Showing all newswire headlines

Pico Peta Simputer is introducing the Amida Simputer, a made-in-India PDA aimed at retail and corporate customers. The company hopes that its product will change the perception customers have of the Simputer. The prototype for the Simputer—positioned as an affordable and feature-rich PDA—was first developed by Indian scientists at the IISC Bangalore in 1998, with the aim of bridging the digital divide in India by enabling mass adoption of the product.

"Forgent is committed to developing all of its assets and technologies to maximize shareholder value," said Richard Snyder, chairman and CEO of the company. Don't those words just chill you to the bone? Maximizing shareholder value. As if that excuses everything. Maximizing shareholder value, no matter who gets hurt. That's the proprietary way. The problem is, software is too vital to the public interest for it to be held hostage by every greedy patent-holding pig on the planet. The same goes for his shareholder piglets, too. True to the piggy template, Forgent announced it has sued everybody and his cousin for"infringing" its patent on JPEGs, a standard format that everyone used in good faith for ages. The patent is almost two decades old, and now they want their money. Gotcha. The Proprietary IP Business Model.

The Linux Box is in the final stages of planning for a Linux Home Desktop Kit and is requesting participation from other members of the FOSS community.

Gnome 3.0 is a long way off still and I have already written a wishlist for Gnome, however this time around I thought I write some specific feature requests for the next major Gnome release (coming in more than a year from now). These are applications that I would like to see included by default on Gnome 3.0 for a more full and integrated experience.

A recent survey of advanced technology companies indicates that Open Source software is becoming an explicit component in enterprise Information Technology (IT) strategy and architecture. Some nine out of ten respondents include Open Source in their planning, according to CATAAlliance, which depicts itself as “Canada's leading, most influential and entrepreneurial technology alliance.”

Tokyo-based open source integrator Ten Art-ni has joined The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL). Ten Art-ni will participate in Data Center Linux and Carrier Grade Linux working groups to advance Linux in Japan.

This interview with Denx founder and CEO Wolfgang Denk discusses the popular and free Denx embedded Linux distributions, Denx's business model, software patents, and other matters related to embedded Linux markets and technology.

While GNU/Linux has gained popularity as an operating system, many criticize it for lacking "killer applications" capable of competing with their Windows and Mac OS X proprietary counterparts. Some killer applications, however, haven't received the recognition they deserve. Here's a short overview of some professional-quality Free Software applications that run under Linux.

A Dutch seller of a wireless networking product could get itself out of legal hot water, if it publishes some information on how to install its software, the programmer's attorney said Friday.

The information technology ministry has launched a pilot project [in Islamabad] worth Rs37 million to train 4,000 government servants in open source software. [Editor: I think the amount translates to about $650,000 USD, based on Yahoo's conversion tool.]

DLT Solutions, Inc. was named as the government technology solutions partner for Red Hat as the Linux company pushes into the public sector. The Raleigh-based company has said that government sales is a key focus in 2004.

You may not have heard of MySQL, but I can almost guarantee you've used its database at some point. If you've ever filled out a form on the Web or purchased something online, there's a good chance the data you provided is stored in a MySQL open-source database. This simple-to-use database is behind many of the transactions that take place on the Internet, because unlike Microsoft's database products, it's free and it runs on both Linux and Microsoft operating systems.

Software Research Associates (SRA), the Japanese system integrator that bought Turbolinux, one of the so-called "Big Four" commercial Linux distributions, out of a financial jam in the summer of 2002, is selling it off to another Japanese outfit called Livedoor Company Ltd, a diversified eight-year-old global IT wannabe.

A little-known outfit calling itself the Public Patent Foundation (PPF) that was organized in November to "campaign against patents that harm the public health, impinge civil liberties and impair free markets" is challenging one of Microsoft’s FAT file system patents, hoping the lot will be brought down if the oldest is declared invalid.

A tiny new "Linux-like" operating system has been released under the GPL, according to a post in the LinuxDevices.com reader forum. LinLike8 aims to bring a Linux-like kernel to 8-bit microcontrollers (MCUs). Version 00.01.00 supports a Cypress Microsystems programmable system-on-chip (PSoC), according to its author, and can be downloaded now.

Paul Maritz earned a gazillion dollars running all of Microsoft's software development, becoming one of the richest men in America, according to Forbes, before retiring in 2000. And now he's turned traitor, putting his skills and his fortune at the disposal of - gad!!!! - Linux.

Lindows says in its IPO prospectus that it's suing Ottawa-based Xandros Inc, Xandros' New York City VC, Linux Global Partners Inc (LPG), one-time Xandros CEO Michael Bego and LGP co-chairman William Jay Roseman claiming they defaulted on a $750,000 loan.

C.J. Coppersmith is responsible for HP's Linux strategy and business planning, including relationships with distributors and software partners. He recently sat down with internetnews.com to discuss a broad range of Linux issues.

On the 20th and 21st April, those of us in the UK were proud to represent KDE at the Linux User and Developer Expo 2004 at London's Olympia exhibition centre.

...just to be safe, it might be wise for the GIMP developers (as well as all other open source image processing projects which use JPG) to volunteer to donate a percentage of their revenues to Forgent Networks.