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Reducing the widespread use of pirated software in Viet Nam will be an uphill struggle because of the high costs of legal software products, according to industry experts. But if shop owners, government offices and local consumers adopt open-source software – which is essentially free – piracy could fall dramatically, they added.

What if you were able to discover potential problems in your code prior to building it? Interestingly enough, there are 5 Eclipse plugins that will help you do just that!

Experts, users and authors agree: When Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 launches in February, it will succeed or fail on the merits of Xen. Forget the FUD, said Andy Hudson, a RHEL5 beta tester and author of Fedora Core 6 Unleashed living in the U.K. Forget the deep support discounts offered by Oracle for its Unbreakable Linux, and definitely forget about the claims coming from the Microsoft-Novell camp about interoperability. They're all moot points.

Microsoft has defended the digital rights management systems integrated into its new Vista operating system.

(A partial response to Peter Gutmanns' article -Azerthoth)

The open source movement and libraries have a lot in common, not the least of which is the belief in free and open access to ideas and information. Yet, until recently, libraries have been slow to switch to open source software. Libraries have highly specialized software needs because the library community has developed its own complex standards and protocols to facilitate things like interlibrary loan, meta data sharing, and federated searching. Until recently, lack of commercial support made implementing open source unfeasible for libraries without an IT staff. Also, open source alternatives weren't perceived as scalable or feature-rich enough to handle the complex needs of most libraries. Now, commercial support has facilitated new levels of collaboration between libraries through sponsored development.

Want to add a couple of cool features to your Web site without delving into the world of Web programing? In this case, you might want to give GreyBox a try. It's a tiny (only 22KB) JavaScript-based tool, released under the LGPL, that allows you to add page-in-a-page and gallery features using just a few easy-to-understand lines of code (check GreyBox' Web site for some examples).

Alert reader Yeb Havinga write in with news thatHL7 JavaSIG code is now available with a possibly open sourcelicense it is calling the"Health Level-7 Public License For JAVA"

Fedora Weekly News Issue 74

This series is designed for PHP application developers who want to start using CakePHP to make their lives easier. In the end, you will have learned how to install and configure CakePHP, the basics of Model-View-Controller (MVC) design, how to validate user data in CakePHP, how to use CakePHP Helpers, and how to get an application up and running quickly using CakePHP.

Oracle Corp. is making further inroads into the Linux market, this time by providing management tools for the open-source operating system, after having made its surprise October announcement of full global support for the Red Hat Inc. Enterprise Linux distribution.

"Does Microsoft intend to continue to break the law by filling software patents in South Africa?" This was the question that further sparked an already lively debate at a recent workshop by Freedom to Innovate South Africa. Although the question was never directly answered, it would seem the answer is yes.

So far the Windows Vista books I've reviewed (Easy Microsoft Windows Vista (QUE) and Microsoft Windows Vista Unleashed (SAMS)) have been for the beginner/home user and home/small office/small business user respectively. From the introductory material in Windows Vista in a Nutshell, it seems this book is for the SOHO user as well, with a small nod to corporate users. For a "Desktop Quick Reference", this book weighs in at a hefty 732 pages. Though probably not the largest "In a Nutshell" book ever published, it's still pretty big, indicating that there's a lot of road to cover with Windows Vista. After getting into the book and the subject matter, I started to wonder if 732 pages was even close to enough.

Theodore Ts'o announced that the 2007Linux Kernel Summit will be moved from its usual location in Ottawa, Canada, taking place this year in Cambridge, England. Ted described the move as a one-time experiment to be re-evaluated at a future date to see if it's worth moving the Kernel Summit to other locations in the future. He noted,"I understand that if it were only up to us developers, we'd want to have the conference in Honolulu, or perhaps in Australia or New Zealand. Unfortunately there are other stakeholers and other financial realities involved." Regarding this year's summit, Ted explained:"This year, the Kernel Summit will be held in Cambridge, England, at the DeVere University Arms Hotel, September 5-6 (with a welcome reception on the 4th). The decision to move the Kernel Summit to England is a one-year experiment based on the very strong request of last year's kernel summit attendees to try a location outside of Ottawa, and especially from the roughly 1/3rd of the attendees that come from the UK or Europe.

A lot of folks have an unhealthily casual attitude towards securing their wireless networks. "Oh, it's nice to share" some say. Others think "I have nothing to interest a cracker, so why bother?" Both attitudes are inviting trouble. There is nothing to be gained from leaving your systems open to be used as warez, porn or mp3 servers, or Borged into a spam botnet. Or to find yourself struggling with slow network speeds because some freeloading hog is overloading your bandwidth.

Novell Inc might have signed a patent and interoperability deal with Microsoft Corp but it is not about to give up competing with the software giant and last week released a study that suggests its Linux desktop product is better value than Windows Vista.

The second beta of Json-lib 1.0, an open source Java library "for transforming beans, maps, collections, java arrays and XML to JSON and back again to beans and DynaBeans." The function type from JavaScript is not part of the JSON format "officially" but it is supported as well.

All the best operating systems come on USB...So, you're tired of Windows and thinking of trying Linux. There are lots of good distros, RedHat or Novell have all the enterprise cred you might need. And there's a support community too, it's a no brainer...

The Electoral Enrolment Centre has consolidated electoral rolls on the open-source PostgreSQL database, replacing a group of disparate databases spread around the country. The updated New Zealand electoral roll management system, dubbed Mike, has been in the works since 2003 and is now in production, replacing a collection of Oracle databases with Visual Basic front-ends.

The Big Four providers of network monitoring and management tools have fined-tuned their products to cater to large corporations. What about small businesses that often find the tools bloated with unnecessary features? Companies like GroundWork Open Source offer more customizable solutions. GroundWork's VP of Products Tony Barbagallo thinks the industry is in for a change.

Following up announcement of its 'Unbreakable Linux' program last fall, Oracle Corp has unveiled extensions for its Enterprise manager administration tool, which will be bundled into two of its three Linux support tiers.