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A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open-source movement -- none more so than France -- and left U.S. developers in the proverbial dust. Through policies and high-profile projects, the French Republic for years has been advocating for all open source all the time, in government and education. And France is not stopping: This summer, an economic commission set up by French President Nicolas Sarkozy recommended tax benefits to stimulate even more open-source development.

Software developer Red Hat bought an Israeli company in a bid to gain a competitive edge against Microsoft and smaller rivals that provide computing services for complex networks. Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat said Thursday that it paid $107 million in cash for privately held Qumranet, which sells software that helps computer systems run multiple programs more efficiently on less equipment.

Content-filtering proxies restrict Internet access privileges for users or groups across an entire network. They must be able to block unwanted content through keyword, URL, DNS, MIME, and image filtering. They need to authenticate and log a user's Internet activity by monitoring and generating detailed reports of URLs accessed, and they must integrate antivirus or malware protection by accessing a reliable antivirus server. Fulfilling all these functions may be a lot to ask, but SafeSquid delivers on all counts.

SCO is offering full-day training on Porting and Packaging on SCO OpenServer 6 and UnixWare 7.1.4 Workshop. A hands-on workshop walking through porting of open source applications and packaging.

[They want me to pay $500 bucks to learn how to port open source to their stuff? They've got some moxy that's for sure. - Scott]

A top Debian contributor has been left "pretty disappointed" by elements of the Debian community for failing to comply with the conditions of the GNU GPLv2 license. Daniel Baumann, who maintains the Debian Syslinux bootloader package, has said Debian components were being released only in binary form without source code - resulting in problems for Apple Macintosh users.

If this is the best Bogusky and his team can do to compete with the highly successful, and should I say, really funny, Get a Mac Campaign, Microsoft is truly throwing its $300M down the toilet because this is ad is pure crap.

Terry Hancock at Freesoftware Magazine explores the empirical case for debunking six major myths on which the existing model of intellectual property is based and the belief that free development can only be a niche phenomenon. Read the full article at FSM

Standards like POSIX are meant to make life easier for application developers by providing rules on the semantics of system calls for multiple different platforms. Sometimes, though, operating system developers decide to change the behavior of their platform—with full knowledge that it breaks compatibility—for various reasons. This requires application developers to notice the change and take appropriate action; not doing so can lead to a security hole like the one found in the Postfix mail transfer agent (MTA) recently.

The release of Google's Chrome browser is a welcome development for those who belong to the ABM category - the Anyone But Microsoft group. They don't mind a monopoly, they just don't like the Microsoft monopoly. The prospect of having Google dictate the course of their digital lives is apparently pleasing to these folk, who see the company as some kind of cuddly teddy bear - a big bear, sure, one that embraces you, fine - but, hey, it's a warm, soft embrace so who cares?

New Inspiron Mini 9 netbook will ship with Ubuntu pre-installed - including Netbook Remix - or Windows XP if you're prepared to pay a litttle extra.

The latency of the execution of a particular task can be affected by what tasks a system is running, the condition of the network the machine is connected to, and how well the various server machines on the network are performing. LatencyTOP is a command-line tool and kernel patch that lets you see what is causing latency in the applications on your system.

Morning wrap: Are you running Ubuntu but you're keen to see what all the fuss over Google's Chrome browser is about? Then here is a guide to running Chrome on Ubuntu using Wine. Speaking of Chrome, Google has updated its terms of service for Chrome to remove the sections that suggested that Google would own all your content while using its browser. The new terms simply state that your content is your content. And Red Hat has just bought up an Israeli virtualisation company, Qumranet, for a $107 million. Red Hat plans to incorporate the new virtualisation software into its Red Hat Enterprise desktop.

In my last article for Linux Journal's web edition, I discussed a web-based program that queried an SQL database and output a native Excel file. That article was based on a program I wrote for a customer some time ago. Today, I'm going to write about doing the exact opposite; today's program will accept an Excel spreadsheet, collect data from it, and make additions to an SQL database. This program is also based on a program I'm writing for a customer. In fact, I wrote both programs for the same customer.

I’ve been hyping the convergence of open source, software as a service (SaaS) and managed service providers (MSPs) in recent months. But I have to admit, it has been difficult to find MSPs that actually run a large mix of open source SaaS systems. That all changed tonight at the MSP Revolution conference, when I met John Truitt, president of Kalleo Technologies. Kalleo, based in Peducah, Kentucky, leverages Asterisk, SugarCRM, Nagios and GroundWork Open Source as part of its daily managed services business.

An issue near and dear to my heart, both personally and professionally is that of spam. Not the lunch meat, which, when prepared correctly, I happen to enjoy, but that bane of email, the unsolicited commercial email (UCE). At what point does legitimate communication cross the line to become junk. I am asking this question for a couple of reasons. The first is an article in this morning's Washingtong Post about Facebook users having their account's deactivated for abuse, because the user was using the system for, theoretically, just what its designers intended - staying in contact with friends. The second reason is more critical to me and that is sending out updates about hazardous weather and preparations to members of my volunteer cadre. As TS Hanna approaches, the traffic will increase and many of the systems that some of my people are on consider this uptick in mail to be spam, regardless of whether or not the end user actually chooses to receive it.

I have six basic different uses for free, open-source software: 1) my law office practice; 2) managing and editing video for the Digital Tipping Point Project; 3) running a 25-seat Edubuntu lab at a public middle school as a volunteer in San Francisco; 4) placing ACCRC.org Linux computers in classrooms; 5) giving out ACCRC.org Ubuntu computers to friends, neighbors and the children who attend that school; and 6) supporting San Francisco's Tech Connect program by demonstrating Linux boxes at events for nonprofits and low-income individuals.

Yesterdays post on sorting Perl lists and removing duplicates did end up being a bit heavy at the end, as I feared. I received my fair share of "here's how you can do it better" emails, which (although I'm not trying to do my most succinct and efficient work here) I always appreciate. In all seriousness, I really do enjoy getting different perspectives on methods and practices put up on this blog. I'm always looking to better my own skill-set, so keep the free advice coming.

Never let it be said that I don't listen to readers. In April, after I favorably reviewed a wireless product that elegantly displayed baseball scores, Don wrote:"How could you recommend that, especially at the price of $200 for a unitasker? This isn't worth $20 for what it does. What a joke. Please check out Chumby for a slightly cheaper and much more functional alternative."

If the rocky reception of KDE 4 has done anything, it has forced the KDE project to realize it needs to listen to users more closely. One of the first results of this realization is the new Community Working Group (CWG). Announced at Akademy, the recently concluded annual KDE conference, the CWG was described as designed "to act as a central point of contact by being available to communicate user needs and concerns to developers, and developer intentions and plans to users." The CWG is still being organized; to find out more about its plans, we contacted Anne Wilson and Juan Carlos Torres, two of the group's five initial members.

Chrome is in fact a reference to the imminent release of Google’s entry into the browser market. Apparently, the launch was accidentally “leaked” by a Google employee who was a little piggy fingered with the send button on his e-mail client. By the time you read this it may be available for download (probably Windows only in the first instance). I was intrigued by this because there have been “reviews” of Chrome already and the reason for this is the unique way Google has chosen to announce it. If you were launching a new browser, or anything else, would you do it through the medium of a comic? Gary Richmond at Freesoftware Magazine explores the Darwinian implications of Google's launch of their shiny new browser and who the winners and losers will be. You can read the full story at FSM