Showing all newswire headlines

Desktop Linux specialist Xandros announced Aug. 8 that it is joining the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), and will participate in OSDL's Desktop Linux working group. IDC, meanwhile, expects desktop Linux to will make substantial gains over the next several years, accounting for $10 billion in annual revenues by 2008, OSDL said.

With the recent release of the second draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3), digital rights management (DRM) is back in the news. The new draft may raise concerns about the rewording of section 3 of the license, which deals with DRM. The Free Software Foundation dislikes the term "digital rights management" and instead choose to call it digital "restrictions" management. But many people don't understand the implications of DRM on free software like Linux.

Digium, the company that spawned open source PBX and telephony software, Asterisk, has received $13.8 million in Series A funding from Boston-based telecom specialist venture fund, Matrix Partners.

The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), (http://www.lpi.org), the world's premier Linux certification organization and the Free Standards Group (http://www.freestandards.com) will combine forces in Latin America to promote Open Standards and professional certification
. The two organizations will initiate this relationship through their key participation in a five city IT tour in Brazil beginning in August 2006 which includes such leading companies as IBM and Novell, local LPI training partners and other IT organizations.

Matt Assay responded to the Enterprise Irregulars postings, which I summarized here, on the question of whether open source will crush, extinquish, vanquish traditional, proprietary enterprise software.

[note: This is an interesting call and response from CMS developers of both proprietary systems and Open source ones - Scott]

With PurifyPlus you can automatically pinpoint hard-to-find bugs, application performance bottlenecks, and identifies untested code.

I've been asked a few times over the past month for a set of references on free and open source software by people hoping to teach or learn about the concepts and mechanics of community development. They are not interested in a business model primer, although many of the references below would be invaluable to understanding the culture for a business person interested in open source software.

GE Fanuc Embedded Systems is shipping a 6U CompactPCI SBC (single-board computer) powered by a Freescale 1GHz MPC7447A or 1.4GHz MPC7448 PowerPC processor. The "C2K" features flexible I/O expansion, the company says, and is available with Linux in standard or ruggedized, conduction-cooled versions.

Chapter 4 - from the book Nagios: System and Network Monitoring by Wolfgang Barth -- Reprinted by permission from No Starch Press and Open Source Press. Available at booksellers now. Full book details are at the bottom of the article.

When Apple announced that it was moving Mac OS X to the Intel platform, one thing that didn't get much attention was that Apple would not be open-sourcing the Intel Darwin kernel. Now, Apple has reversed its course and has quietly announced that it will open-source the kernel after all.

The final release of open-source AJAX4jsf framework 1.0 is now available. The project, sponsored by Exadel and hosted on java.net, extends the benefits of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) functionality to component framework JavaServer Faces (JSF), which supports UI development for J2EE applications.

If you're interested in supporting Mozilla or OSS projects in general, Mozilla is actively soliciting people to participate in testing their new calendar systems.

Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community.

[wjl made it into this issue. :) -- grouch]

The Linux Starter Kit is a complete package bundling a full version of SUSE Linux 10.1 on DVD with a Quick Start Guide and an electronic reference guide. The kit has everything a beginning Linux user needs to try out Linux and quickly get up to speed with a new operating system.

The GP2X is an open, Linux-based handheld games console manufactured by Game Park Holdings of South Korea. It has a typical handheld control layout, a good quality backlit screen, built-in stereo speakers, headphone socket, and several connectivity and expansion options. My son is completely taken with the device, and it has won me over too. At£125 (or $190), you're not going to find a less expensive handheld device that can be expanded into a full-blown computer.

Italian developer Fulvio Ricciardi has produced a GPL-licensed x86 Linux router distribution available as a live CD or bootable CompactFlash (512MB) image. The ZeroShell Net Services distribution includes a Web-based configuration interface, and can provide "the main network services a LAN requires," Ricciardi says.

Embedded Planet has announced a family of PowerPC-based AMCs (advanced mezzanine cards) and an AdvancedTCA (ATCA) carrier board. The "AMC Platform" product family will support RapidIO or gigabit Ethernet backplanes, and work under Linux and other popular embedded OSes in standards-compliant wireline and wireless infrastructure products, the company says.

[I'm a sucker for gadgets. -- grouch]

O'Reilly Media has published a new edition of its Linux certification volume. LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, Second Edition is modeled after the Linux Professional Institute's job-based certification program, which currently focuses on two-year (Level 1) and four-year (Level 2) experienced candidates.

The new breed of rootkits is operating system-agnostic. 64-bit implementations of BSD, Linux, MacOS X, Windows Vista are all considered vulnerable, as long as they're riding atop the wrong chips from AMD and Intel. VM rootkits quietly sieze control of the chips' virtualization technology to control or pervert any and every process the attacker chooses. Current defense possibilities are depressingly mechanical.

Digium Inc., the creator of the Asterisk open source PBX, on Wednesday announced it has secured $13.2 million in its first round of venture capital funding from Matrix Partners, a well-known VC firm within the open source community.