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How often have you thrown up your hands in disgust at the poor quality of documentation for an open source project? Wouldn’t it be nice if someone put together a documentation coverage tool that worked like test coverage tools? Well, you’re in luck—dcov is here (at least for Ruby code). dcov is still pretty immature , but it’ showing a lot of promise. It’s already capable of verifying that each module, class, and method of your code is documented. The upcoming release adds coverage checking for each parameter to a method

We all know (or are about to find out) that the world of Open Source Software isn’t the same world as proprietary developers live in. OSS coders may or may not be paid to develop the projects they work on, regardless, it’s all about your contributions, how good you are and how well you’re perceived in the OSS community. One’s reputation in the community is a valuable item. When everything you code or produce is freely available for the world to see and especially your peers to review and (ahem, constructively) criticize, the stakes are pretty high.

Last school year, I worked as a technology coordinator for a rural high school in Illinois. In an attempt to save the school some money, I introduced OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Firefox, and Thunderbird. Linux was also installed on a few desktop PCs and a couple of servers. Ubuntu was the Linux distribution selected. OpenSUSE, Debian, Fedora, and Slackware were also given trials on the servers. The open source software and operating systems were met with some acceptance, some resistance, and some skepticism.

Currently, a few developers on Team-XBMC have begun the porting of XBMC to Linux (and OpenGL using the SDL toolkit). The goal is for this to become a full port of XBMC with all the features and functions that are available on the Xbox version of XBMC (with the exception of Xbox exclusive functionality as Trainers, launching Xbox Games, and such). XBMC is a media player for the original Xbox game-console and is free and open source software, distributed under the GNU General Public License.

About 6 months ago I was having a conversation with my roommate Beth, talking about her aging Dell laptop. She was considering getting a desktop machine to use as her primary workhorse for her up and coming graduate student immersion. I thought a bit, and said "Hey, I could probably get you something decent. We could even make this an interesting experiment. Tell you what, I'll get you a machine, but it'll run Linux. Up for it?". "Sure!", and we were off...

In the comments to the article I wrote about running the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn on a Gateway MX7626, I added that my friend who owns the laptop had “upgraded” to Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 4 to try and fix a problem with intermittent sound under Feisty. The initial upgrade did work and her sound functioned properly. I talked to her again last night and she is giving up on running Ubuntu beta software and is going back to Fiesty.

Linux will power about 31 percent of all smartphones sold in 2012, and by then will have shipped in 331 million devices, says ABI. The research firm forecasts 75 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate) for Linux in smartphones through 2012, making it the fastest-growing OS in the sector. Linux is benefiting from growing support in the handset OEM community, most notably Motorola, but also Nokia with less traditional types of devices aimed at mobile broadband applications.

From the flames, some of you seem to be a bit interested in the new open sauce flavours floating around. One more go at the sauces, and we will see if you like it. Or not. You can flame, or ask for more. Here goes. The three victims for this round of testing are Arklinux 2007.1, Damn Small Linux 4.0, and Sabayon Linux 3.4.

Governments looking to migrate to open source software (OSS) will need to ramp up their internal skills base, according to Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio. Di Maio said that over time organisations had become reliant on external skills in their operations. One of the primary challenges for governments moving to open source would be the need to re-instate internal skills. "In moving to open source you can't rely on external skills and [before the move] you will need to assess whether you will be able to ramp up the the required level."

Sun has announced the UltraSPARC T2, which it has dubbed the world's fastest commodity microprocessor. As a general-purpose processor, the UltraSPARC T2 also provides support for the massively threaded, open source Solaris operating system and other realtime operating systems, as well as future versions of Ubuntu Linux. Sun plans to release source code for the UltraSPARC T2 processor to the OpenSPARC community and the UltraSPARC T2 processor design to the open source community through the GPL license.

Blue GNU interviews Alexandre Oliva to learn about Free Software Foundation - Latin America. After a bit of a stuttering start, the FSFLA is definitely well under way and making strong progress.

Well, you have to hand it to Microsoft. They are nothing if not thorough, and leave as little to chance as possible. Previous reports from all over have indicated sudden, surprising surges of membership in National Body voting committees in multiple countries throughout the world (most recently in Sweden), and I have reported recently (here and here) that there has been a sudden surge of interest among ISO members in upgrading their privileges to "P" status, which will entitle to them (just in time) to a more influential vote on OOXML

Scheduled for release tomorrow is X.Org 7.3. Among the new features for X.Org 7.3 include the Xorg server 1.4, an application for adjusting a display's backlight, updated display drivers, and support for font catalog directories. Version 1.4 of the X.Org server contains such features as RandR 1.2 support, input hot-plugging, KDrive enhancements, Solaris DTrace support, and EXA improvements. In this article today, we will briefly go over some of the changes found in X.Org 7.3 and we will follow up with some benchmarks in early September.

"Microsoft has engaged in anticompetitive conduct in the software industry for many years, and has sought to attack free software for almost as long," Free Software Foundation says. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today released the following statement in response to claims by Microsoft regarding their obligations under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3):

Microsoft cannot declare itself exempt from the requirements of GPLv3

Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced the latest release candidate of the upcoming 2.6.23 kernel,"it can mostly be described with the one word,'boring'", he said, noting there weren't any exciting changes. He added that there was two weeks between this and the last release candidate. Actual source-level changes can be viewed through the git web interface. Kernel Newbies maintains a list of all changes in the upcoming kernel

An easy, inexpensive way to double up Ethernet interfaces to get more more bandwidth and reliability is called Ethernet bonding. While Gigabit Ethernet is all exciting and the hot new fad, you can get a lot of mileage out of using Ethernet bonding to give your existing gear a nice boost without spending much extra money. Just stuff two ordinary 10/100 Ethernet interfaces into a machine, tweak a few configuration files, and you're in business. If one fails you won't lose connectivity. It is a good cheap upgrade for your servers—you'll have several options for configuring load balancing and failover, and with the right gear you'll get an instant bandwidth boost by combining the bandwidth of the two interfaces.

If you go by what the mainstream press reports, you’d think there were only two computer desktop operating systems in the world—Windows and Mac OS. This notion would be most unfortunate because it might keep you or your company from exploring Linux as a reliable, secure and powerful desktop operating system for your PC that’s cheaper than the two proprietary platforms. In fact, it’s often free. Today, more than a year after I switched, there’s very little I can’t do in terms of business and personal productivity on my Ubuntu Linux PC that I did when I used Windows.

Few major pieces of free software are more eagerly awaited than KDE 4. With changes to everything from the core libraries and window manager to the look, feel and function of the desktop, by any standard, KDE 4 is an extreme makeover of the popular desktop environment. Scheduled for release in October, KDE 4 can be toured now in the first beta that was released at the start of August. On the way, you'll find major overhauls of general functionality,as well as both major and minor refitting of familiar KDE programs and the introduction of a few new ones.

Software Freedom Day the worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), will take place on September 15. The South African event will take place at the department of science and technology (DST) in Pretoria.

The Free Software Foundation has defined Four Freedoms related to software. These freedoms apply to users of software, not necessarily developers. In the view of the FSF, these freedoms are ethical in nature, so much so that they argue that software which violates these freedoms is unethical.