Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Gnome 3 will introduce a new vision of usability and rapid change, rather than continuing with the incremental growth and gradual changes of Gnome 2. Gnome 3 may be just as ambitious and disruptive as KDE4. Will it work? Will users accept it? Bruce Byfield gazes into his tea leaves and tries to figure out how it will all work out.

As I alluded to earlier, I am out of the office this week. With me to Italy I took a Samsung NC10 that is loaded with an Intel Atom processor, Intel integrated graphics, an OCZ solid-state drive, and 2GB of DDR2 RAM. Prior to leaving I loaded it up with a clean install of the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, but what a mistake that was. As was pointed out in the days prior to that, there are a number of regressions present within the Intel Linux graphics stack due to the switch to the Graphics Execution Manager, DRI2, and other work. While the benchmarks showed there is indeed a drop (a large drop in some), this performance drop nearly renders the system useless.

IBM is licensing technology from an open-source database company it's invested in, hoping to convince Oracle customers they should switch to its next DB2. The giant has licensed capabilities in five-year-old EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server, which EnterpriseDB claims will cut by 90 per cent the cost of moving off Oracle. The technology is expected to appear in the next version of DB2, version 9.7, to be announced today.

In this article, I conclude my status report on the development of some of the most active notation software projects for Linux.

In September, for the second year in a row, Linux developers from all over will pack their pipe wrenches and low-slung trousers as they prepare to descend on Portland, Oregon to get down to business. Though the packing can wait a few more months, now is the time for developers interested in sharing their love of digital fittings and flanges to get their name on the list.

One of Oracle's top technology gurus has appeared at MySQL's annual conference to sooth concerns over the open-source database's future under Oracle. Ken Jacbos, vice president of product strategy in Oracle's server technologies division and known as Dr DBA, was apparently brought on stage at the show to highlight the history of fraternal collaboration between Oracle and MySQL. The message was clear: MySQL is safe under Oracle, so don't wobble and turn to Postgres or stop building the open-source database.

It's the Ubuntu release week (or Ubuntu "circus", as some prefer to call it), a major event in the calendar of many open source software enthusiasts. What will the distribution's 10th official release be like? And will the download servers cope with the expected heavy demand? We'll have to wait until Thursday to find out; in the meantime, read below for a quick tip on reverting to an older kernel under Ubuntu and visit Canonical's ShipIt service to order your free CDs. In the news section, Mandriva gains support for hardware database known as Smolt, Easy Peasy ponders a few ideas concerning the distro's default user interface, and Fedora's Ricky Zhou points out the importance of innovation in Red Hat's community distribution. Finally, don't miss our feature article which calls for an implementation of a centralised bug-tracking database for all open source software projects.

Sun Microsystems — and what would happen to it — has been in the news for some weeks, amid rumors, then negotiations, then rumors, again, concerning the flailing company's future. The now-infamous IBM purchase and its spectacular failure earlier this month exponentially increased speculation — speculation that was put to rest this morning when it was revealed that database-giant Oracle will be adding Sun to its solar system.

Both Monty Widenius, founder of MySQL, and Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL and until recently, VP of the Sun database group, have both commented on Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems and MySQL. Observers had noted that Oracle may not be interested in pursuing development of MySQL, despite Oracle's announcement saying MySQL would join the ranks of its other database products.

It's tempting to speculate that Oracle's bid for Sun Microsystems is a convenient way to kill off open-source database wonder, MySQL. But MySQL's former chief executive, Mårten Mickos, sees things differently. If anything, Oracle badly wanted MySQL.

Why is it so hard to get governments (especially local government) to use open source software? Here are some ideas discussed during my keynote today in Oslo at GoOpen 2009 for practical steps various people, from citizens to policy wonks to representatives, can do to help get open source in actual use and delivering on its promise (and I know it's not easy):

The audio recordings from the presentations at SCALE 7x are finally available. The links for the talks are on the Conference Schedule. If there's no link for a session, it either means it wasn't recorded, or the recording wasn't usable for some reason.

Microsoft knew this day was coming. This was the reason it desperately wanted — no, needed — to take down Netscape in 1996. Netscape wasn’t just trying to build a program for reading text and photos across a network of connected computers. Netscape was trying to build a new platform - the ultimate platform - to run software and share information instantly and on a global scale. And no one understood that better than Bill Gates.

Highly-paid executives who led their financial institutions into failure get to keep their jobs and handsome paychecks, while the grunts who do the work get canned. Meanwhile, governments everywhere are reacting in their usual manner, by drafting galactic-sized reams of new rules and regulations. Which will supplement and not replace the old galactic-sized reams of rules and regulations. The burden of this record-keeping is going to fall on IT staff-- are you ready?

License proliferation has been a hot topic amongst the open source community for the past couple of years. I am happy to report that the Eclipse Foundation and IBM have collaborated to do our bit to help by superseding the Common Public License (CPL) with the Eclipse Public License (EPL). This means that the CPL will no longer be considered an active open source license.

In one of the worst marketing moves for an upcoming operating system I can ever recall, Microsoft has said that it will limit to three the number of applications people can run simultaneously on many Windows 7-equipped netbooks. I can't think of a better way to kill demand for the new operating system. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft will sell a Starter edition of Windows 7 on netbooks. That Starter edition will only allow people to run three applications at the same time. If they want to run more, they'll have to pony up with more money, although the article didn't say how much more money they'd have to pay.

The enterprises, vendors, developers, analysts, and journalists I speak with regularly are mostly pretty savvy about the basics of open source at this point. Even if they're not licensing geeks or otherwise expert in all the minutiae and subtle implications of open-source development, community, and usage, they generally have the important basics down.

Fred Trotter writes: I have recently been asked to testify at the NCVHS hearings on meaningful use (see forwarded message below). This is very likely because I have been working as a representative of the FOSS community with CCHIT to resolve the basic incompatibility with current CCHIT certification and FOSS EHR systems. For a decent summary you can read the CCHIT category on my blog or read some of the mainstream blogs: slashdot and ZDnet Now I will be asked to testify on what 'Meaningful Use' of EHR systems means from a FOSS perspective. I am having discussions on what I should cover on both Hardhats (VistA community) and OpenHealth (larger FOSS community). Feel free to email me off-line (fred dot trotter at gmail dot com) or simply reply to this thread, with your thoughts.

Red Hat commissioned the Georgia Institute of Technology – Georgia Tech, to research the state of open source around the world, and has now presented the results of the research as the Open Source Activity Map and Open Source Environment Map. The interactive maps let users see how the seventy five countries examined for the project, rank globally. The activity map is based on concrete factors; existing open source and open standards and numbers of open source users.

Ubuntu 9.04 - officially launched today and due to be ready for download on Thursday - is a worthwhile upgrade for Ubuntu fans. Ubuntu steward Canonical has been working hard to improve the look and feel of Ubuntu and the Jaunty Jackalope edition brings quite a few refreshing touches to the old exterior. The default theme is still the familiar brown, but numerous small improvements to dialog boxes, splash screens, and a flashy new login screen give Ubuntu a slicker, more professional feel. There's also a new theme named New Wave that's a nice mashup between the DarkRoom and the default Human theme.