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In a surprise decision, the developers of Debian have voted that materials released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) are compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) -- but only if they contain no invariant sections. The decision settles a longstanding dispute within the project about the GFDL. Although the decision continues to separate Debian from other free and open source software (FOSS) projects, most of which accepts the GFDL without reservations, the possibility remains that future revisions to the license could allow Debian accept it fully.

[ED: As the freest of the free(dom) software movement, the concerns of this group must be taken seriously. Note too that some Wikies had to develop monitoring methods to catch flagrant misuse of (too) interested parties in blatant skewing of the meaning of the contents. See for example, the actions of U.S. Congressionial staffs to burnish the image of their local icon. - HC]

Volker Gropp's enhanced bandwidth monitor -- called bwm-ng, or Bandwidth Monitor Next Generation -- is a rewrite of an earlier bwm. It's simple to install and use, and I recently found it to be very helpful in getting data I needed for a story. You might find it useful, User Level: Intermediate

Dyne:bolic is a multimedia-centric Linux distribution on live CD. Recording, mixing, streaming, and broadcasting audio and video content is its stock in trade. It has been nearly two years since NewsForge first reviewed the Dyne:bolic 1.0 alpha release. The distro has matured considerably in the intervening time. This is a look at the 1.4.1 release.

Indian commercial interests want to do more business with Oregon, especially in the open source software arena.

But those who expected to hear a bid for more software and business-process outsourcing contracts might have been surprised. The 13 representatives of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce want to buy more products and services from Oregon companies, as well as sell more to them.

With its legacy systems no longer able to keep up with a rapid growth in transactions, SA life assurance company Clientele Life switched its servers to Red Hat Linux for better performance and stability.

Solutions for end-users - who would have thought?

On March 10, 2006 McAfee AntiVirus users were dismayed to find essential files had been tagged as the Win95/CTX virus, then quarantined or deleted. With no clue as to what was taking place, many kept re-scanning in hopes that McAfee could eventually remove the evil virus and repair their broken computers. Unfortunately, the "malware" attacking their systems was McAfee itself, consulting it's own misbegotten virus definition file: 4715.DAT. McAfee users are understandably upset.

From our tests of Progression Desktop, it is unlikely that anyone would have a problem in getting their Windows data over to their new Linux install. Here are the folks who make it happen.

Developers of the open source Gnu Privacy Guard encryption software have reported a security flaw that could allow an attacker to sneak malicious code into a signed e-mail message.

Barriers to solving real-world, everyday problems with cutting-edge computer technology are now gone. Linux and Open Source Software offer a giant toolbox, full of shiny new tools, just waiting to be put to good use by our children. Rob Reilly begins a new series designed to help teach kids what computing is all about.

A small public radio station in upstate New York launched an open source software community for non-profit broadcasters last month, and made its own content management system (CMS) the first project hosted at the site.

Barriers to solving real-world, everyday problems with cutting-edge computer technology are now gone. Linux and Open Source Software offer a giant toolbox, full of shiny new tools, just waiting to be put to good use by our children.

Online blogger and Ubuntu fan Chromakode shoots us well ahead of the technology curve with an Xgl and Compriz installation running on Dapper Drake. This one's not for the faint-hearted.

As server Linux vendor Novell eyed the enterprise desktop market at Cebit this week, Xandros, better known for its desktop Linux OS, plotted its move to enterprise servers.

Number two telecom OS provider Enea will release its direct, asynchronous message-passing software for distributed systems under an open source license in June. Described as the "cornerstone" of Enea's telecom RTOSes, the "Linx" IPC (inter-process communications) software scales better than other freely available IPC technologies, such as TIPC (transparent IPC) and Unix sockets, Enea claims.

Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. "I've tried about 100 different distros over the past two years and can honestly say I've never seen anything as spectacular as Kororaa Xgl," mused one excited user in an online forum. Yes, Kororaa, a little-known Gentoo-based distribution, stole the spotlight last week after the release of a live CD featuring Novell's amazing Xgl technology; we asked one of the distribution's developers to tell us more about the project. In other news, Fedora and Ubuntu delay releases, CeBIT visitors share KNOPPIX 5.0 torrents, a project builds a live DVD that boots several Linux distributions, and two articles teach the basics of Solaris. Also in this issue: a special report that looks at the growing acceptance of Linux in schools. Happy reading! Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

The reporter writes, "The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) announced the opening of its operations in India. It is expanding the availability of its certifications for individuals and organizations in India are growing technology industry."

Once sued by Microsoft for giving exact answer to the Microsoft tests which some people claim were obtained by people taking tests and reading the answers into small recording devices, the seem like pawns of Redmond.

My problem with these guys? They lobbied against the Open Source Bill in Texas. Are they shills for Microsoft? No verification of that, but they sure looked like it at the committee hearing in Austin.

The European Commission has published its Decision defining the role of the Trustee in the Microsoft case, the curriculum vitae of the Monitoring Trustee, as well as the curricula vitae of his advisors. The Trustee Decision is the formal document which sets the parameters for the Trustee’s work in monitoring Microsoft’s compliance with the March 2004 Decision (see IP/04/382) in order to advise the Commission on that compliance. These documents can be found at:

BlackBerry has just announced that they are offering Google Talk among their mobile devices for BlackBerry users with a Gmail account. Blackberry is offering their users a PDF download file called Google Talk for BlackBerry devices User Guide and has a list of systems requirements at the BlackBerry.com (NSFFF - Not Safe For FireFox) site.

  

We discussed the need for a simple yet understandable DNS Howto. So, we worked together and came up with what we think every Linux person should know about the largest distributed database on the planet.

According to Till Brehm one of the sponsors of HowtoForge.com: I'm sure it will help many people to get started with DNS. When I have a look at our Forums, DNS is one of the most discussed problems.