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For the Linux distribution Debian 3.1 (also known as "Sarge") the first revision comprising a collection of updates has now been published. Debian 3.1 r1 contains remedies for security problems in particular. The most recent package of patches it contains bears the date of December 14 and removes problems with kernel 2.6.8 that could be used for DoS attacks or to infiltrate code. Over and above these remedies, Debian 3.1 r1 features, for example, solutions to problems to emerge with the networks sniffer Ethereal, to security loopholes in PHPGroupWare or in Mozilla applications.

Melbourne software company Miro says it has delivered on its August promise to assign the intellectual property inherent in its open source Mambo content management system (CMS) to the non-profit body it created to administer the application.

The purpose of this article is to outline some ways to make business sense of open source software. Open source has joined the main stream. Studies, surveys and experience have shown that majority of IT managers of global corporations are using open source software.

[Ed: Not a bad introduction, really. RMS would oppose vehemently the references to software as 'products', and a few other things. Otherwise, the author did pretty decent. - dcparris]

LinuxQuestions.org is proud to announce that it recently reached two milestones. The site now contains over two million (2,000,000) posts and has over two hundred thousand (200,000) registered members. As one of the largest non-distribution specific Linux communities on the web, LQ continues the rapid growth that it has sustained for almost six years. The site was recently redesigned and is an integral part of a growing network of Linux-related sites.

[Ed: Congratulations to Linux Questions! LXer wishes you continued growth and success in the coming New Year! - dcparris]

This early release brings some Linux application interoperability to Solaris, but it's more suited for technical experimentation than business deployment, analysts said.

[Ed: If you're a Solaris fan, or a GNU/Linux user experimenting with Solaris, you'll be interested in the report on BrandZ. - dcparris]

So you're not quite ready to ditch Windows alltogether for that new, tempting Linux distribution. Or there's some particular reason why you can't make the switch 100%. Maybe you like to play games, like myself. And I'm talking about the latest and greatest games that will only run properly in Windows XP. What to do? Well, there's several options available, but I want to briefly talk about the one that's maybe not quite as commonly used. Read on.

There's a new, minimalistic -- and reportedly fast -- podcatching client for Linux now available for free download. BashPodder is a podcatching client written in bash code that requires the bash shell, wget, and sed -- all three of which are typically installed on any Linux system.

Linux vendor Debian has released an update to its popular GNU/Linux distribution, with security-related bugfixes a key feature.

There were times when we had 8 bit processors with a clock rate of 1MHz, and most of the time, these processors were waiting for us, not us for them.

Kevan Barney of the Novell Open PR blog gives a couple of examples of Novell bringing great Linux solutions to American schools. The first example shows how Novell provided open source solutions to the Whitfield School of St. Louis, Missouri. The second example is an excerpt from Government Technology, a e-zine covering solutions for state and local goverment in the information age. A telling excerpt from the article "We've rejected one-time deals, or free-the-first-year deals, because that doesn't help with sustainability," Huffman said. "We don't want to get three years into this project and realize that's as far as the fiscal plan will take us."

Nick Wilson and Jed Brown at Performancing built a Firefox extension that launches a blog entry editor and publishes to Blogger, Moveable Type, or WordPress from within the browser.

Sun's chief open-source officer says the company's process of open-sourcing its software stack will not be rushed and will not happen quickly.

We've been busy collaborating. The movement is open source culture and we have an issue to prove it.

Who does what with an enterprise IT system can be quite important. This is even more the case given the glut of new regulations and laws governing how businesses are run in a post-Enron/Worldcom world, even if it only means that the right company director can be taken outside and shot. So knowing which people should have access to what systems and trapping the meddlers –whether malicious or incompetent – is now a core component of sound compliance management.

That is one reason why Identity Management systems are now getting to be big business.

Consolidation decreases cost; simplifies product offering for converging carriers

Leading tech companies and academia have agreed to make intellectual property from selected research collaborations free for commercial and academic use.

The European Court Judge handling Microsoft Corp's appeal against European Commission antitrust sanctions has dismissed the attempts of a number of Microsoft supporters to intervene in the appeals process.

[Ed: Unfortunately, they still have quite a list of supporters and the likely view of the court appears to be affected by the fact that it is overhauling its handling of monopolist practices. - dcparris]

From their book's section on adding your own code to the kernel, the authors demonstrate how device drivers are represented in the filesystem.

More and more countries are embracing the collaborative model of open source on a national level to fend off caged IT models. The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore’s (IDA) Technology Group has positioned Linux as a medium term technology bet, which means one to three years to mass adoption.

[Ed: This is an excellent article for our government tech readers, and offers great information about some of the migrations completed or in progress. - dcparris]

Red Hat said Tuesday that it has completed converting the core financial systems of construction giant Skanska to Red Hat's Linux Enterprise operating system.