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If bringing total democracy to electronic voting can only happen via software source code that can be viewed by all, the Australian Electoral Commission is happy to oblige with its next-generation election application

Although Skype, which provides Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony services and PC-to-PC calling, turns two years old on August 29, it remains unclear what kind of business this relative newcomer will turn out to be. Skype could remain a mere fad for techies, become a next-generation communications platform or evolve into the next eBay or Google, say Wharton experts

Systems vendors used the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo to show a deepening commitment to community-developed software, a trend that should help alleviate IT managers' concerns about where they will find corporate support for Linux or open source deployments. "Finally, HP and IBM and the like are coming at it from the right direction," says Al Tobey, senior Unix engineer at Priority Health in Grand Rapids, Mich. "They're starting to see the revenue stream show up on their financials and they're saying, 'We need to do this from the top down.'"

User group president Jonathan Oxer says the trademark application is to protect the name from abuse. "At this point, the exercise is not about extracting fees from people," he says. "It's an extremely small number of people that are likely to have to licence it. It's about establishing the trademark. This is the reality of working in the commercial world that we're in now."

In the beginning was Slackware, and it was good. But that was just the beginning. Ever since then, Linux distros have exploded at dazzling pace. And at the center of much of that creative explosion is Debian. It is simply everywhere. Mepis, Knoppix, Linspire, geez you name it, and if it's not SUSE Novell or Red Hat, there's a good chance that the spirit and code of Debian lives at the heart of that distro.

This is a call for sponsors to donate locations, work and money for debian developer gatherings. SLX Debian Labs has funded and organized numerous developer gatherings in the past (e.g. for debian-edu, debian-installer or the release team). They are highly effective to solve problems in small groups and normally more fun then working at home alone.

If I were a student today (or professional developer), I know where I would build my skills! Earlier this summer, evans data reported that in the enterprise space, more development is now taking place on java than on .net. furthermore, java users are more likely to take advantage of open source and develop on Linux. Here is an interesting case in point on developers embracing open source and Linux.

The SoulPad could let users carry their computer's data, applications and personal settings on their mobile phone or digital music player Researchers at IBM are testing software that would let you tote your home or office desktop around on an iPod or similar portable device, so that you could run it on any PC. The virtual computer user environment setup is called SoulPad, and consumers install it from an x86-based home or office PC. SoulPad uses a USB or FireWire connection to access the network cards for connecting to the Internet, the computer's display, the keyboard, the main processor and the memory, but not the hard disk. After the person disconnects the system, SoulPad saves all work to the device, including browser cookies or other digital signatures that a PC keeps in its short-term memory.

I never realized how much publicity a handful of software developers could create with the release of one application. But they sure have made waves. SpreadFirefox.com, the Mozilla Foundation’s official promotion site for its Firefox web browser, reported today that over 80 million downloads have been made of the browser. Yeah. I know what you’re thinking. “This is an open source project, there’s just no way to get 80 million downloads in under a year!” That’s a good point you’ve raised. There is indeed no way to verify the download counter’s accuracy. For the sake of writing this blog entry, we’re going to assume the Mozilla foundation has some integrity, and the counter has not been doctored.

VA Software Corp. in Fremont, Calif., needed to boost its hardware sales and decided to try a different approach. "As we tried to expand our business, the challenge was that we didn't have a large portfolio of third-party applications," says VA Chief Technology Officer Clint Bodell. "Instead of trying to build or buy third-party applications, because of our affinity with the open-source community, we said, 'Why not try to encourage them by providing the technology to bring them along?' " Out of that decision came the SourceForge.net site.

UK companies are increasingly convinced that open source technologies will play a major role in their IT strategy. In an online survey of 140 senior technology executives, conducted by the National Computing Centre, more than 50 per cent have either adopted or are planning to adopt open source. Three out of five said open source will become a fundamental component in their core IT systems, and three-quarters said their organisations' IT strategy will include open source over the next five years.

... a sensitive issue in the open-source community. According to Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation in Mountain View, Calif., "Anytime money gets into the picture, people get suspicious." Baker was explaining to an audience of open-source developers at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Ore., earlier this month why she feels her nonprofit organization needs a for-profit sister company to promote and manage the world's No. 2 Internet browser, Firefox

A discussion was raised as to whether or not GIT [story] would be a service that should be provided by development websites likeSourceForge. Linus Torvalds suggested that this would be a good match-up. "The git architecture is admirably suited to an _untrusted_ central server," Linus explained, "ie exactly the SourceForge kind of setup." He went on to explain, "with git, developers don't have to trust SF, and if SF is down or something bad happens (disk crash, bad backups, whatever), you didn't 'lose' anything - the real development wasn't being done at SF anyway, it was a way to _connect_ the people who do real development."

THE Linux and open source movement has changed the very paradigms of software, platform and development methodologies, breeding business models inconceivable in the previous decades. In line with this trend, IBM Corp's software strategy is to focus on middleware and team with industry independent software vendors (ISVs) to deliver solutions. "We are our customers' trusted business partner. Thus, IBM's ISV partners can more effectively focus on producing new applications with peace of mind, knowing that we are committed to their growth. "This commitment creates a strategic alignment that promotes mutual success, reduces conflict and establishes a strong foundation of trust," says IBM Malaysia's general manager, software group Ooi Sze Kai. According to him, IBM middleware and Linux together provide the foundation for implementing an on-demand operating environment which delivers immediate value and benefits to businesses. "IBM extends this support of Linux across hardware platforms and services offerings, giving clients the solid support to create an on- demand operating environment. IBM and Linux deliver a powerful combination that provides them with the business flexibility to respond quickly to market changes in a 24x7 business environment," Ooi adds.

The upcoming 3.0 version of the open-source Xen virtual machine technology—which allows multiple operating systems to run concurrently on the same physical server—is nearing finalization. The leading Linux distributors, Red Hat Inc. and Novell Inc., plan to incorporate Xen into the next versions of their operating systems. And new chip technology on the way from Intel Corp. by the end of the year and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. next year promises to boost performance.

These are the steps to build a hylafax server. (oh yeah, i almost forgot, you should definitely called the fax server we build "HylaMonster").

If Africa in general, and Cape Town in particular, is to compete globally it has to move from being a consumer of proprietary software to becoming a developer and user of open source software, delegates at last week's Cape IT Initiative event were told. The city of Cape Town also opened an open source competency centre on Friday.

I've said this before, and so have many others: The semi-annual LinuxWorld Conference and Expo has become a business-to-business gathering. Last week's edition, held in the west building of San Francisco's Moscone Center, had more exhibitors than last year -- about 200. It had the same number of attendees -- about 11,000. But most of the exhibitors I asked said the show was better for them than last year because the quality of attendees was better -- at least from their point of view. And there was still the "meeting ground" aspect, centered on the Dot-Org area that was located well away from the main show floor. This still makes LinuxWorld worthwhile for those whose primary interest is learning about new advances in the GUIs and other software that keep GNU/Linux evolution strong and steady.

When developers opted to nix a separate 2.7 kernel development at the Linux Kernel Developers Summit last summer, the decision spawned three 2.6 trees: the mainline or stable kernel, known as 2.6.x, maintained by Linux founder Linus Torvalds; the 2.6-mm, or staging tree, where technologies are tested before being added to the mainline kernel; and the 2.6.x.y kernel, for bug fixes. "The hierarchy in the community has flattened, so now you have small teams of experts working at consensus level rather than having a maintainer and all the subordinates," said Dan Frye, director of IBM's Linux Technology Center in Beaverton, Ore. "We are just delighted. The stuff our enterprise customers need is getting done, and that is translating into shipments of high quality from the distributions," Frye said.

Wind River Systems Inc., which makes proprietary embedded operating systems and development tools for creating embedded applications, has joined two open-source consortia.