Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Reports that Microsoft had to release the Hyper-V Linux Integration Components (LinuxIC) under the GPLv2 because they had violated the GPL have been rebutted by Microsoft and Vyatta. Vyatta had been referenced by reports as the source of the accusation.

The forthcoming standard for the object-oriented language C++ will not be released before 2010. It will also lack the planned 'concepts' mechanism. This is according to information in a Dr. Dobbs Journal article by C++'s inventor, Bjarne Stroustrup. Concepts have been "decoupled" – or in Stroustrup's words "yanked out" – by the ISO group responsible for the standard, Working Group 21.

How can anyone make a living writing Free software? Why should a coder work for free? These questions, and others, are answered in this two-part series. Today we learn why Free and Open Source software are very important even to end users who are not coders.

In the dispute over bankruptcy-threatened SCO Group's legal claims, the company has submitted testimonyPDF in which it confirms having paid $100,000 to investor Steven Norris. According to the testimony, the money didn't actually come from Germany, but rather from its non-debtor Japanese subsidiary. The gift of personal funds from SCO boss Darl McBride is also mentioned. The payments to which IBM lawyers are objecting represent, according to the deposition, a baseless, sham argument, saying that "IBM and Novell are interested only in putting SCO out of business so it canot pursue its legal claims against them." SCO is in dispute with Novell and IBM over the copyright to Unix and over code allegedly illegally copied from Unix into Linux to which SCO claims it has copyright.

Microsoft released a set of Linux drivers for its Hyper-V software under the General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) not because of "perceived obligations" to that license but because it is the preferred license of the Linux community and would benefit both Microsoft customers and users of Linux, according to a company executive. In a statement by Microsoft Senior Director of Platform Strategy Sam Ramji posted to the company's Port 25 blog late Thursday, Microsoft stood by its original reasoning to release technology called the Linux Device Driver for Virtualization on Monday under the GPLv2. Microsoft had not previously released code under this open-source license and had, in fact, criticized it.

During the final days of the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, the fourth edition of Akademy-es was held in the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Akademy-es is the sister of Akademy aimed at Spanish speakers. Akademy-es started on Friday 10th with a talk by Cenatic, a governmental foundation with the aim to promote and improve knowledge of free software in public administrations, companies, universities, etc. For that, the foundation is creating and developing different courses both online and at site based on free software. They want to create a specific course for the KDE desktop, so they asked for collaboration from KDE España, the Spanish organisation to support and promote the KDE project in Spain. The president of Cenatic showed his interest in the project and this collaboration will be starting in the coming months.

The development of the next version of Ubuntu continues with the third alpha release of Karmic Koala. According to the announcement, this alpha contains software updates which "are now ready for large scale testing". Alpha 3 is one of a number of milestones which the Ubuntu developers release as they progress towards the final October release of Ubuntu 9.10.

Microsoft's historic embrace of Linux technology could have wide-reaching impacts on the virtualization market and Microsoft's rival VMware. By allowing greater ability to run Linux on the Hyper-V virtualization platform, Microsoft is making a compelling case that it could be the virtualization vendor of choice for consolidation of Windows and Linux applications, says Gartner analyst George Weiss. Microsoft still lags behind VMware in enterprise features such as live migration. But once Microsoft proves itself "good enough" in terms of functionality, many customers will be intrigued by Hyper-V as a lower-cost alternative to VMware, Weiss says.

There are more than a few of us who would be overjoyed to see Open Source take over the world. For the geeks at NASA, though, the world is not enough. Open Source is nothing new for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — Linux Journal looked at Linux use in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories way back in May 2000. The Open Source wonder runs its Colombia supercomputer, and will even power mans return to the moon.

While Linux systems generally have a good reputation for uptime, there are sometimes unavoidable reasons that a reboot is required. Typically, that is because of a kernel update, especially one that fixes a security hole. Companies that have long-running processes, or those who require uninterrupted availability, are not particularly fond of this requirement. A new company, Ksplice, Inc. has come up with a way to avoid these reboots by hot-patching a running kernel.

It seems as if Linux gamers are indeed really excited for having new games on Linux, well, "really excited" may still be an understatement. About 24 hours ago we talked about Heroes of Newerth, a game being developed by S2 Games, was coming to Linux and we were able to hand out beta invitations to begin playing the game immediately as part of their closed testing process.

Microsoft made waves this week with their GPLv2 contribution of virtualization code. On the other side of the coin, Microsoft continues to take issue with open source vendors over the issue of patents. One vendor that has called on Microsoft to be more open is Red Hat. In a blog post, Red Hat's legal team praised Microsoft's code contribution while asking Microsoft to change its stance on patents.

At OSCON 2009 in San Jose, California, Google announced the winners of this years Google O'Reilly Open Source Awards. The awards have been presented each year since 2005 to individuals for their "dedication, innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to open source".

Microsoft's unexpected move Monday to donate thousands of lines of code for inclusion in the Linux operating system kernel is being interpreted by some as recognition by Microsoft that it's a hybrid IT world out there, and its software must co-exist with Linux and other open-source products. Make no mistake, Microsoft hasn't abandoned its ambitions to be the dominant player in the data center, just as it already is on the desktop. And if that means engaging in some "co-opetition" with Linux in the short-term, so be it. But anyone who sat through the keynote speech by Microsoft COO Kevin Turner at the Worldwide Partner Conference last week knows Microsoft has a long list of technologies -- including Linux -- it has in its competitive sights.

atop is a handy top-like program that shows system load information in a separate section on top of process information; Juliet Kemp gives us a tour of this useful utility.

A week after adding API access to its Amazon-esque cloud, Rackspace has now open-sourced these APIs. On Wednesday, the company said it had opened up the specs for both its Cloud Servers APIs and Cloud Files APIs under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Meant to encourage the development of open standards for all so-called infrastructure clouds, the move is in stark contrast to Amazon's much-discussed silence over its own API philosophies.

Adobe has used the Open Source Conference (OSCON), currently taking place in California's San Jose, to announce a new strategy for its Flash Platform. Some people are questioning Adobe's motives.

Microsoft was in violation of the GPL (General Public License) on the Hyper-V code it released to open source this week. After Redmond covered itself in glory by opening up the code, it now looks like it may have acted simply to head off any potentially embarrassing legal dispute over violation of the GPL. The rest was theater.

Many a vigorous debate has been fought over any possible legal threats that might be inherent in Mono. Now that Microsoft has extended its Community Promise to cover select parts of the C# programming language, which is what Mono is built on, it is being hailed as evidence that Mono is safe. Bruce Byfield tries to answer the question, is it really?

The real-time web is shaping up to be the next online revolution, and as we saw during our RealTime CrunchUp earlier this month, it’s already begun. But there are still some things that are holding us back — for one, many services still aren’t actually real time, they’re just something close to it. That may work well enough for sites like Facebook, but as we begin to see more innovation on this front, there’s likely going to be much more demand for technology that is truly real time. Groovy Corp, a database software marker partially owned by Intel, thinks it has the answer: a relational data management system called the SQL Switch, which it says will make true real-time both affordable and feasible.