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Open-source software is becoming ubiquitous, but companies need to be aware that its use must be carefully managed. Even Microsoft has admitted the attractiveness of this business model through its engagement with open-source companies such as SugarCRM Inc.and Zend Inc. Problems can arise because many open-source licenses require that users who incorporate open-source code in their software must make their code available for free (at reproduction cost), permit modifications of the software and permit redistribution without charging a fee.

The head of IT at the University of the Western Cape tells Novell he will do his utmost to develop an exit-strategy for all Novell products at the university. "Novell has let us down badly."

As a standalone office suite, OpenOffice.org lacks a back-end solution similar to Microsoft Office SharePoint, the software that integrates the office suite into a document collaboration and document management environment. Sure, there are applications that can handle both version control and user management, but until now, none of them offered seamless integration with OpenOffice.org that was easy enough for an average office worker to use.

OpenMoko jas announced the availability of a completely integrated open source mobile communications platform in partnership with FIC, a company who specialises in in motherboards, graphics cards, mobile solutions, and electronic devices. The announcement of the OpenMoko mobile communications platform coincides with the unveiling of FIC’s Neo1973 smartphone, which utilizes the full OpenMoko platform, and promised to be available in January 2007.

The HPC4U European research project active in GRID computing technologies just released the first freeware version of its fault tolerant grid middleware providing fault tolerance for parallel applications. This system, based on a Linux kernel running as MS Windows service (coLinux), offers the user the possibility to launch parallel application on virtual nodes in order to test fault tolerance mechanisms in action.

For anyone interested in the latest GPLv3 summary, but who didn't make it to the 5th international GPLv3 conference in Japan last week, a transcript of Richard Stallman's keynote has been published. Enjoy.

As the Web 2.0 bandwagon continues its rapidly accelerating path downhill towards the inevitable crash we find ourselves at another turning point in the development of the networked world. Ten years ago we were faced with a choice between the controlled homogeneity of the ‘information superhighway’ or the many and various delights of the unsupervised Internet, and we chose wisely.

Blessen Cherian, CTO and Executive Team Member of bobcares.com writes, "Shell scripting is nothing but a group of commands put together and executed one after another in a sequential way. Let's start by mentioning the steps to write and execute a shell script."

Linux company GEN Automation Technologies does their share in promoting Free Software by providing small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) the options to avail of rental and lease-to-own servers running an Open Source.

New Russian site about popular open source translation memory application OmegaT has launched - http://omegat.info. Some documentation (Instant Start Guide) has been translated into Russian.

The power of free software is being put to best use in Africa with localised Linux operating systems such as Wazobia in Nigeria gaining in popularity.

The UK's Open Source Consortium has joined criticism of UK government education policy towards open source software, maintaining that the British Education Communications and Technology Agency 'pays lip service' to open source while effectively excluding it from purchasing frameworks.

I have an impressive talent for buying laptop computers hostile to Linux. Right now I'm using a Sony Vaio VGN-FS840/W, with more proprietary drivers than you can shake a stick at. It's so bad that even a retail edition of Windows XP won't run on it; you need the OEM Windows (and sure enough, Sony is too cheap to include the CD), or you need to go to the Sony support site, download all of the drivers, and make your own supplement CD.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Dolphin, an alternative file manager, is imported into KDE SVN. Work on session management in Kontact becomes visible with the implementation of state remembering for tabs in aKregator. Mailody gets a better SMTP implementation, with authentication support. Many functionality improvements in Okular. An experimental generic API for integration of more online music store services (following the example of the Magnatune implementation) is proposed and developed in Amarok. Continued speed and memory optimisations in KOffice and KDE 4 (via. kdelibs).

The consultants that rolled out Australia's biggest known Linux desktop project are backing themselves for more.

Welcome to this year's 48th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! With the end of the year 2006 approaching fast, many developers are hard at work preparing their latest product releases. A new version of Xandros Desktop, the subject of our first look review, will be announced later this week, while SabayonLinux 3.2 and the PlayStation edition of Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 are also expected shortly. Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 is about to enter its hard-freeze period, while the recent release candidate for openSUSE 10.2 is reportedly shaping up into a highly polished distribution. Many other projects have been making steady progress towards their future releases - Freespire has launched its development process which will lead to a stable version 2.0 in the first quarter of 2007 and many far-reaching changes are also planned for the next release of Fedora Core. All these topics, together with the usual round-up of interesting news from around the distro world - that's issue 179 of DistroWatch Weekly. Happy reading!

Bruce Perens, a prominent figure in the open source movement and to some extent in the free software movement, has shot an open letter to Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian accusing the company of betrayal.

Is it right for free and open source projects to capitalise on the dissatisfaction created by the Microsoft-Novell deal and try to attract developers who work for Novell to jump ship?

Here is a new video of the "Sugar" user interface for the $100 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptop. As you may know, the mission of this non-profit association is to develop a low-cost laptop—the "$100 Laptop"—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children.

While many analysts are busy tearing down Sony PS3's and Nintendo Wii's, a few insiders are taking a closer look at the first batch of $100 (eventually) laptops to roll off the production lines in Shanghai as part of the One Laptop Per Child program backed by Nicholas Negroponte and MIT's Media Lab.