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Hold on to your hats! IBM has subpoenaed Microsoft! And Sun! At last, we're getting to the core of the matter. We're going to get to find out the whole story. Microsoft need to (show and) tell about Darl's communication in May of 2003 "with Steven Ballmer regarding SCO's rights to the UNIX operating system". Oh, and IBM would like to hear about "Microsoft's business strategy regarding Linux", and they'd like to chat about the Caldera antitrust litigation against Microsoft too. including those shredded documents.

The GNU/Linux operating system isn't exactly known for gaming, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any games on it that are worth playing. LinuxPlanet welcomes new contributor Jem Matzan, who introduces us to games worth your time.

Richard M. Stallman, director of the Free Software Foundation, OpenOffice.org developer Michael Meeks, and Xen Project chief architect Ian Pratt will be among the keynote speakers at the sixth annual Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM), set for Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 25-26, 2006, in Brussels, Belgium.

Today, the eyeOS development team released version 0.8.11 of their on-line, web enabled desktop environment, eyeOS.

Creating 3D models usually requires abstract imagination; one needs to construct and merge geometric figures together. Claus Schwarm looks at SharpConstruct which uses a different, more visual approach to 3D modelling.

GNOME update will include tools designed to make it easier to deploy Linux desktop environment in enterprises.

The University of the Western Cape is to make its educational material including lecture notes accessible to all as part of a global free and open courseware movement.

Today it became generally known that MySQL has acquired a company called Netfrastructure. This company offers a product which is a reimplementation of the Firebird database architecture, combined with a web-based application server front end. It was designed by Jim Starkey in the late nineties and combines a database, a custom java virtual machine and a web server. Jim Starkey is also the principal author of Datatrieve, Rdb/ELN and InterBase, which became Firebird after being open-sourced in 2000.

What happens if you violate the GNU General Public License (GPL)? Historically, you'd earn the scorn of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the open source community, and you might have to disclose or rewrite some code. However, the intellectual property disclosure requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 may present an additional threat to companies that violate the GPL.

MEPIS founder Warren Woodford has announced upgrades for SimplyMEPIS 3.4. The upgrade packages, which are now available in the MEPIS apt source pool, enable SimplyMEPIS 3.4-x users to upgrade their systems to the latest SimplyMEPIS version, version 3.4-3.

A fledgling Internet-based tax preparation platform offering free software to tax preparers and an open source code to that software from which programmers could theoretically build other technologies key to the tax prep process, has attracted a handful of practitioner members and is discussing potential development opportunities with at least one of the tax prep industry’s top five software companies, according to the site’s founder, a CPA.

Despite the UK government's reluctance to embrace open source, Martin Brampton points out the many ways they're suited to each other - the least of which is cost.

The government regularly claims it will reduce the cost of administration through the use of IT. Such a claim is inherently implausible, given the sector's track record in IT projects. Quite apart from that, government appears to be going about things in entirely the wrong way.

From the "I'm a Microsoft shill journalist" department

SAN FRANCISCO -- Of all of the virtues that backers of open-source software tout, widespread availability of enterprise-level support is not among them.

In fact, a lack of support has been a drawback for most corporate IT decision-makers when they look to add open-source tools to their software stacks, said a panel of users and vendors at the Open Source Business Conference here last week.

The sixth Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting is a 2 days event, organized by volunteers, to promote the widespread use of Free and Open Source software. Taking place in the beautiful city of Brussels, Belgium FOSDEM meetings are recognised as the best Free and Open Source events in Europe.

Analysts predict that the $300 million open source database market is going to continue to grow rapidly. Forrester Research Inc.'s analyst Noel Yuhanna projects that mission-critical deployments of open source databases will increase by 20% this year. It is that growth that Yuhanna believes will drive the OSS database market from $300 million now to the $1 billion mark by 2008. Most importantly, analysts say, this segment is being taken seriously by proprietary database vendors attracted to making open source technology part of their own product offerings.

Who could be upset by a scheme that allows free use of software? Well, Gervase Markham has found one Trading Standards officer who is

Internet star Robin "roblimo" Miller recently wrote "Point & Click OpenOffice.org", a work explaining this suite's basics. The book is meant to be easy and instructive, so that any user can be proficient in OOo in just a few minutes.

The next version of GNOME will include a number of tools aimed at making it easier for administrators to deploy the Linux desktop environment in enterprises. GNOME 2.14, which is due for release on 15 March, will include new administrator tools such as a profile manager and an editor to lock down PC functionality, according to GNOME developer Davyd Madeley in an article posted on the project Web site at the end of last week.

As part of the drive to cut costs and future saving, Singapore Housing Development Board decided to migrate its business applications on the Internet and intranet to Linux as its strategic operating system.

I do a lot of audio manipulation (Old Time Radio, CD ripping, etc), and it's nice to see those apps run fast and stable!