Google adopts an “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy with its Linux-based operating system, and oversees its shipment on netbooks and tablet devices alongside other OSes? If the idea sounds far-fetched, check out the video below from Mobile World Congress, in which Freescale shows a $199 tablet computer concept that runs Chromium OS (the open-source core of Chrome OS), Linux and Android.

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) allows you to log into a full desktop on a remote server (as opposed to just opening windows on your local machine, as with X11 over SSH). It can be very useful, and it's very fast to set up.

The Linux Foundation has announced sessions for its Collaboration Summit, scheduled for Apr. 14-16 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. This year's event features a full-day workgroup on MeeGo, as well as Linux sessions ranging from cloud computing to desktop distros to open source compliance.

Canonical is burying Ubuntu's traditional brown theme and is adopting a new visual style for version 10.04, which is scheduled for release in April. The new theme was revealed last week as part of Canonical's broader effort to overhaul Ubuntu's branding and visual identity. The new theme includes a richer color palette and a number of stylistic enhancements. The change that has generated the most controversy is the placement of the window management buttons in the left-hand side of the titlebar. In response to some of the concerns that have been raised by users, Canonical designer Ivanka Majic has written a blog entry that describes the reasons behind the change. Majic is also seeking additional feedback from the Ubuntu community.

The CE Linux Forum (CELF) has opened registration and announced speakers for its Embedded Linux Conference on Apr. 12-14 in San Francisco. The event will feature keynote speakers Greg Kroah-Hartman and Matt Asay, and offer over 50 sessions on embedded Linux topics including flash file-systems, RT-Preempt, security, Moorestown, and Android.

As Phyllis Diller would attest, a face lift isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most things — legalese included — can use a good going over from time to time, and that's just what the good people at Mozilla will be doing this year. The face being lifted, as it were, is the well-known Mozilla Public License, the legal agreement that covers use of the organization's many software projects. The original MPL, version 1.0, was released some twelve years ago, the result of what Mozilla Foundation Chair Mitchell Baker describes as "frantic drafting." A second version (1.1) followed, and continues to be the license in force for Mozilla users everywhere.

Former Sun chief open source officer Simon Phipps is joining the Open Source Initiative (OSI) board effective April 1st. Let's hope Phipps can shake the organization up a bit. I'd hazard a guess that many newcomers to the open source community are partially or even wholly unaware of the OSI and what it's meant to do, because the OSI has not been a terribly dynamic organization over the past few years. The OSI is considered the steward of the Open Source Definition (OSD), and is the body that approves new open source licenses. But its influence has been considerably on the wane for some time now.

From the forthcoming version 4.1, Google is doing away with the Chrome feature which has attracted the most criticism: unique IDs. Until now, this token has been stored in the user_experience_metrics.user_id key in the User DataLocal State file in the Chrome installation folder. Supplementing other measures to improve the browser's reputation for data protection, in a white paper on Chrome data protection, Google has announced that it will in future delete the token once Google Chrome runs and checks for updates the first time. From version 4.1, the allegedly anonymous ID will only be used to report successful installation of the browser to Google.

Shuttle announced a Barebone XS35 nettop equipped with a dual-core Intel Atom D510, and Nvidia Ion 2 graphics. Meanwhile NewEgg is selling a Linux-equipped Eee Box B202 nettop for only $189, and the Eee PC-oriented Eeebuntu distro is moving from Ubuntu to Debian with EB 4.0.

Mini is designed to work on less-capable phones with smaller screens, slower network connections, and less-sophisticated user interface abilities. Version 5 offers support for features including Speed Dial, which is a grid of favorite Web pages, compression through Opera's servers to speed download of Web pages that aren't tailored for mobile phones, and tabbed browsing.

If you’re a Linux user, you’ve likely come across Git at some point, perhaps while trying to download a new program or looking into version control systems like CVS or Subversion. Git is the revision control system created by the Linux kernel’s famous Linus Torvalds due to a lack of satisfaction with existing solutions. The main emphasis in the design was on speed, or more specifically, efficiency. Git addresses many of the shortcomings of previous systems, and does it all in a lot less time.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has elected Simon Phipps to the board of directors; Phipps recently left Oracle after serving as Sun's Chief Open Source Officer. He will take up his new position on the OSI board from April 1st. In a blog posting confirming the appointment, Phipps says he is "honoured and delighted" to take up the position on the board of an organisation which "still plays a very important and relevant role in the world of software freedom".

By a remarkable vote of 633 to 13, the Parliament rebuked European negotiators who have been drafting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in a series of confidential meetings around the globe. No version of the document has been disclosed by the participants, which include the United States, the European Commission, Japan, and Canada. Parliament's resolution demands that the European Commission--the EU's executive branch--grant "public access" to the ACTA documents. If the negotiations are not sufficiently transparent, the resolution says, Parliament "reserves its right" to take legal action.

[Three cheers for openness! - Sander]

I’m a sucker for a cool space wallpaper, and judging by the images I find online, so are many of you. Creating a cool space scene can be done in a few minutes once you’ve got the basic method down, and Gimp provides several ways to go about adding random elements to keep things interesting. In this guide we’ll cover a 10 minute method to creating a galactic landscape that may not win you any awards but will certainly add some depth to your desktop. If you do not already have Gimp (available by default in current Ubuntu versions) it’s freely available for download here for Windows, Linux, and Mac. This tutorial will be using Gimp 2.6.7.

More than 100,000 app developers have reportedly signed the iPhone Development Program License Agreement allowing them write software for the iPhone, however few people outside the inner circle of developers have ever seen the documents thanks to a non-disclosure clause included in the agreement.When NASA released the NASA App for iPhone, The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) seized the opportunity to get a copy from the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act. The EFF scoured the pages and released a fascinating look at the agreement, teasing out some of its finer points for closer inspection.