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Code certification is a lightweight approach for formally demonstrating software quality. Its basic idea is to require code producers to provide formal proofs that their code satisfies certain quality properties. These proofs serve as certificates that can be checked independently. Since code certification uses the same underlying technology as program verification, it requires detailed annotations (e.g., loop invariants) to make the proofs possible. However, manually adding annotations to the code is time-consuming and error-prone.

IBM Real-Time Class Analysis Tool for Java is a tool for Linux and Windows that lets developers deploy their Java applications without manually defining classes that should be preloaded.

In this article, I cast before you another five pearls of wisdom, focusing more on smaller companies without the overhead, or support structures, of a larger organization. For more less commonly states yet invaluable hints check out the previous installment in the Don't let these disasters happen to you series, targeted at embedded engineers in larger corporations.

The Linux VServer Project has completed a new stable version of its kernel patches. The project took the opportunity to combine its announcement of the new Version 2.0.2 -- the first release declared to be stable after some eight months of effort -- with a Wiki-based redesign of its website.

South Korea will try to tackle one of its lingering problems--a chaotic street and address system--through a new open-source project.

Opera Software will resell Adobe's Flash Player 7 SDK (software development kit) to customers of its Opera for Devices SDK. The agreement should simplify the licensing picture for Linux device designers interested in deploying a "full Internet" browser that supports Flash-based browsing, or Flash-based user interfaces, the companies say.

PyKota is a robust Linux-based open source print quota and print accounting system that runs via LDAP, MySQL, or PostgreSQL on the back end and CUPS and Samba on the front end. At our school, we have found it to be a powerful application capable of managing printers, users, groups, and accounting information using any currency.

It's 2007, and you want to upgrade all your PCs' operating systems after the infamous March 2007 XP Meltdown. You know, the virus attack that actually melted computers running XP, but couldn't touch machines running any other OS? Never heard of it? Well, play along with me, OK?

Martin Streicher, Editor-in-Chief, Linux Magazine, looks at three essential UNIX utilities that deliver the entire Internet to your command line.

A new online forum has been created on nuxified.org devoted to helping new GNU/Linux users choose their first distribution. As fas as I know, it’s the first anly only online online forum when you can ask a question “Which distro should I pick?” without getting bashed.

Open-source systems management firm GroundWork Open Source has opened for business in the UK. The San Francisco-based firm has launched GroundWork Monitor, its alternative to enterprise frameworks such as IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView, CA Unicenter, and BMC Patrol. A little like Red Hat in Linux distributions, GroundWork aggregates open-source tools such as RRDtool, MRTG, SmokePing, NeDi, Cacti, Ganglia, Dojo and Sendpage to provide what it claims is a complete monitoring solution.

Novell is making life easier for IT security administrators. The enterprise software vendor has bundled the Sentinel security and event management software from e-Security, which it acquired in April, into its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and identity management suite.

As Linux for mobiles gains momentum, ZDNet UK looks at the first reprogrammable device to be released for the developer community

As part of the ongoing BSP Marathon there will be a BSP in Berlin, Germany on the weekend September 22nd-24th. The BSP will be hosted in the office of Individual Networks Berlin e.V.

The NeoOffice project has released the first free public beta of its upcoming 2.0 software. NeoOffice is a port of the OpenOffice.org codebase to native Mac OS X APIs and toolkits. The result is an office suite that is integrated with OS X core functionality.

What kind of contract includes a provision that one of the parties has the right to violate the contract with impunity? Well, the Windows XP EULA for one, as an interesting analysis of Microsoft's legalese points out. Several readers have justifiably praised LinuxAdvocate.org's "Windows XP EULA in Plain English" page in which each section of the current Windows XP Home EULA is printed side-by-side with a clear explanation of what it means. Given the fact that most of us have "agreed" to it or a very similar Microsoft EULA, the LinuxAdvocate's analysis is definitely worth reading. But the plain English description of one section in particular caught my eye.

Linuxlookup.com has a story on a program that pays open source developers up to $2,000 for extending mobile capabilities of community’s most wanted connectors and plug-ins for Skype, Gmail, Yahoo!, Open Office and others.

Out of my ignorance, I had come to the conclusion that, with only isolated exceptions, California state government was firmly in the pocket of proprietary software solutions. When you’re in a Microsoft-standardized site, with no useful leads to other contacts, such a conclusion may not be too surprising.

Many KDE users tend to take the Konqueror Web browser for granted, but that's a mistake. Konqueror may not be able to replace Firefox as a Web browser for every site, but it does a lot more than just simple browsing.

[Konqueror alone replaced several of the programs I used when I ran Windows. - Scott]

In an interview with Tectonic, Canonical's newly-appointed education programme manager, Richard Weideman, says the makers of Ubuntu are focusing on the education space to expose the next generation to the benefits of open source and "freedom of choice". He argues that open source is no longer "a fringe element but a cornerstone" of today's education agenda.