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The casual view of open source software is that the code always comes first: releases are made when the code is ready, new contributors prove their chops by the quality of their code, and so forth. But in reality the FLOSS ecosystem relies on a complex legal framework in order to run smoothly and to stand up to proprietary software competition: the various software licenses, contribution agreements, copyright and other "intellectual property" law. Every once in a while, a good status check on the legal dimension is healthy for the typical developer, and SCALE 8x offered just that in a series of talks.

Barely a day goes by when you switch on your computer, plug into the web and come across yet another deranged scheme to restrict freedom in the name of security, safety or morality. RIAA, DMCA, RIPA, Pallidium computing, the list almost seems to grow exponentially. So, some guys got together in a dark room, brainstormed and came up with yet another ruse to curtail access to and use of the internet. Relax, this one won’t fly. Trust me. But the sheer audacity of it! Even the bovine docility of Windows users wouldn’t stomach this one (or would they?)—and here’s the irony. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

Clamav is the most popular free anti virus program for Linux environment.( Of course it scans for widows virus) However, clam is a command line utility and you need some skills for manipulating is properly. There are several graphical front ends for clam av which can make your life easy. The most popular among them are clamtk and Klamav.

Vsftpd is one of the most secure and fastest FTP servers for Linux. Usually vsftpd is configured to work with system users. This document describes how to install a vsftpd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine.

Operating systems market share is something that is hard to judge. There are lots of numbers out there provided by lots of different people. Which figures are you to believe and which ones should you take in with a grain of salt?

The biggest science story to hit the mainstream media in the last year was of course the big switch on at CERN. What made it such a great story for me was not just the sheer and audacious enormity of the enterprise or the humbling nobility of the colossal experiment but the story behind the story. That story was the absolutely central role of free software philosophy at the heart of everything CERN was (and is) doing. Despite the false start, CERN’s search for the Higgs Boson has got into its stride. The same cannot be said for the car crash that is climate science, which may have inflicted terminal damage on the reputation of science. I believe the rigorous application of free software methodology in conjunction with the Fourth Paradigm may save it. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

Haiku OS, the nine year old project to develop an open-source BeOS-compatible operating system, is hoping it will receive a new OpenGL stack this year. The Haiku project, like X.Org, will be participating in this year's Google Summer of Code project where the search engine giant pays many student developers to work on code for various open-source projects. There's a long list of ideas for where Haiku OS could use some help, and one of them includes a hardware 3D acceleration stack...

It's been just a month since releasing Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 and that was followed by the release of our PTS Desktop Live 2010.1 operating system, but since then work has been flowing into the next release of the Phoronix Test Suite and related benchmarking technologies. The next release, Phoronix Test Suite 2.6, is codenamed Lyngen and will be officially available in May. Today the first alpha release for Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 is available...

When it comes to Intel's X.Org driver for Linux, xf86-video-intel, the most recent release was version 2.10 and it arrived in early January complete with Pineview (their next-generation Intel Atom systems) support, X-Video improvements, and various other features. The xf86-video-intel 2.11 driver is now emerging as their next quarterly update that brings in the KMS page-flipping and DRI2 swap events support. However, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, which is set to be released in April, will not be shipping with either of these drivers. Instead Canonical has decided to stick with the xf86-video-intel 2.9 driver that was released last September...

So the devil called me this afternoon and said they where having a snowstorm in hell. In other news Valve announced that their revolutionary "content delivery service" known as "Steam" is being ported to OSX and will be available as early as April 2010. No really its true, straight from the horse's mouth. In addition the actual client and "Steam-works" being brought to Apple's operating system Valve also plans to port all of the Source Engine games.

[Not directly FOSS related, but interesting since Windows is seen as the powerhouse of gaming. - Sander]

A joint resolution on Transparency and State of Play of ACTA negotiations from virtually all party groups in the European Parliament was tabled earlier today. It will debated tonight and faces a vote on Wednesday. If approved, the resolution marks a major development in the fight over ACTA transparency. It calls for public access to negotiation texts and rules out further confidential negotiations. Moreover, the EP wants a ban on imposing a three-strikes model, assurances that ACTA will not result in personal searchers at the border, and an ACTA impact assessment on fundamental rights and data protection.

Julien Lavergne has released the next Alpha 3 of lubuntu. lubuntu is a faster, more lightweight and energy saving variant of Ubuntu using LXDE, the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. The lubuntu team aims to earn official endorsement from Canonical.

Ask any knowledgeable mobile user, and she will tell you that the best way to securely access the Internet in public places is through a VPN (virtual private network) connection.

Case studies of open source success are always useful - especially when, like this one, they show how a UK government project that cost £100 million ($150 million) using traditional approaches but still didn't work properly, was fixed for just £35,000 ($53,000) using free software.

We've all seen countless articles, blog and forum posts explaining how to back up a server with rsync and other tools. While I've cringed when people talked about using non-scalable methods, there actually is a place for quick and dirty backup mechanisms. Small companies running just a few virtual machines in the cloud, or even enterprises with test instances, may wish for a quick and effective backup.

Listen is an audio player which comes with many very useful features such as Podcasts management, browse Shoutcast directory, provides direct access to lyrics, lastfm (currently playing song info and future events) and wikipedia information. One feature I really enjoy in Listem Music Player is it's option to create playlists for you by retrieving information from last.fm and what you most frequently listen to. And another feature creates dynamic playlist based on some criteria you choose:

In the important realm of science, technology and ideas, I believe that the continual conversion of ideas and development effort into the private property of companies like Apple is a great threat to continued free innovation.

Nautilus image converter is a nautilus extension to mass resize or rotate images. if installed an additional menu entry will appear when you right click the mouse inside nautilus. It is a convenient utility which can save you lot of effort.

Parallels, the virtualization and cloud enabler, has officially announced they’re supporting Chrome OS, Google's Linux distribution. Here are the implications for corporate customers, consumers and partners.

The Linux world is all excited about Ubuntu's new look but surely there are more important things that need to be done to make Ubuntu more appealing?