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Several new features of the recently released OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta require a Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Since Java's license is neither free nor open source, a small but vocal minority has responded both strongly and negatively. For instance, when NewsForge recently published a review of the beta, no other feature attracted as much comment. Some groups, including members of the major GNU/Linux distributions, most of whom repackage OpenOffice.org (OOo), have responded by looking for alternatives, often while cursing the project for the extra work it has dumped on them. How did OpenOffice.org come to rely on Java? What problems is it likely to cause? How are GNU/Linux distributions reacting to this change in a key piece of software?

Usually, you want a shell script to just run to completion, one command after another. There are times, however, when a sequence of events includes a step upon which subsequent steps depend for successful execution. For these times, two useful commands are wait and sleep, both of which cause a delay in the script execution.

The long awaited 2005.0 release of Gentoo Linux is the first and most prominent news in this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter! Regular visitors to the Gentoo website may have noticed that the PayPal donation button is back, and the Gentoo bugzilla now supports SSL encrypted connections. Other features this week: a developer portrait of UK-based Marcus D. Hanwell, an after-show report from the Open Source Conference in Tokyo held last weekend, and plenty of news from the community, press clippings, developers leaving the project and new ones arriving, and of course the regular sections of bugzilla statistics and security alerts. Enjoy reading!

Leading Asset Management Company to Expand Novell's Award-Winning ZENworks Suite

Welcome to Security Alerts, an overview of recent Unix and open source security advisories. In this column, we look at problems in KDE, MySQL, Perl, Ximian Evolution, GnuPG, OpenSLP, Ringtone Tools, LuxMan, and Ethereal.

Relax, this isn't another newsletter about the latest Microsoft anti-Linux campaign.

The worldwide.kde.org contributors map has hot fresh updates. The contributor map on worldwide.kde.org shows developers, translators, doc writers, artists, packagers and other contributors of KDE in all the world. If you are a contributor to the KDE Project, submit your coordinates.

Adobe has made a download of the Linux version of Adobe Reader 7.0 available on its ftp site. The newly renamed utility handles portable document files (PDFs) deftly, and additionally now allows users to collaborate on projects and provides additional file security at the server-level, according to Adobe.

The Open Enterprise Server aims to facilitate migration to Linux.

SCO Group has finally made public the Web site it promised last fall. SCO.com/scoip/ purports to be "The Right Place for SCO Intellectual Property Information."

Despite open-source developers' concerns, Free Software Foundation's general counsel predicts no difficulty in moving to third version.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is one of the last application areas in which Linux has little or no impact. The Peerstone Group, a market research firm, found that only two percent of corporations relied on Linux to support their ERP applications in 2004. Yet, recently, a growing number of Linux ERP vendors have emerged. Although obstacles remain, the future of Linux in ERP looks promising.

"Information-technology Promotion Agency(IPA, in pdf), an extra-departmental organization of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan has been supported open source software development. Some efforts are now available: framework for printing, Samba internationalization, a tool for hacking Gtk+, ssh in Java, manuals for OpenOffice.org, and GRASS internationalization."

I have espoused the cause of Ingres for some time and, especially, I have commended Computer Associates' decision to take the Ingres database into the open source community. Now, I dare say that at some point CA will tell me all about its "open source challenge" and how successful that has been in developing new facilities for Ingres. And they will also tell me about how many downloads there have been (though I am cynical about the utility of such a figure). But this article is about one company, Datallegro, which has adopted Ingres as its database.

I found the GNOME desktop more appealing than KDE until I found Mandrakelinux 10. Mandrake looked good to me, from its fonts to its slide bars. On the functional side, it had some wonderful system administration tools, graphical and centralized. But for some reason Mandrake 10 didn't find my home wireless network. That led me to search for alternatives. I discovered PCLinuxOS, a free LiveCD distribution originally based on Mandrake.

Foreword: This article introduces a network camera based on embedded Linux, an open FPGA, and a free, open codec called Ogg Theora. Author Andrey Filippov, who designed the camera, says it is the first high-resolution, high frame-rate digital camera to offer a low bit rate. Enjoy . . .

Sure, open source is the coolest thing since sliced bread... but before he opens the checkbook, your boss is going to want more definitive reasons for implementing OSS in the company. As part of our renewal of Linux and open source book reviews, we examine a book that has all the right reasons for open source in one place.

March 24, 2005 10:41 AM PST

La Quinta Inns has already adopted the open source JBoss application server platform. Now it is considering a move to Linux.

SALT LAKE CITY -- I had an abbreviated schedule here on Day 4 as the main phase of Brainshare 2005 drew to a close. BrainShare will continue Thursday and Friday, but the press and the outside vendors will be gone. It'll be quality time for Novell and its customers. So I'll use the occasion to provide a wrap-up of the conference rather than another daily summary.