Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Believe it or not, there is still this illusion that Linux and open-source software is written by counter-culture, C++ programming cultists living in their parent basements or huddled together in Cambridge, Mass. group-houses. Please. That is so twenty-years ago. Today, as the Linux Foundation reveals in its latest analysis, Linux Kernel Development: How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It (PDF Link), it’s big business that’s making Linux in 2010.

Oracle claimed that it acquired the Hudson trademark with its purchase of Sun Microsystems. But a well-placed former Sun Microsystems employee has contacted The Reg to say that Sun took an "explicit decision" not to apply for a trademark on the name Hudson. A search of the US Patent and Trademark Office's website throws up 623 trademarks for Hudson for many things, but not for the project Oracle owns.

Motorola Inc. announced it will split into two companies on Jan. 4, separating the "Motorola Mobility" division that makes Android smartphones from the "Motorola Solutions" division responsible for enterprise handhelds running Windows Mobile. The separation will benefit stockholders, customers, and employees alike, the company claims.

Here at MakeTechEasier, we’ve covered Linux desktop issues of all kinds, and we’ve examined desktop environments both well known (Gnome and KDE) as well as somewhat obscure (Window Maker, LXDE). For some reasons, we’ve never taken a close look at the very popular XFCE desktop environment. It’s nearly as feature-rich as Gnome, but with a smaller footprint. As it’s been a big name in the Linux desktop world for quite a few years now, it seems we’re long overdue to check out this polished and useful collection of software.

Scapy is a flexible tool for both capturing and generating network traffic, and performing whatever type of analysis you want. In Part 2 Paul Ferrill goes deeper into designing custom tests with just a few lines of code.

This is an annual report published by The Linux Foundation that measures the the rate of Linux kernel development, who is doing it (developer names) and who is sponsoring it (company names). It has become an annual check on the state of the world's largest open source project and collaborative development effort.

It's long been a topic of what parts of X.Org should be killed with fire. There's plenty of dated and obscure X.Org and Mesa drivers around for hardware that hasn't even been manufactured in years and are rarely used. At XDS Toulose and on other occasions it's been decided not to do a massive purge of all these legacy graphics drivers for Linux. Old hardware support by the X Server has once again been brought up, but this time it's about monitors.

For the CentOS developers and users, Christmas Day may bring more than the usual presents under the tree. If past experience holds, it should take the CentOS development and QA teams about 45 days from the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to get CentOS 6 ready for release... which puts the projected release date on December 25.

As Linux gains more popularity, the number of major commercial game vendors supporting Linux has not increased, but independent developers are certainly taking notice. Here are four more Linux games that are sure to distract you from real work. Be sure to play them only when your boss is not looking. Enjoy!

ZT Systems announced what it says is the first commercially available ARM-based development platform for the server market. The Ubuntu Linux-based R1801e 1U rackmount server employs SSD (solid state disk) storage and eight ARM Cortex-A9-based computer-on-modules (COMs), providing 16 600MHz cores while using less than 80 Watts, the company says.

In a post on the project's mailing list, Fedora Project Leader Jared K. Smith has announced the election results for the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo), the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), and the Fedora Board.

The Linux Foundation has published its third annual report about Linux kernel authorship. The statistics included in the paper illustrate growth trends in the kernel development process and provide insight into how the labor is distributed among individual contributors and corporate sponsors. The kernel has seen modest growth in its base of contributors over the past year, though the rate of development has seen a marginal decline.

Based on the run rates of the current quarter, Red Hat will likely reach $1 billion in annual revenue in 2011. Only a handful of companies, probably less than 20 software firms, have ever hit this milestone. Red Hat will be the first open source-focused company to break the billion dollar barrier. Certainly Richard Stallman did not envision this when he created the paradigm of Free Software. Such an event may be more in tune with what Eric Raymond, Tim O’Reilly, and others had in mind when they reframed Free Software as Open Source.

Linux developers continue to push out new kernels at rapid pace, though over the course of the last year the pace of new code commits has slowed, according to a new report from the Linux Foundation. The report also notes that the top contributors to Linux kernel development have shifted over the last year to include more contributions from mobile vendors. The new report from the Linux Foundation is the third annual 'Who Writes Linux' report, summarizing kernel contributions and activities over the past year.

These bye-laws define the internal organization of The Document Foundation. They cover the Community processes for contributions made to the projects of The Document Foundation. These bye-laws do not apply to the actual structure and governance of The Document Foundation as a legal entity, which are addressed in The Document Foundation's legal statutes.

It's now two months since Linux Game Publishing went offline due to a failure of their only web server and full service has still not been restored. Last week their service was partially restored with the LGP DRM system going back online along with some of their other web-sites, but the main Linux Game Publishing web-site is still down with no update since the 23rd of November.

Oracle is claiming ownership of yet another open-source project. This time, it's the Hudson project, the popular software build and monitoring service originally developed by Sun Microsystems. The giant has told users they are welcome to move the service to non-Oracle-owned servers, but if they do so, they can't call it "Hudson" anymore. Users have already moved code to new servers in an effort to deliver improved service.

The Linux World is rarely dull, but last week was an emotional roller coaster for users of openSUSE and Ubuntu. First Novell was sold to Microsoft and Attachmate with no mention of the fate of openSUSE. Then Ubuntu founder Shuttleworth told reporters that Ubuntu may switch from the six-month release cycle to daily updates. Both items garnered lots of speculation, elation, and worry until both parent companies finally addressed them.

The progress made by the LibreOffice folks so far is impressive, at least when it comes to attracting contributors. The third beta was released on November 18th, and seems to have impressive momentum. The release notes list 118 contributors who’ve helped with the development just between beta 2 and beta 3. How’s it looking so far? Don’t expect miracles, but it’s shaping up nicely.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that may have a significant effect on the threshold under which patents can be invalidated in the US. In Microsoft Corp v i4i Limited Partnership, the court will look at the standard of proof by which patents can be declared invalid. In most civil cases in the US, the standard is "preponderance of the evidence", but in patent invalidity cases the Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit has stated that the test should be "clear and convincing" evidence - which is a much higher threshold to achieve. If the Supreme Court decides this standard should be revised it could be of significant benefit to defendants claiming that patents being asserted against them are invalid.