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ActiveCollab, an open source web-based collaboration and project management tool designed by a Croation student, nears its first stable release. Running on PHP 5 and MySQL 4.1, it allows one to retain control of data and provides an easily managed alternative to other management tools.

A plan to revise the "constitution" of the free software world, Richard Stallman's General Public Licence (GPL), has split the hacker world in two.

With the next version of Ubuntu set to release in the near future, I found myself curious about the general consensus of the average user population. Early on, I made a conscious decision that I would not review this upcoming version of Ubuntu until it had been released in a non-beta format.

Benefitting from an unlimited network storage capacity, KoffeePhoto is an innovative answer to photo sharing needs.

[Reader Beware: This is freeware - not Free Software. It's availability for GNU/Linux systems is the only reason I'm posting this. You'll have to decide for yourself whether this has any value. - dcparris]

PolishLinux.org has a review of Frugalware 0.5, the latest release of this independent Linux distribution. From the article: "It's not as good for the newcomers as openSUSE or Mandriva since there are not so many graphical wizards and tools included. On the other hand, the system is fast and simple, offers a great package manager, large software repository and decent multimedia support[...] All in all, Frugalware is a very nice distro and it may be a good choice for a power user's desktop."

The Linux Professional Institute held a series of "beta" exams for its forthcoming level three certification. The LPIC-3 certification is expected to be released in January 2007.

OpenOffice.org's OOoBasic gives users tools to programmatically access and manipulate files. To see how that works, we'll create a simple macro that allows you to save text snippets from the current document in a plain text file. This macro can be used to store text fragments from multiple documents in one text file, or to save deleted passages in an external file in case you need them later.

With Microsoft's Vista looking more like a joke everyday, there is a real opportunity for Linux to make a true attempt to go for the mainstream user. Unfortunately, it’s their openness and freedom that is holding them back. Obviously we are not going to see the Linux companies out there working together as they are after all, still competing with one another. But there are some things that they can do to enable the development community in such a way that it will give Windows a run for its money unlike anything the world has ever seen before.

Flash Player 9 Update includes all of the features from the release versions of Flash Player 9 (9.0.16.0 and 9.0.20.0) for supported platforms. In addition to bug fixes and minor enhancements, this release introduces support for full screen mode in the web player and support for Windows Vista. These release notes document known issues related to the beta versions of Flash Player 9 Update.

My friend Bjorn Stabbel posed some interesting questions about the lack of enthusiasm for open source in China. Bjorn is an owner in a software development company, Exoweb, that specializes in content Management systems using Python and Plone development.

Red Hat, Inc. organised the first Red Hat Developer Day in India in Bangalore on 18 October 2006. The one-day Red Hat event brought together Linux developers and users to facilitate the growth of open source technologies, development, techniques, tools and standards through the sharing of technical knowledge and expertise.

Here's a preview of the Explorer-Firefox battlefield:

Once upon a time, the open source JBoss Java application server was a neutral player in the server market. But back in April, when commercial Linux distributor Red Hat shelled out $350 million in cash and stock to acquire JBoss, that middleware platform was no longer the same Switzerland it used to be. It was only a matter of time before Novell, which was a JBoss distributor itself, had to find another ally.

WinSystems is shipping an x86-compatible EBX SBC (single-board computer) that runs Linux and targets M2M (machine-to-machine) connectivity applications. The LBC-GX500 is based on an AMD GX500@1W processor, and targets industrial automation, transportation, test and measurement, petrochemical, MIL/COTS, medical/diagnostic equipment, communication gateways/routers, and homeland security applications.

Two vulnerabilities have been found in Adobe Flash Player version 7.0.63 for Linux -- as well as earlier versions -- that provide an opportunity for attackers to send arbitrary HTTP requests from an unsuspecting user's browser, reports Rapid7 LLC in a security advisory published Tuesday.

Mercury Computer Systems is sampling what it claims to be the first AMC (advanced mezzanine card) based on Intel's Core Duo processor. Mercury also says its AXA-100, which is available with Linux, "doubles the compute resource available in an AMC form factor."

Jay Patel writes: "The Mozilla QA team and community need a new home on the web (we still have http://www.mozilla.org/quality, but it's a bit outdated and wikis just don't look pretty)... so we've started planning for QMO (http://quality.mozilla.org).

Founder and chief maintainer Jeremiah Cheatham last week released v2.3 SE of the Slackware-based Myah OS. Myah OS v2.3 SE, optimized for multimedia and gaming, is composed of a Linux live and installation CD and utilizes the KDE 3.5.4 desktop environment and a 2.6.18 kernel.

Strategic Test is prepping a tiny processor module based on an 806MHz "Monahans P" processor. The 200-pin SODIMM-sized Triton-290 is expected to ship in November with a Linux 2.6-based development kit.

The Camino Update weblog reports that the first alpha version of Camino 1.1 is now available. Amongst other enhancements, Camino 1.1 Alpha 1 adds a single window mode for tabbed browsing, support for the system-wide Mac OS X spell checker, RSS/Atom feed detection and improved cookie and download options.