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Software Freedom Day (South Africa) is almost upon us, and there are plenty of geeky events happening around the country and the continent, intended to spread the good news of free software and introduce non-geeks to the welcoming world of open source.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Microsoft Corp. has filed a second appeal against a European Union ruling ordering it to share code with open-source software companies, officials said Wednesday. The company's spokesman Tom Brookes said the new appeal before the EU's second-highest court comes in the wake of a June agreement with the EU head office to let the courts decide the source code issue. He said Microsoft planned to defend its view that the interoperability protocols -- server software which helps Windows-powered computers communicate with other computers and software -- are Microsoft's intellectual property and should not be shared or given away for free.

Bob Sutor, IBM's Vice President of Standards and Open Source, just release his comment to The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On behalf of IBM, Mr. Sutor says, "We support the recommended guidelines, especially the technology specifications for the OASIS Open Document Format."

Within the context of Microsoft's spastic, flailing response to desktop-neutralizing events from both Google and The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Dave Rosenberg has posted an interesting (Freudian) analysis of Microsoft's behavior.

Version 2.12 of desktop for Linux and Unix is released with two new applications, a new theme engine and improved multimedia performance.

Ten days of presentations, workshops, and chaotic coding sponsored by Trolltech, Novell/SUSE, HP, the local governments of Andalucia, and Malaga can only mean one thing: aKademy 2005, the KDE community's annual conference. Held in Malaga, Spain, aKademy 2005 included a Users and Administrators Conference, a Developer Conference and a Coding Marathon. Users, developers, and local visitors with an interest in open technology were treated to a display of stable desktop software and glimpses of cutting-edge innovations to come.

Latest Edition Is the First to Include Input From the Recently Launched openSUSE Project

Apache 2 offers a number of new features and improvements over the Apache 1.3 series, but the upgrade can seem daunting to those who haven't had much (or any) experience with Apache 2. I recently had to go through an upgrade from Apache 1.3 to Apache 2.0 on Debian Sarge, and it's not as difficult as you might think.

Fulfilling an earlier promise to release the source code for their Plone-based laboratory management system, Bika Lab Systems has open sourced the code under the GNU GPL. The Bika laboratory system is already in use at a number of organisations including a bottling co-operative in the Western Cape.

More than at any other time, database professionals are being aggressively challenged by mushrooming volumes of data in corporate business systems. While some industry analysts project data growth at an average rate of 42% a year, that figure is conservative in some installations where growth rates are several hundred percent, with no end in sight. What's to blame for sky-rocketing data volumes? First, corporations have realized the golden nugget potential of all the data floating around in their transactional systems and are utilizing data warehousing more than ever before. The strategic use of data is high on the mind of nearly every CIO and business executive, so in response, transactional data is stockpiled into data warehouses where business intelligence users constantly aim their analytic queries to produce forecasts that are used to make key business decisions.

Version 2.12 of the GNOME Linux desktop will be released on Wednesday, featuring two new applications, a new theme engine, and improved authentication, according to project director Davyd Madeley. What's more, the look and feel of the desktop is vastly improved, thanks to the new Clearlooks-based theme engine, Madeley said in a pre-release "tour" on the GNOME website.

Leslie Franke writes: "I recently created a Rapid Web Development and Testing with Mozilla Firefox presentation. The S5 slide show is a basic overview of Firefox's built-in web development tools, as well as some useful web developer extensions that are available."

More coverage and deeper insight on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' declaration to standardize on the OpenDocument file format...

The Boston Globe
Why OpenDocument Won (and Microsoft Office Open XML Didn't)
why-opendocument-won
by David Wheeler

Integrating Fedora Linux into a Windows network is reasonable and easy as long as you use the SAMBA utilities. This article includes the necessary steps for implementing a SAMBA server in a Windows environment. Once integrated, a Linux server looks and acts exactly like any other server on a Windows intranet... Complete article

Linux needs anti-virus? As malware writing gains more of a profit motive, according to one security exec, that improbable future may yet come to pass.

Here's a new series of tutorials, recently released, to help you learn Linux fundamentals and prepare for system administrator certification Exam 201. These eight tutorials cover the Linux kernel, file and service sharing, system customization and automation, and more.

Uganda's first ever Software Freedom Day celebration is set to take place on Saturday, with a focus on the use of (Information and Communication technology) ICT in development.

Lately, certifications seem to have lost some of their allure. A study by Foote Partners LLC, a research firm in New Canaan, Conn., shows that for the 12-month period that ended April 1, noncertified workers received a larger average pay increase than those with certifications -- 3.6% compared with 2.9%. Some say the study shows a shift in the value IT executives place on certifications. "It's being put in its right place," says Robert Miano, president and CEO of Harvey Nash USA, the U.S. arm of London-based Harvey Nash PLC, a global recruitment company. "Certifications are going to stay, but they're not as highly regarded as they have been in the past."

The sponsored research approach may not have played well for Microsoft, but IBM wasn't deterred this week as it trotted out two new sponsored reports heavy with praise for the total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits of Linux over Windows and Solaris. The two reports, one of which was an update to a Robert Frances Group TCO report penned in 2002, were conducted by RFG and Hayward, Calif.-based Pund-IT Research. Overall, the reports showed Linux had continued to lead in TCO benefits over the competition and that it had expanded into new roles in companies that had previously allocated Linux to so-called "edge" uses like e-mail and Web serving.