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The TomTom case exposed a long-simmering problem resulting from the combination of patents, proprietary software companies and open source. Andrew Tridgell recently patched Linux’s VFAT implementation, but the cult of silence that surrounds intellectual property will bedevil open source projects for some time to come.

Fedora 11 Xen hypervisor package contains pv_ops dom0 kernel support, ie. it is able to boot bzImage format dom0 kernels, and pv_ops sysfs memory ballooning support is included as well. These features/patches are backported from Xen 3.4 development/unstable version to Fedora’s Xen 3.3.x. Our current target is to add two more change sets from Xen Unstable as patches to F11 xen-3.3.1-11.fc11.src.rpm to provide Xen 3.3.1 Dom0 support for OpenSolaris and Nevada PV Guests with images utilizing the most recent Sun ZFS

UC Berkeley Extension will start offering a course (1 credit) titled "Open Source Fundamentals and Strategies". LJ contributing editor Ibrahim Haddad developed the course for UCB and will be teaching it.

There are awards, and then there are awards. The Oscars may hold audiences captive for a night, but the Nobel Prize is an award forever. The Open Source community has its share of awards as well, and award season would appear to be upon us, as two of the largest have opened nominations.

The popular Linux Desktop Environment KDE is now upgraded to version 4.2.3. This release contains several bugfixes & enhancements.

XBMC (“XBMC Media Center“) has been updated to version 9.04, codename Babylon, available now for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Apple TV, the classic Xbox, and bootable CDs or USB drives. XBMC is a cross-platform open-source software available for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard, Tiger, and Apple TV), Microsoft Windows operating-system, as well as the original Xbox game-console. With translations to over 30 languages for a worldwide audience. All versions of course completely free of any adware or spyware. It supports a very complete spectrum of of audio and video multimedia file formats and codecs right out-of-the-box, and include features such as playlist playback, audio visualizations, picture viewing, slideshows, and weather forecast functions, RSS feed scroller on your home screen, together with a ever expanding array of community driven third-party add-ons and plugins.

The Python developers have released the first beta of Python 3.1. The new version of the free scripting language is a development version, not for production use. The developers plan this as the only beta and aim to release the final Python 3.1 in June.

Thanks to netbooks, 2009 will be "The Year of GNU/Linux," says blogger Robert Pogson. A netbook running Android has been spotted in the wild -- the Skytone Alpha 680. Though its specs may be somewhat anemic and its price may be somewhat high, it's stirring up a lot of excitement in the Linux community as the harbinger of netbooks to come.

This tutorial shows how to prepare an Ubuntu 9.04 server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, MyDNS nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more.

As they did in the past with Java and HTML (just to cite two cases), Microsoft has now invested at least 12 months of work to try to fragment the ODF in the IT market: A shame.I swear I was ready to publish this week a post praising Microsoft for finally released SP2 of Office 2007 with native support for ODF, but unfortunately after the initial tests of various users, what we see is an absurd attempt to mislead consumers (who payed for the software) and fragment ODF in the IT industry.

When Google released the first version of its Chrome web browser, many eyebrows were raised over the fact that it updated itself automatically and silently, in the background, without user intervention or even so much as a notice. As it turns out, this has been a brilliant move by Google, as Chrome users are the most likely to have up-to-date installations of their browser, followed at a respectable distance by Firefox users. Safari and Opera trail behind significantly.

This is the screenshot of the cnet's download.com which shows the most popular downloads for windows. The first five positions are taken by anti-virus software :-). Sadly there is no 'Linux' download section but 'Mac' has a place.

South African open source specialist Obsidian Systems has added Untangle, a commercial-grade open source security solution, to its line up of supported products. Muggie van Staden, MD of Obsidian Systems, says that Untangle is ideally suited to small- and medium-sized businesses wanting to block spam, spyware, viruses, adware and unwanted content from entering their network while still being able to allow approved users remote access to the network.

As part of a small personal project, I've been reading through the court exhibits presented in Comes V Microsoft. One of those exhibits is a chain of internal Microsoft emails discussing how to get Windows XP on the OLPC. In these mails, there is a "recap" (and some later email discussion) of a meeting between Orlando Ayala, Craig Fiebig, and Tom Phillips from Microsoft with Rodrigo Arboleda of OLPCA and Marcelo Calure of Brightstar.

Novell announced it is developing a Moblin-based version of SUSE Linux that is optimized for Intel Atom-based netbooks. In addition, Intel and Novell today announced a partnership to collaborate and encourage original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) to adopt the Linux-based Moblin distribution.

Mozilla has issued a broadside against Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, by claiming it stifles the browser market and gives Redmond’s Internet Explorer an unfair advantage over its rivals. According to the Financial Times, Mozilla’s chairwoman Mitchell Baker said: "Our initial review suggests this is a blatant use of the Windows operating system to change the market dynamics of browser usage."

As the Internet becomes more vast open source communities need to be not only educating potential users on the benefits of open source software but also encouraging them to become part of the community. There once existed a common misconception that, “if we have coped with the tools we’ve used until now, why adapt to something new?” The answer is simple: change. Given the considerable impact that the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies have had on the way governments and businesses operate today, we now have a completely revised approach to sophisticated technology solutions – and need to forget this misconception in its entirety.

Leading Open Source Management Provider adds Deep Linux/Unix Monitoring and Eases Deployment Overhead

Despite the positive buzz generated by Windows 7, it is only a matter of time before Linux takes its rightful place at the top of the operating-system pile. Microsoft's failings are finally catching up with it and will cause the once-unstoppable juggernaut to cede to Linux. A key event was September 14, 2000, when Microsoft set a tiny snowball rolling with the release of the deeply flawed Windows Me. That snowball has been gaining momentum, despite some ups and downs along the way--XP was an up, for example. In many respects, the public mood has already shifted against the operating system that was once considered the heart of personal computing.

Ever wished you could make your friends watch the entire Rick Roll video as soon as they log in to their computer? Now you can.