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Last fall, we wrote about how the BSA, the Business Software Alliance, famous for being basically a Microsoft-front organization whose main job is to publish absolutely, hilariously misleading "piracy" numbers each year, had been taking on the issue of the so called "covered business method (CBM) patent" program that was being pushed in patent reform. The covered business method patent program is pretty straightforward. It allows certain types of patents -- currently financial patents -- to undergo a faster review, allowing the USPTO to dump bad patents faster.

Lubuntu eXtra Life Extension, aka LXLE, is based on Lubuntu, a version of Ubuntu running LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment). Trust me on this, you will not recognize many Ubuntu traces topside. If you have yet to experience the LXDE desktop, prepare yourself for a wonderfully smooth computing experience.

The SparkyLinux development team has announced earlier today, the immediate availability for download of a new edition of their popular Linux operating system, this time based on the lightweight Xfce desktop environment.

Last year, Bangalore-based iWave Systems Technologies announced two Linux-ready computer-on-modules (COMs) that offer embedded building blocks for two interesting system-on-chips that combine ARM cores with other types of processors. Now the company is extending these COMs with a pair of Linux-friendly development boards.

Dell's Wyse division, takes a HDMI stick, adds some Android, mixes in some thin-client sauce, and bakes up a new kind of portable PC.

Why makes Open Data Day work? Mostly you. It is a global excuse for people in communities like yours to come together and organize an event that meets their needs. Whether that is a hackathon, a showcase and fair, lectures, workshops for local NGOs and businesses, training on data, or meetings with local politicians—people are free to organize around whatever they think their community needs. You can read more about how Open Data Day works on our website.

The United Kingdom is taking the first steps toward saying goodbye to Microsoft Office and hello to a more open alternative, after it was announced that over £200 million of taxpayers' money had been spent just on licensing since 2010.

It's not only Fedora that's seeing lots of fundamental changes in the Linux distribution, but openSUSE is going through a period of transition as well.

Unigine Corp has shared that their flagship advanced 3D engine, which originally was targeted for games but is now seeing greater use within simulators and professional 3D visualization areas, is forking into Unigine Sim and Unigine Game.

CLAs aren't new. FSF-copyrighted projects have been using copyright assignment since at least 1985 - in return, the FSF promise that the software will always be distributed under a copyleft-style license. For over a decade, Apache Software Foundation projects have required that contributors sign a CLA that allows them to retain copyright, but grants the ASF the right to relicense the work as it wishes. For the most part, this hasn't been terribly controversial.

Opinions vary on whether the UEFI standards are helping or hurting the migration to Linux. Enterprise users can select a Linux distro certified to work with UEFI standards, but not all Linux distros have keys that allow it to install. Despite the intent of the UEFI standards, the process so far is not universally successful. It should "just work," said the Linux Foundation's Greg Kroah-Hartman.

The first maintenance release of the stable QupZilla 1.6 cross-platform web browser, based on the QtWebKit engine, has been announced a few days ago by its developer, David Rosca, for the Linux, Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

Livestreamer is a command line interface (CLI) client which, upon given a streaming URL, retrieves live streaming video from the URL, and pipes it into a native video player running on local host. So with Livestreamer, you can enjoy live streaming from various sources via a much stable and lightweight video player such as VLC or mplayer, without opening a web browser.

This week, we explore why companies still suffer anti-cloud delusions, Google's blueprint for responding to a cloud outage and why the cloud battle is over and the cloud won.

Linux isn't the only open-source operating system, and it isn't the only one with both server and desktop components either. The FreeBSD Project is one of the earliest open-source operating system projects, with roots connecting it to the original open-source BSD Unix work performed at the University of California at Berkeley

Today in Open Source: Other mobile versions of Linux may displace Android: Plus: A first look at LibreOffice 4.2, and a Java Trojan threatens Linux computers.

The latest m23 release focuses on two main new features: For one, on support for Apache CloudStack® and on the other hand on the extended options to clone machines.

Network Attached Storage products have become more commonplace as users demand access to their data on all their network-connected devices. FreeNAS is a FreeBSD-based operating system that installs in 2GB of space and can turn your old hardware into an enterprise-level storage box.

On January 30, Canonical has announced in a security notice that a new Linux kernel update is available for its Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) operating system, fixing a security issue found recently in the Linux kernel packages.

We've written plenty of times about the importance of the public domain around here, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of the public domain has been Disney, a company which has regularly mined the public domain for the stories it then recreates and copyrights. Of course, somewhat depressingly, Disney also has been one of the most extreme players in keeping anything new out of the public domain, as pointed out by Tom Bell's excellent "mickey mouse curve" showing how Disney has sought to push out the term of copyrights every time Mickey Mouse gets near the public domain. All this despite the fact that Mickey Mouse was almost certainly was an infringing work when it was created, copying multiple sources that were still covered by copyright.