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Trolltech has partnered with mobile phone application vendor Teleca. The two companies will jointly create and market a mobile phone software reference design based on Trolltech's Qtopia graphics framework and Teleca's Obigo applications suite, which includes products for browsing, messaging, content management, media playback, and DRM (digital rights management).

Listen to music and watch DVDs on your Linux® system without lengthy installation and configuration efforts. Learn about four packages -- MoviX2, GeeXBoX, WOMP!, and LLGP -- that put the fun back into your computer.

SimplyMEPIS is a KDE-based, Debian-derived distro that focuses on desktop use. The previous stable release came out in May of 2005, but the newest version of SimplyMEPIS is scheduled for release today, and it looks like a great release for anyone who's interested in desktop Linux.

LONDON — Danny and Linda Lee, who are both in their mid-50s, know as much about computers as they do about gangsta rap. Yet Mr and Mrs Lee's computer at their home in Bedhampton, Hampshire, England, doesn't run Microsoft Windows. Nor is it a newbie-friendly Mac.

[Ed: Congrats to the mainstream press writer who actually conveyed with some accuracy the difference between freeware and FOSS! - dcparris]

Ned Lilly responds to yesterday's reader comment.

Related to:
Comment of the Day -February 8, 2006 - OpenMFG isn't Open Source

Firefox users are being urged to update their browsers in the wake of a new, malicious code set to attack compromised PC's.

HP South Africa is planning to launch a range of its notebooks pre-installed with the Linux operating system later this month. The machines will run the Linspire version of Linux and include the ThinkFree office suite.

I'm not sure if anyone or anything can kill anything music-related from Apple right now--or even give it a serious flesh wound. But Songbird is a new open-source music player, built on some of the same code as Firefox, that aims to change how people think about online music. This Windows-based program is rather iTunes-like in look, feel, and functionality. (Actually, it's incredibly iTunes-like: Sometimes, imitation is the sincerest form of open-source development.) But rather than hooking into one online music source--Apple's iTunes Music Store--Songbird aims to talk to lots and lots of them.

Tibco Software and Adobe Systems plan to offer alternatives to the open-source Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) tools being created by the newly formed Open AJAX collaborative.

Tibco this week plans to unveil Version 3.1 of its Tibco General Interface AJAX tools, while Adobe earlier this month introduced the public beta of its Adobe Flex 2.0 and Adobe Flash Player 8.5 tools, which use a proprietary scripting language.

Computer code that could be used in cyberattacks on Firefox users has been released, increasing the urgency for people to upgrade to the latest version of the Web browser.

In the February issue of the Globus Consortium Journal (www.globusconsortium.org/journal), open source Grid computing pioneers explain Grid's relevance to common enterprise data management requirements. "It's data management -- not mere compute horsepower -- that's capturing commercial interest in Grid today," says Greg Nawrocki, President of the Globus Consortium.

Message Partners has selected Protagon, a Brazilian security software company based at Belo Horizonte - Minas Gerais, and Yellow Cube, a IT security and messaging company based in Budapest, Hungary, as distribution partners for its Message Processing Platform (MPP).

The Gnome project Wednesday released version 2.12.3 of its popular Linux desktop, the final release in the 2.12 branch. Version 2.13 will be skipped, and the next edition, v2.14, is already well into development, the project said.

An article in Vnunet.com seems to say that there's a rift between Sun and IBM at OpenOffice.org, and that Sun is fighting to hang on to the OpenOffice.org code. I asked Bob Sutor and Simon Phipps, and they both say, "no way."

Intel helps fund European Linux company

Borland Software is flogging its JBuilder, Delphi, C++ and C# business while buying Segue Software, in a strategy to reverse corporate losses by focusing on software performance instead of development.

The Metasploit Project site has published a hacker's code for exploiting a vulnerability in Mozilla's Firefox 1.5 browser.

I once read an essay in which the author wrote: "No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself". When it comes down to making irresponsible decisions about Linux and Open Source Software, you might make the kinds of mistakes that people have made in the past in other endeavors thinking they knew the future as it slipped through their fingers.

CodeWeavers Inc. and Linspire Inc. Wednesday jointly announced the release of CrossOver Office 5.0 for Linspire, a specially optimized version of the product for the Linspire Linux distribution. CrossOver Office enables Linspire users to run Windows applications natively from their Linspire desktop.

Recently I posted about the Fallacy Of Composition (which says that an advantage shared by everyone is not an advantage) and how it applies digital music: If everyone can make and distribute music cheaply, the price they can charge goes down and they all make less money. It should apply to open source as well. Is there an escape route?

[Ed: Just 10 years ago, I predicted that there would be fewer big enterprises and more "mom & pop" shops. In some ways, that seems to be playing out today, especially in the libre software community. Mind you, I see a return to the Middle Ages, not a whole new way of doing business. - dcparris]