Showing all newswire headlines

Microsoft is once again in the race to supply government agencies in the state of Massachusetts with its Office productivity suite, the state's governor has said.

The state was threatening to disqualify Microsoft as a software supplier to state agencies because it failed to support open standards in its Office productivity suite. Starting in 2007, the state requires that all newly created documents use open standards.

[Ed: Evidently, it ain't over until it's over. I wonder which member of the GOP got to Romney on behalf of Redmond. Oh well, a Byrd in the Bush for freedom. - tadelste]

I was confronted one day by my wife that our new SuSE Linux computer could not access a website. My wife is an avid coupon clipper. She has found the internet to be a valuable source for coupons. One such place is Albertsons which uses Smartsource to host its web based coupons. Well what my wife saw was a webpage that posted "Our printing coupon technology is not supported on Linux".

The Free Software Foundation released its guidelines and process specifications this morning for the revision process that will produce version three of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The guidelines are designed to include as many people as possible in the revision process, says FSF executive director Peter Brown, but the foundation's specific ideas for changes to the license are not being released to the public just yet.

Quest Software, which has been building a cross-platform bridge between Linux and Windows systems, is expected to release early next year a tool that lets users monitor the open source operating system from their Microsoft management consoles.

[Ed- We have covered this before with mixed reactions. If this is what is needed to help Linux uptake fine -bstadil]

The download site for Firefox is performing well following the release of a widely-anticipated update of the open source web browser. Firefox version 1.5, which was released Tuesday night, features "dozens of enhancements," according to the Mozilla Corporation, including improvements in popup blocking, RSS integration and updating.

A very nice review of the tiny Linux distribution which has caught the linux users fancy. Really entertaining read.

Ruby Weekly News is a summary of the week's activity on the ruby-talk mailing list / the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup, brought to you by Anonymous. (Thanks whoever it was, this week's newsletter would have been a no-show without you.)

Epson Electronics America (EEA) launched its Web presence in 1998 with a then-typical static HTML Web site running on a Windows server. But by 1999, exorbitant licensing and maintenance costs, coupled with the company's need to create a dynamic site, led EEA's Executive Director for New Business Roy DaSilva to begin a migration to a site built with open source tools running on a Linux server.

So here we have an entire industry exerting considerable effort to exclude a whole class of customers, because we use a computing platform that they cannot control. Sure, Microsoft will be happy to screw over its end users by including all manner of DRM nastiness. But in the end it won't matter anyway- customers who choose to view their legally-purchased DVDs on Linux will easily, if illegally, find a way. What sort of madness is this?

The RIAA - Hollywood - DRM - Linux Suicide Pact

Lockheed Martin is to use Linux as the operating system for the missile defence program Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program, dubbed 'son of Star Wars'.

Mozilla Reorganizes
Firefox 1.5 is available now at getfirefox.com and mozilla.com. The Mozilla site is the "new home" of Firefox and Thunderbird, replacing Mozilla.org as the download address for Mozilla's browser and open-source e-mail application.

A Mozilla spokesperson said Mozilla.com is now home to Mozilla, a taxable corporation spun out from the Mozilla Foundation in August. Mozilla will handle all of the consumer-facing software from the open-source group, as well as merchandise such as Mozilla T-shirts.

The people behind the latest version of the Linux desktop environment, KDE, say the main benefits will be better standards support in its Web browser, Konqueror.

The KDE project team said on Tuesday that the browser in KDE 3.5 has passed the Acid2 test from the Web Standards Project (WaSP). This test examines a browser's support for W3C recommended standards including CSS1, HTML4 and PNG.

BOSTON -- OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved XML Catalogs version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. XML Catalogs defines mechanisms to facilitate machine processing of XML entities associated with external identifiers, allowing references to web resources, such as files, images, stylesheets, and schemas, to be mapped to other resources.

The CSIR Satellite Applications Centre's mapping technology, built on open source software, tells users where fires are breaking out across South Africa in near real-time.

While there certainly has been little reason to doubt where IBM stands on ODF, it was reassuring to see it pledge its support today in a letter delivered to Massachusetts Secretary of Executive Agency Finance and Administration Thomas Trimarco. The letter is signed by IBM's VP of Standards and Open Source, Dr. Robert Sutor (it was Bob, you may recall, who hosted the Armonk Meeting back on November 4.

Bob's letter doesn't hesitate to establish IBM's right to make its opinion heard. It opens as follows:

With all the recent activity around document formats and the strong leadership position taken by Massachusetts, I'm writing to you to reaffirm IBM's full support for the OASIS OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (ODF) standard. IBM, with our nearly 5000 employees in Massachusetts, is pleased to continue our active participation in the open, community-driven OASIS standardization process as well as our support for this important global standard in an upcoming version of our IBM Workplace product. Massachusetts is one of the epicenters of IBM software innovation, which will continue to be a key growth engine for our company. Lotus, Rational and Ascential all call the Commonwealth home and are developing the next generations of customer solutions based on open standards.

Diggable

In 2006, Novell plans to further capitalize on its Linux product line with the launch of a "Linux awareness" program meant to migrate more customers, resellers, and development partners from NetWare and Microsoft Windows to open source alternatives. Jacqueline Emigh reports.

This is the question I've asked to the GNOME's marketing-list this morning. 31 minutes later (midnight in Mountain View - California) we got the response from Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager at Google Inc. and responsible of Google's Summer of Code:

NEW YORK The rules governing the use of most free software programs will be revised for the first time in 15 years in an open process that was to begin Wednesday.

First Public Discussion Scheduled for January

BOSTON and NEW YORK, Nov. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today released a document specifying the process and guidelines for revising the Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). The FSF will release the first discussion draft of the new license for comment at the International Public Conference for GPLv3 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on January 16 and 17, 2006.

Mologogo uses GoogleMaps with a Java and a GPS-enabled cell phone to show a target phone's position on a GoogleMap, allowing you to track it from your own phone or through the Web. This artcle provides insight into Mologogo and other Web 2.0 contenders and their privacy issues.