Showing all newswire headlines

Monday, July 31, 2006: India will host the Fourth International GPLv3 Conference in Bangalore on 23 and 24 August 2006. A part of the world-wide drive to create awareness about the upcoming version three of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3), the two-day conference is expected to draw delegates from across the communities -- legal, bureaucrat and academia. While the first day will see Richard M. Stallman and Eben Moglen, the original architects of the GPLv3 license, communicating latest updates on the GPLv3 final draft, the second day holds panel discussions on localisation, awareness and adoption of GPLv3 and threat of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).

Admins, as a general rule, spend far too much time and energy trying to keep spam out of the networks. Until technology is developed to reach out and touch spammers — forcefully — spam will be an unfortunate and expensive fact of life. Fortunately, some simple hacks can be applied at the server level to derail a significant amount of spam. For Postfix admins, for example, there is the Postgrey Greylisting Policy Server.

Linux has had NTFS support for many years now, but as a reverse engineered filesystem, progress hasn’t exactly been fast.

A Mozilla Firefox exploit has been found that can hijack the Web browser and monitor submit-and-click events.

The new domain thedebianuser.org is still in its infancy, but at least its focus is pretty clear: it targets Debian users, which includes pretty much everyone from new converts to Ubuntu users to Debian Developers. After all, we are all users.

Flex and Bison are powerful tools for developing lexical and grammar parsers, in particular language compilers and interpreters. Although it is easy to generate programs using Flex and Bison, it is a bit harder to make those programs produce user-friendly syntax and semantic error messages. This article examines the error-handling features of Flex and Bison, shows how to use them, and details some pitfalls.

Traditional printed books beat ebooks in almost every respect except one: portability. While it's nice to relax on the sofa with a book in your hand, lugging a 500-page hardcover volume when you are on the move isn't all that appealing. But if your favourite book is available in an electronic format, you can easily turn it into an ebook and read it on your Pocket PC or Palm OS device.

Oracle's chief hints at possible redistribution of Red Hat Linux by the database giant.

MEPIS LLC, the popular Ubuntu-based Linux distributor, has finally released its distribution source code under the GPL. Warren Woodford, the Morgantown, WV-based company's CEO, is not one bit pleased with being forced to do so.

[What's interesting to me is that Woodford calls a requirement to include all the sources a 'restriction'. Frankly, I find the "limited agency relationship" comment bizarre. People already can give copies of GPLed software to their friends without being accused of violating the GPL. The only thing needed is the written promise of source code somewhere on the media. - dcparris]

Pervasive Software has decided to exit the business of providing support for the PostgreSQL open-source database, one of the first failures in the current rush to open-source business models.

Software in the Public Interest is pleased to announce that it has appointed new Officers following the election of three new members to the board of directors.

In a change of heart, Novell has ceased distributing proprietary software modules such as 3D video drivers that plug into the Linux kernel.

[I looove it! Now if Novell will start banning its own non-free repertoire, or more accurately, freeing it up... - dcparris]

"Open source is not just a matter of altruism--it's also good economic sense," said Sun Microsystems' Simon Phipps (pictured) in a recent speech. "Sun has now contributed more lines of open source code than any other organization, including the University of California, Berkeley," he said.

[Interesting. Some will want to brush up on their reading comprehension skills before attempting this one. - dcparris]

My favorite non-IE based alternative browser has reached the 200 million download mark.

NEW YORK — Prudential analyst John McPeake initiated coverage of three software companies Tuesday, including Red Hat Inc., which makes a Linux-based operating system.

Microsoft security guru Jeff Jones is extending the meme that Windows is more secure than Linux. Ever curious, Email Battles decided to check out his assumptions and methodologies. Setting aside easy red herrings like the timing of fixes, they still came across judgment calls that less MS-centric researchers might have made differently.

A bill introduced by Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) that aims to restrict social networking Web sites in schools and libraries passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 410-15. The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) would require organizations that receive funds under the federal E-Rate program to install Internet filters that would block access to sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

[This strikes me as getting dangerously close to the Big Brother syndrome. Isn't there a better way to protect children? - dcparris-

Welcome to this year's 31st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Christoph Berg [1]announced nine new members of the QA team who already work on outstanding issues in the [2]etch release. Gintautas Miliauskas [3]reported that he has been working on an integrated l10n infrastructure for Debian based on the framework used by the [4]WorldForge project.

Based on an XML standard developed by Microsoft called Systems Definition Model, SML promises to lower the cost of maintaining data centers by offering a common language for servers, networking equipment, and other computing devices to share information.

[So that leaves the _existing_ ODF standard...where? Bob-]

[From the article, "The goal of SML is to establish a lingua franca for computing resources--servers, networking gear, applications and the like--to exchange operating information, such as security requirements or performance problems."
Not exactly in the same realm as ODF - dcparris

A three-way collaboration among FileMaker customers well-versed in PHP, engineers and commercial PHP vendor Zend Technologies has enabled FileMaker to roll out the first public beta preview of a new Application Programming Interface (API) for the popular PHP open-source scripting language.

[Be wary of running your mouse over the MS banner ad. If MS ads annoy you, this one will really tick you off. But if you need to worry about Filemaker... - dcparris]