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Several rumors have been circulating that claim an esoteric prescience concerning Sun's intentions toward Java and the free software community. Like shoots of hope that spring from the coldest ground, open source proponents were reported floating the idea that Sun might finally, this time, yes really, make Java open-source.

More credibly, CNET suggests that Sun will alter its licensing on its Java Runtime Environment so that Linux distributions can include it. Currently, a typical Linux user (unless he buys a packaged distribution that has gone through the trouble and expense of getting a JRE license, as Sun's own Java Desktop System did) has to download and install a JRE himself, should he want Java for use in applets in his web browser or for other purposes. Clearly, it would much more convenient for users (and provide more certainty for developers) if Linux distributions could come with Java built in.

The Linux Desktop Pocket Guide is a valuable resource for new users to the Linux world. Almost everyone has heard of Linux and recognizes it as the "next big thing". However, many people are taken aback at the sheer number of Linux distributions. The advantage of Windows is that there is only one company to go to and that provides some simplicity. With Linux, there is no one-stop shopping, and each distribution has different strengths and weaknesses. This book helps the novice user to navigate the most popular distributions to decide which will work best for them.

Due to circumstances beyond our control...

[I'm betting on the wife with an 8-pound hammer! - dcparris]

Internet satirist Shelley the Republican has embraced Microsoft Windows, barely 10 days since publishing a tongue-in-cheek diatribe that painted the open source community as a bunch of communist hackers.

BogoSec is a source code metric tool that wraps multiple source code scanners, invokes them on its target code, and produces a final score that approximates the security quality of the code. This article discusses the BogoSec methodology and implementation, and illustrates the output of BogoSec when run on a number of test cases, including Apache Web server, OpenSSH, Sendmail, Perl, and others.

Dropline 2.14.0, released last month, lets you add the GNOME desktop environment to Slackware. It consists of 271 compressed package format files on a single CD. Using dropline on top of Slackware is like putting icing on a cake.

Lead maintainer Andrew Morton says defects are being added to the production kernel faster than they're being fixed.

Do the companies that benefit the most from open-source code give anything back to the community? That's a provocative question that comes up when you take a close look at how prominent open-source projects actually work. I don't want to point any fingers, but what about the banks and financial services firms? How much do they give back?

Madrid, Spain, May 8, 2006- After a successful Beta program, Genasys today announced the release of Version 9 of the GenaMap Product Suite. This powerful GIS development and distribution platform is celebrating more than 20 years providing flexible functionality and Unix and Linux support while Version 9 adds support for the Windows operating system.

A local representative of the principal backer of the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system has reacted negatively to a proposal to set up an independent Australian organisation to promote the software.

Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva, Red Hat, and Ubuntu issued security updates that addressed security problems for the following packages: ClamAV, Dia, the X.org X Server, Ethereal, Asterisk, Mozilla, Thunderbird, resmgr, GDM, LibTIFF, Mplayer, PHPWebSite, and SquirrelMail. Ubuntu also issued a kernel update addressing multiple vulnerabilities.

In its "Gunfight at the OK Corral" with a spammer, controversial Blue Frog maker, Blue Security, was shot out of the saddle, completely losing its own website to a denial of service attack. In addition, Blue Frog client email addresses were reportedly exposed, and 10 million non-combatants in Typepad's blogging community assumed room temperature for at least twelve hours. So what did Blue Frog mean when it assured skeptical experts that there would be no innocent victims?

There are already multiple implementations of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) in the marketplace. Why do adopt a standard - and therefore by definition go head to head with their competitors?

Does GNU or the Free Software movement need a new and more attractive logo to help us advertise Free Software ideas?

Many times I have come across seemingly hopeless situations where a program when compiled and installed in GNU/Linux just fails to run. In such situations after I have tried every trick in the book like searching on the net and posting questions to Linux forums, and still failed to resolve the problem, I turn to the last resort which is trace the output of the misbehaving program. Tracing the output of a program throws up a lot of data which is not usually available when the program is run normally. And in many instances, sifting through this volume of data has proved fruitful in pin pointing the cause of error.

Our list of Unix books, papers, and usenet postings continues to grow, so much so that I thought it best to move it to its own page, so we can organize it and continue to work on it on its own page. With that end in mind, Groklaw member grouch has collected all the comments you've left on the original article, and he's put them all together in one list.
Nice bit of work, Grouch!

Journalist Zenone Sovilla founded publishing company Nonluoghi Libere Edizioni (the name approximately means "Non-Places Free Editions") in 2002 after two years' experience running an online community called Nonluoghi.it, which he created to discuss social and political issues, with particular attention to the relationships between democracy and information. The focus of the newborn publishing house was on participatory democracy, libertarian theories, and nonviolence. Right at the start, Sovilla decided that this new business would not only support the philosophy behind free software, but also practiced it in full, since "it looked to be the only way to be consistent with the company mission." In practice, adopting free software was a bold choice in autumn 2001.

MySQL AB, developer of open source database, announced that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has selected MySQL as its open source server-side database standard.

The Linux Professional Institute's recent decision to globally hike exam prices means SA geeks are running out of time to get certified cheaply. By next year, South Africans could be paying in excess of R900 per exam, about triple the current price.

Using OpenDocument format text in OpenOffice, KOffice and AbiWord