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Sun Microsystems in the next few days plans to issue an update that plugs a serious security hole in the most recent version of its Java Runtime Environment, more than a week after providing a fix for the same vulnerability in an earlier version of the program. The lag has prompted a prominent security researcher to lambaste the effectiveness of the company's security team.

Free Software Foundation (FSF) leader Richard Stallman said at the launch of version 3 of the General Public License (GPLv3) late last month that businesses are “foolish” not to adopt non-proprietary technologies. Surrounded by supporters from the software programming and academic fields on the June 29 launch at the foundation’s Boston headquarters, Stallman detailed his opinions on why businesses should use open source software.

Slackware Linux is the oldest surviving Linux distribution, and still one of the most popular. Last week's release of version 12.0 is a milestone for the Slackware team, as it marks Slackware's first use of a default 2.6.x kernel. Other new components include KDE 3.5.7, Xfce 4.4.1, Xorg 7.2.0, and GCC 4.1.2. Slackware is now nearing the bleeding edge without sacrificing stability, making this truly an exciting release.

Businesses in Asia are not zealots when it comes to open source, as many are adopting it for practical reasons like cost, security and support.

Mobile-gadget makers are starting to take advantage of software-defined radio, a new technology allowing a single device to receive signals from multiple sources, including television stations and cell phone networks. But a new federal rule set to take effect Friday could mean that radios built on "open-source elements" may encounter a more sluggish path to market--or, in the worst case scenario, be shut out altogether.

Even if you live in a cave, you heard about the iPhone--a masterpiece of technology and also a marketing blitzkrieg made by Mr. Jobs. At the same time a very interesting phone has been launched on the market : OpenMoko's Neo 1973. The main feature of the Neo 1973 is openness. All the hardware is documented, and the software is open source. This contrasts greatly with the iPhone which is as closed as a bank vault.

In the ongoing effort to reduce the power consumption of the linux kernel and take better advantage of the tickless kernel patch, Stephen Hemminger posted a patch to make it possible to unload the keyboard blink driver, "the blink driver wakes up every jiffy which wastes power unnecessarily. Using a notifier gives same effect. Also add ability to unload module." The blink driver was only recently merged, described as a "simple driver that blinks the keyboard LEDs when loaded. Useful for checking that the kernel is still alive or for crashdumping."

FIC's fully hackable Neo1973 handset officially launched for developers;"mass market" launch of its OpenMoko OS to follow.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Akademy 2007 draws to a close. Dolphin embedded as the file management view in Konqueror. Plasma continues to mature, with new data engines for Tasks and Bluetooth, and EBN and Task Manager Plasmoids making an introduction. Further progress in Javascript bindings through QtScript; import of Kimono (C#) classes. More basic functionality added to Kollagame, a game development IDE. Initial work in the KWin/Xinerama and 2d Projection for Marble Summer of Code projects, with continued progress in the Icon Cache, KOrganizer Theming, KRDC and Music Notation projects...

The Linux kernel process scheduler, as you know it, has been completely ripped out and replaced with a completely new one called Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS). How fair it will be, remains to be seen, but in the meantime here's what it's original creator Ingo Molnar has to say on the subject: 80% of CFS's design can be summed up in a single sentence: CFS basically models an "ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU" on real hardware.

Today I tried to help a Mac user save some pictures to a DVD. There were more than 1GB of photos, so it made more sense to use a DVD than two CDs. Unfortunately, Mac OS X thinks that you need to make movies when you insert a blank DVD disc -- it has no idea that you want to save data to it. What you, the user, want to do does not matter. All that matters is that you do what Apple says a computer should do. This is "the Apple way," and some people find it enjoyable.

The third version of the General Public License (GPLv3) has been adopted by 116 open source projects in its first week of operation, according to an overview compiled by software risk management firm Palamida. A further three projects have opted for the Lesser General Public Licence, which offers fewer restrictions than the regular GPLv3.

Today Guardian Digital announces the launch of the next generation of EnGarde Secure Linux, the first secure pure open source platform for managing the threats of the Internet in enterprise-class environments.

I pulled the 30 GB hard drive from the $15 Laptop today, swapped in the original 3 GB drive (which wasn't bootable with its original Windows 98 install) and decided to throw distros at it. For those not following along, it's a Compaq Armada 7770dmt, 233 MHz Pentium II, with the biggest chink in the armor being RAM -- only 64 MB of it. Here's the scorecard ...

When the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) couldn't depend on a proprietary portal solution to meet its needs any longer, CDHS County Infrastructure Manager Ron Cash turned to open source software, because of the benefits of community development and the flexibility to customize applications for a perfect fit. The financial benefits of open source are nice too, Cash says.

Ubuntu 7.04 is undoubtedly one of the most popular Linux distributions, especially for Linux newbies. Overall it is extremely usable and good but a very limited number of applications are by default shipped with Ubuntu 7.04. Here in this article we look at a number of really good applications that are not shipped by default with Ubuntu as well as instructions on installing them.

In Linus Torvalds' words,"Not a whole lot of changes since -rc7," but the more significant upgrades in kernel release 2.6.22, announced over the weekend, include a new wireless stack, a new FireWire stack, and a new SLAB allocator for more efficient memory management.

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 95 for the week of July 1st through July 7th 2007. In this issue: A new Infrastructure Ticketing System, A reminder to vote in the Fedora Board election, Fedora Core 5 Retirement, Red Hat High, the Fedora Free Media Program, Fedora 7 Reviews and much more.

The new version 3 of the General Public License got a major endorsement Monday from the project leaders of Samba, widely used open-source software for networked file sharing and printing. "After internal consideration in the Samba Team, we have decided to adopt the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 licenses for all future releases of Samba," said Jeremy Allison, a Samba project leader.

Canonical, a company best known for the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has released Storm, a generic open source object relational mapper (ORM) for Python. Storm is designed to support communication with multiple databases simultaneously.