Showing all newswire headlines

I've started to wonder if Novell or IBM has explained to SCO's Chapter 11 Trustee Edward Cahn how the GPL works. It cuts through all the other ways SCO is bound to lose, in my view. Then, I thought: why not just explain it myself? You never know. It might prove useful to put it all in one place. So, here goes, SCO and the GPL. As you may recall, if you've been around since 2003, SCO's position on the GPL has been that while it may have distributed its code under the GPL, it didn't mean to do it, that it never knowingly distributed Unix or Unixware code under the GPL. I'd like to briefly explain why that excuse doesn't matter to either Novell or IBM. IBM of course has always taken the position that it hasn't infringed any copyrights, no matter who owns them. But let's take SCO's words at face value, and pretend that they are true. Then how does the GPL moot their claims?

Microsoft has presented version 4.0 of its .NET Micro Framework at the Professional Developer Conference (PDC). The framework is being released as open source software under the Apache 2.0 licence. .NET Micro Framework, an offshoot of the standard .NET Framework, should allow developers to use .NET and Visual Studio as options for the development of applications for devices with limited memory and processing power, such as set-top boxes and car entertainment systems.

The Petaflop pioneer Roadrunner has been relegated to second place after the 225,000 processor cores of the Jaguar XT5. Europe's largest supercomputer, Bluegene/P, has meanwhile slipped in the ranks.

Over the next ten years, tens, and possibly hundreds of millions, of new platforms are going to be put into place in the United States as part of a new national infrastructure; an equal number will be installed in Europe (many are already being installed). The same may happen in other parts of the world as well.

Last Friday during the Gallium3D workshop we learned that the Tungsten Graphics developers that were bought out by VMware have been working on a virtual Gallium3D driver that would be used by guest operating systems running within VMware's virtualization platform. This is especially interesting considering that it will allow virtualized guests to have accelerated access to X11, OpenGL, OpenCL, X-Video, XvMC, and all sorts of other possibilities that's just limited by what's supported by the available state trackers.

Raleigh, NC - November 17, 2009 - The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced the availability of Fedora 12, the latest version of its free open source operating system distribution. Fedora 12 includes a robust feature set for desktop users, administrators, developers and open source enthusiasts alike. New enhancements available in Fedora 12 include next-generation Ogg Theora video, virtualization improvements and advancements to NetworkManager, among numerous others.

Over the course of the last month or so, your editor has been to six conferences on three continents. When engaged in that kind of travel, it is, of course, obligatory to determine which country has the best beer; normally, substantial amounts of research are required. It's also normal to hear what's on one's co-researchers' minds while carrying out this task. This time around, your editor heard grumbles from a surprising number of people, all about the same topic: copyright assignment policies. In particular, developers are concerned and unhappy about the copyright assignment policy that Canonical has chosen for all of its projects. This agreement [PDF] is a relatively simple read; it fits on a single page. It applies to a long list of projects, including Bazaar, Launchpad, Quickly, Upstart, and Notify-osd; contributions to any of those projects must be made under the terms of this agreement.

Normally a change in the automounting of USB drives in Ubuntu wouldn't be a big deal. But in my case I've been using shell scripts to back up my Ubuntu box to USB drives via rsync. And before Karmic, those USB drives automounted with the name "disk," and they'd be at /media/disk/ in the filesystem. Perfect for my shell script to target for the backup. Now for some reason those drives are automounting not with the name "disk" but with the unique UUID number for the given device. At first this was bad, but after I modified my scripts, I actually see some wisdom in what started out as just another Karmic fail.

Rumours abound that Google's Chrome OS will be 'open sourced' in the coming week, although the early glimpses are likely to be some way from the final product due for release in late 2010. The likes of TechCrunch and Reuters have suggested that this could be the week that the eagerly awaited operating system and rival to Microsoft's Windows is pushed out to developers, with its source code given out for anyone to see. Announced back in July, Google Chrome OS will launch as an alternative to Windows on the likes of netbooks, but the company will be aware that this could build a platform and user base for an all-out assault on Windows.

Canonical appears to be preparing the Ubuntu One Music Store to coincide with the Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) launch in April 2010. But what exactly is the Ubuntu One Music Store -- and can it generate any money for Canonical? Here are some early thoughts.

When it comes to organizing and tweaking photos, digiKam and F-Spot rule the roost. But if you don't need all the bells and whistles of a full-blown photo management tool, then you might want to try Shotwell.

Web developers know the importance of testing web sites and blogs on the different web browsers available. A site/blog can look great on one browser, but if you try to access it on another one, it can probably look garbled. It’s a hassle checking a web site/blog on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc. What if a browser combined the three main browser types, which removed the need to open up three separate browsers? There is one – Lunascape.

The XtreemOS project has released the second public release of its Linux-based Grid operating system under the motto "Making Grid Computing Easier". The consortium has conceived and integrated a platform of open source technologies to enable easier usage, management, scalabilty and programming on top of Grid computing resources.

Packt Publishing is pleased to announce that WordPress has won the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. WordPress has won this Award for the first time in the past four years, earning itself a place in the Hall of Fame category for the Award next year.

10 Distros that you need to get to know. Have an artistic bent or just want to waste some time gaming? Here they are. Get to know them.

Listen up open source developers, if you want your project to succeed you’re going to have to do more than write great code; you’re going to have to document it, teach new users how it works and provide real-world examples of what you can do with it. That’s the message from Jacob Kaplan-Moss, one of the creators of Django, a very successful open source, Python-based web framework. At least some Django’s success can be attributed to its thorough documentation which is not just reference materials, but also includes tutorials, topical guides and even snippets of design philosophy.

Samsung announced an Android-powered "Galaxy Spica I5700" smartphone, targeting Europe. In other Android news, Dell confirmed Brazilian and Chinese carriers for its Dell Mini 3, Google released a second-generation developers phone, and ZiiLabs is prepping an Android platform, say reports.

Google has made the source code for the current 2.0 release of Android available to download from its Android Open Source Project page. So far, Android 2.0 has only been released in the US on the Motorola Droid from Verizon. The developer of the CyanogenMod builds of Android, who was recently in the news over a copyright dispute with Google, has already compiled the sources to allow the operating system to run on the first Android phone, T-Mobile's G1.

LXer Feature: 16-Nov-2009

Microsoft has released part of its .NET Framework - the part for internet-connected smart devices - into the open-source community. The company said on Monday that it's releasing source code for the .NET Micro Framework under an Apache 2.0 license. Microsoft is also creating a community of "interested and involved members to help shape the future direction of the product." The community's web site was still under construction at time of the announcement.