Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

How much would it cost the European Union to cobble together the Linux kernel from scratch? The development costs would reach over a billion euros (or about £900m, or $1.4bn USD), according to researchers from the University of Oviendo, Spain. Jesús García-García and Mª Isabel Alonso de Magdaleno are set to present this open source thought experiment at the European Union's Conference on Corporate R&D next month.

Almost exactly one month ago we reported that Roderick Colenbrander was working on a new open-source project after his once-popular NVClock program has since largely faded away. Details were scarce on the project originally, but we knew it was to do with Linux gaming. Today we now know that this project is called "Kwaak3" and it's a port of Quake 3 to Google's Android platform.

PCs running Ubuntu will be getting more social thanks to changes that will set the popular Linux distro's look and feel for the next five years. Lucid Lynx, due this April, will bring social applications like Twitter and Facebook directly into the software, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has said in an interview here.

For the past four years, the "brightest minds in Linux" have come together at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit to "tackle and solve the most pressing issues facing Linux today." The opportunity to solve is coming up quickly, and those who want in on the tackling had better move fast.

What was Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, thinking? Amazon just signed a patent cross-licensing deal that pays Microsoft intellectual property fees for, among other things, patents that cover Amazon's Linux-based Kindle e-reader and its Linux servers. Too bad Microsoft has never, ever been able to show that its patents cover anything to do with Linux. Microsoft claims that Linux and other open-source programs violate its patent rights. They've been making those claims for years. What's always been missing is proof.

Distro-hopping is easy and fun. Linux users distro-hop to solve problems and to try new software. But is it necessary? Haven't most Linux distributions reached a state of polish that makes distro-hopping unnecessary? Brian Proffitt wonders.

The Novell-sponsored OpenSUSE project released Milestone 2 of its OpenSUSE 11.3, featuring Linux 2.6.33, GNOME 2.3 beta, and a new network security stack. OpenSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2 also debuts the new KDE 4.4 desktop, which adds a netbook interface, plus new tabbing and social networking features.

The Open Source Automation Development Lab (OSADL) announced the release of the "Latest Stable" Linux mainline real-time kernel, based on Linux 2.6.31. The "PREEMPT RT"-based release will be demonstrated on Mar. 2-4 at Embedded World 2010 in Nuremberg, Germany, which offers a number of sessions on Linux and Android development.

Red Hat's community Linux has undergone a major development change, with the bleeding edge Rawhide splitting off to become its own branch. A look at what this means, and why it matters.

After a long weekend at SCaLE 8x with some of my favorite people, Linux Journal's Kyle Rankin, Bill Childers and Shawn Powers, I have officially become a huge fan of the annual Southern California Linux Expo. Shawn, Kyle and I had the opportunity to give talks at the conference, and were able to talk with many readers and meet lots of fellow open source enthusiasts. It is always gratifying to hear positive feedback from so many readers in person, and it is fun to see people all over the conference kicking back with a Linux Journal in hand.

Microsoft and Amazon.com have signed a wide-ranging patent cross-licensing agreement that provides each company with access to the other's patent portfolio. Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but it was made clear that Amazon will be paying Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money as part of the arrangement. While Microsoft wouldn't say which of its products and technologies Amazon is interested in, Microsoft did mention that Amazon's Kindle, which employs open source and proprietary software components, as well as Amazon's use of Linux-based servers are covered.

In an open letter to Google, the Free Software Foundation suggested that the software giant freely release the VP8 HD video compression format after having acquired the On2 video technology firm.

Since Oracle finished its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, there have been many changes to the open-source projects that were once supported under Sun now being discontinued by Oracle and significant changes being made to the remaining open-source products. One of the open-source projects that Oracle hasn't been too open about their intentions with has been OpenSolaris. Solaris Express Community Edition (SXCE) already closed up last month and there hasn't been too much information flowing out about the next OpenSolaris release, which is supposed to be known as OpenSolaris 2010.03 with a release date sometime in March.

Recently I wrote about controlling konsole with dbus. As I've begun to use that script for setting up my konsoles I, like others, have discovered that the tab title that you set with dbus doesn't stick. This short note shows you a workaround to make your tab titles stay put. Even though I wrote the original post a few weeks back I didn't realize that I had a problem until now because I just this weekend upgraded the system that I use most often. Plus, apparently, I already discovered the workaround on my other system and proceeded to immediately forget about it as it took me a fair amount of fiddling to figure it out (again) today.

The browser maker moves the Dragonfly debugging toolkit to publicly hosted servers, setting up the BSD-licensed software as an open project.

A few days back we reported on a new Mutter release, which is the window and compositing manager for GNOME 3.0, and now with the GNOME 2.29.91 beta release coming up on Wednesday there is also the release of another new GNOME 3.0 component. Perhaps the single biggest new component for the GNOME 3.x stack is the GNOME Shell and this is the package that just reached version 2.29.0. GNOME 2.29.0 brings a lot of improvements.

Hall agreed to serve pro bono publico (at no charge, for the public benefit), and asked the court for a declaratory judgment that the patent was unenforceable. Katzer responded by bringing a SLAPP suit against Jacobsen. SLAPP is a law that was meant to defend little folks sued by big rich companies, but is increasingly used in just the other direction. And the judge upheld this, which meant that Jacobsen would have to pay Katzer's lawyer's fees before the case was even decided. After some court argument, the unreasonable fees asked were reduced to $14,486.68 and $16,976.25, for two lawyers used by Katzer, and Bob Jacobsen paid them.

If you have been following my live tweets today you will know that day 1 of the "New Millenium Learners Conference 2010" taking place here in Vienna at the moment was really interesting. The opening session led by people from the Austrian Ministry of Education introduced some of the projects that the Ministry has been working on in Austria. Our small Austrian OLPC project in Graz was also mentioned but unfortunately due to time constraints the information on all the projects remained relatively superficial.

Microsoft and Amazon.com have reached an agreement that gives each company a license to the other's patent portfolio, in a way that could revive one of the Redmond company's longest-running controversies. That's because Microsoft says the deal grants Amazon patent-related "coverage" for its use of open-source and proprietary technologies in its Kindle e-reader, and for its use of Linux-based computer servers.

[You smell what I smell? Microsoft FUD.. - Scott]

Occasionally, your editor will be struck by a series of topics all associated with a common theme. The recent fuss about Android's presence (or the lack thereof) in the mainline kernel ties in well with a couple of other items of notice: the Nexus One phone and the role of free software on the Android platform in general.