Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Some days ago the the community around the web sites KDE-Apps.org, KDE-Look.org, etc launched two new web sites: Qt-Apps.org and Qt-Prop.org. Both sites will be a home for presenting Qt based applications like kde-apps.org already is for presenting KDE applications. The difference between both new sites is that Qt-Apps will be pure FLOSS only, while Qt-Prop is a home for proprietary software. The launch was done in cooperation with Trolltech.

Recent events -- $3 Windows for the developing world, competition from Intel, and a $175.00 pricetag for OLPC's $100.00 laptop -- have some reporters and analysts suggesting the project may be in trouble. But are those dire forecasts credible or are they simply wishful thinking by the Wintel faithful?

KOffice, the KDE office suite, has always stood behind the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as an industry standard. Now with KOffice 2.0 around the corner, with OpenOffice.org quickly becoming a new leader, and with Microsoft to release its own so-called "open" format, ODF and the interoperability that it promises is more important than ever. The KOffice developers will meet in Berlin during the weekend of May 12th-13th to do as much ODF-centered development as possible. Read more to find out what this can mean for KDE at large.

Following the release announcement of the 2.6.21 Linux kernel, Adrian Bunk noted that he no longer planned to track regressions. He explained, "if we would take 'no regressions' seriously, it might take 4 or 5 months between releases due to the lack of developer manpower for handling regressions. But that should be considered OK if avoiding regressions was considered more important than getting as quick as possible to the next two week regression-merge window."

Debain is the only group of software developers who still believe that Richard Stallman invented programming. Everyone else now correctly credits Bill Gates for doing so. Debain developers hold themselves separate from the rest of the Linux community because of their pride in not stealing from other operating systems to build their version of Linux. All other versions of Linux are based directly on Windows.

[A really funny parody about Open Source - Scott]

Gran Paradiso Alpha 4 is now available for testing. New features in this development milestone of Mozilla Firefox 3 include the FUEL JavaScript library for extension developers, a redesigned Page Info window, improvements to offline application support and Gecko 1.9 bug fixes.

Once you are comfortable with inputting functions and formulas, the next step is to learn how to automate the processes. Calc includes over half a dozen tools to help you manipulate functions and formulas, ranging from features for copying and reusing data to creating subtotals automatically to ones for varying information to help you find the answers that you need. These tools are divided between the Tools and Data menus, according to no apparent logic.

The aKademy team is pleased to announce that we will be hosting the Text Layout Summit 2007 during our week in Glasgow. This is the second Text Layout Summit following the success of the event at Gnome's Boston Summit last year. Experts from the free software world's top text rendering apps and libraries are expected including Qt, Pango and the cross platform effort of HarfBuzz. As previously, register before the end of Monday if you want us to book your accommodation.

The Fedora team yesterday announced the availability of the fourth and final development release of Fedora 7. This release includes a 2.6.20 kernel and is reproduced in three installable live images: an i386 GNOME live CD, an x86_64 live DVD, and an i386 KDE live CD, a spokesman said.

Universal Electronics Inc. (UEI), best known for its line of universal remote controls, also sells SimpleCenter, an all-in-one application for Windows PCs that ties together in a single interface all of a user's multimedia devices and software. It streamlines the management of photos, music, and movies, and even acts as a Universal Plug and Play server so you can stream your files to any device on your home network, while the software converts files to the proper format for the device. Recently, UEI released the basic version of SimpleCenter under the terms of the GNU General Public License in order to take advantage of the community's ability to make the software better faster than the company can do it alone.

A list of Open Source programs put together by the people at eWEEK.

Ubuntu continues its march into business as it adopts a trademark policy designed to protect its name and other trademarks from unapproved commercial use.

At the 2007 China Open Source Software Summit in Beijing on March 27, China's Co-Create Software League (Cosoft) awarded prizes to 25 winners in the second China Open Source Software Contest.

Another six months, another release from the Ubuntu folks. The Ubuntu 7.04 release, better known as Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, is another cutting-edge, but not bleeding-edge, release that shows what Linux is capable of on the desktop. I've been running it since the early betas, and have found that it's the best Ubuntu release yet.

DragonFlyBSD founder Matthew Dillon posted an update on his syslink protocol which he defined as, "a message based protocol that can devolve down into almost direct procedure calls when two localized resources talk to each other." The syslink API will be used to talk to both local resources on the same node as well as to remote resources on a different node. Earlier documentation further explained the networking nature of the protocol, "the Syslink protocol is used to glue the cluster mesh together. It is based on the concept of reliable packets and buffered streams. Adding a new node to the mesh is as simple as obtaining a stream connection to any node already in the mesh, or tying into a packet switch with UDP." In another email Matthew explained how various DragonFlyBSD nodes utilize Syslink to automatically establish the optimal physical route.

One of the oldest virtualization products, Win4Lin, is starting to show signs of aging. Win4Lin flourished in 2000, when competition was sparse and expensive. But seven years on, not only are there several virtualization products, but almost half a dozen are available for free. With no visible improvements over its previous version, Win4Lin Pro Desktop 4.0 is now outdated and outclassed.

The College of American Pathologists has justTransferred SNOWMED CT toInternational Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO). It is now available for use inside any of theIHTSDO Member countries if you are in the US, you can still get it fromNational Library of Medicine viaUMLSKS. However you still have to agree to the License Agreement for Use of the UMLS® Metathesaurus. It provides for some very FOSS unfriendly terms... included after the gap.

It's already been 10 days since I started my DPL term and I haven't made any formal announcement yet, so here it is. It's a bit late to comment on the elections, but let me thank all other candidates anyway, with extra sympathy for Steve McIntyre who for the second time came second by less than 10 votes and Gustavo Franco who had a platform very similar to mine yet wasn't rewarded with as many favorable votes. Also many thanks to Anthony Towns, my predecessor, and Steve McIntyre again for making the switch as comfortable as possible.

For the next interview in the fortnightly People Behind KDE series we travel to The Netherlands to talk to another developer of the KDE-PIM realm. Saving both your hands and your email frustrations - tonight's star of People Behind KDE is Tom Albers.

Adobe's plan to open-source its Flex Web development framework offers at least a partial open-source alternative to Microsoft's Silverlight and Extensible Application Markup Language.