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OpenStreetMap (OSM) has completed the bulk import of comprehensive street and highway data for the United States, months ahead of the project's original estimates. The massive data set originated with the US Census Bureau's public domain map database, and importing it required a dedicated upload process running around the clock since August 2007. The imported data will still require human editing and error-correction, but the completed task is a major milestone for the OSM project.

Howto Install KDE 4.0 (Stable) in Ubuntu Gutsy

I was pleased to see the formal announcement yesterday of the OpenSAF Foundation, a new open source project that I've been helping form for the past several months. You can find the the launch press release here, and I've also pasted it in at the end of this blog entry for archival purposes. There's more to the picture than can be found in the press release, upon which more below.

Etelos, launched in pre-bubble 1999 as a CRM services outfit, has remade itself as a Web 2.0 company with the help of open source software. Today, Etelos offers hosted CRM applications that weave into Google apps, Windows Live, and even iPods. Leaving Microsoft behind, and all the licensing restrictions that came with it, made all the difference, says CTO and founder Danny Kolke.

Fonality has become the first open-source-based VoIP provider to strike a deal with a Tier 1 computer vendor. Starting this February, customers will be able to purchase fully provisioned Fonality VoIP Phone System servers from computer maker Dell. The Fonality VoIP Phone System will come installed on Optiplex 330 PCs, according to Fonality CEO Chris Lyman.

AMD has today announced the ATI Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series graphics processors, which are the budget-minded siblings to the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870. The graphics cards currently now shipping in these series are the HD 3450, HD 3470, and HD 3650. When the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 were introduced, there wasn't same-day Linux support but it had arrived both in open and closed-source forms relatively quickly, but is that the same story for these lower-end solutions? Will the DisplayPort interface on these graphics cards be supported under Linux? In this article, we have answers to these questions.

FUDCon Raleigh 2008 was a weekend of hacking, planning, discussions, coding, and general mirth. Over 200 members of the Fedora community were in attendance, and a tremendous amount of work was accomplished that will pay off in the Fedora 9 release. Rather than recap the entire event myself, I have collected up some of the blog posts about FUDCon that appeared on Fedora Planet during and after the event. Check back tomorrow for a FUDCon video.

Zenwalk Linux 5.0 for desktop was released on the 18th of January 2008 with the continued focus on simplicity and optimum performance. This major release also boasts the out-of-the-box availability of three Intel Pro Wireless and one Intel Wireless WiFi Link firmwares. This is also the first time that the modern HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) will be implemented thus replacing the old Zenwalk hotplug system. In keeping with tradition, the latest softwares are provided.

Open source content management systems (CMS) come in various shapes and sizes and can manage everything from your blog to your enterprise. These systems aren't difficult to deploy, but if you don't know your Apache from your MySQL, you'll run into a steep learning curve. If you have a deadline staring at you, or just want to get a CMS up and running as fast as possible, hop over to BitNami, a site that packages ready-to-consume "stacks" of popular open source CMSes. Just grab your favorite one, double-click, and you're done!

It's been a few years since the Free software, Turn based strategy game: The Battle for Wesnoth, made it's humble beginnings. Ever since then, little by little, not only has the code and game play been improving but the artwork has made huge leaps in quality. So take a dive in the world of Wesnoth and see for yourself some of the best pieces of original/traditional art the Free software world has produced.

Red Bend Software, the market leader in Mobile Software Management and Firmware Over-the-Air (FOTA) updating solutions for mobile devices, and Trolltech®, the leading cross-platform software development company, today announced they have formed a partnership to bring over-the-air software component management to Linux mobile phones that use Trolltech's Qtopia® application platform.

The Apache Web server (Apache) comes with a powerful logging framework. In the default configuration, Apache logs all errors to an error log and all access requests to an access log. The default level of logging is sufficient for analyzing traffic patterns and for getting basic information about errors, but it may be inadequate for troubleshooting purposes. Familiarity with all the logging features can help you troubleshoot the Web server or applications hosted on Apache.

It’s one small step for Dell, and another great leap for Asterisk — the open source VoIP phone system. Dell plans to promote Fonality (a major Asterisk proponent) to small business customers seeking IP telephony systems. It’s a landmark development, folks. Here’s why.

A nest of poisoned Web sites has been quietly attacking unsuspecting visitors using an arsenal of thirteen different exploits. If the site visitor has javascript enabled and is vulnerable to any of those exploits, then in no time at all their system will be compromised with a Trojan not yet recognised [sic] by many popular anti-virus packages.

It happens to the best of us. We forget where we put things. Car keys. Flash drives. Yes, sometimes we even forget where certain files are on our computers. We can't really help you with the car keys and flash drives (although we inexplicably find things like that in the refrigerator here), we can help you out with finding missing files.

The extraordinary Richard Stallman, prophet of free software, always makes a deep and lasting impression. With his long brown locks, flowing beard and an unexpected air of innocence, he appears Christ-like, even if a slightly portly one. That's how he struck me when I first encountered this iconic figure five years ago for a magazine interview, and like everything to do with the feisty founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), it turned out to be amusing and unpredictable.

This is an editorial about file conversions. It starts with a story about Free Software Magazine and our struggle with article formats, and continues explaining why the world needs to get rid of Office Open XML, which could create more problems than the Microsoft monopoly itself. What I experienced with Free Software Magazine while converting (which, admittedly, wasn’t really that big a deal) would be nothing compared to what the whole world will have to deal with if OOXML became “the” file format “normally” used to exchange office documents.

This is a look at the state of Linux through the eyes of Google Trends, Google’s highly useful search trend analyzer. Though looking at search statistics can never give a complete picture, this gives an interesting perspective to how things are going for Linux, especially when viewed through the eyes of such a dominant and pervasive search engine as Google.

Today marks ten years since Netscape Communications Corporation announced its intention to release the source code of the then in-development Netscape Communicator 5.0, heralding the beginning of what would become the Mozilla project. At the same time, Netscape stopped charging for Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Netscape Communicator Standard Edition 4.0.

Linux laptop users suffering from Apple MacBook Air envy now have a chic, hot laptop to call their own: the Dell XPS 1330n with pre-installed Ubuntu 7.10. On Jan. 23, Dell quietly announced that it was releasing the Dell XPS 1330n to the European market. In addition, for the first time, Dell is allowing its customers in Spain to order this and other PCs with pre-loaded Ubuntu Linux. The Ubuntu-equipped XPS 1330 will be available to North American customers the first week of the February.