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The European Interoperability Framework, EIF, regulates how public agencies, citizens and businesses communicate with other on a software level. Now an alliance of proprietary ventures has had an influence on the EIF draft.

OpenLogic have announced that they are expanding their commercial support services for open source packages to include CentOS Linux. The company offers indemnification for a certified range of around 500 open source packages and a choice of either Developer Support with a four hour response time during business hours or Production Support with a one hour, round-the-clock response time.

Of all the big computer companies, only Dell really supports desktop Linux. Specifically, Dell offers a nice selection of PCs running Ubuntu Linux. But what Dell hasn't done is come out and announce that they are working on Google's beta Chrome OS. Other vendors, such as Acer, HP and Lenovo, are on board with Chrome. Regardless, Dell is actually the first big-time vendor to have released a version of Chrome OS designed to work with one of their netbooks.

I'm writing course notes for a sophomore (college) level survey, with tomorrow's material on Henry David Thoreau. All of a sudden, I got a a notification "The published version of this item cannot be shared until a Google review finds that the content is appropriate." The "share" link is disabled. This means I can't upload to my Google website from this page. I suppose I could cut and paste to another brand new document... but that might get me kicked off Google entirely if it still scans for and sees something "inappropriate"!

[For all the cautionary notes about The Cloud, there hasn't been much said about arbitrary denial of access. - gus]

A developer who claims he is tired of the “Linux is secure” argument has set out to develop a “package of malware for Unix/Linux” in order to help ethical hackers demonstrate the vulnerability of the open source operating system. "I was fed up with the general consensus that Linux is oh-so-secure and has no malware,” a developer going by the name of buchner.johannes wrote on Ask Slashdot, in posting filed by kdawson.

[Tired of the “Linux is secure” argument? Now I've heard it all.. - Scott]

The Mozilla Project has announced the winners of the Extend Firefox contest. The contest required entries to make use of new features in the Firefox 3.5 series, and included categories for best new add-on, best updated add-on, best shopping add-on, and best game & entertainment add-on. The winning entries for Best New Add-on were FireFound by Chris Finke, Multifox by Jeferson Hultmann, and Voyage by Hsiao-Ting Yu. FireFound sends your machine's location to a secure server, with the idea that if your machine is stolen, it can send its location using Firefox's Geolocation API to help track the machine. This assumes the thief uses Firefox after stealing the machine, of course. It works with Firefox and mobile Firefox.

Linux newbie and excellent writer Emery Fletcher weighs in on the subject of documentation for Linux users, and why it is a good thing.

Dan Kegel announced a new release of winetricks version 20091125. Below is a copy of the email Dan sent to the wine-devel mailing list. The highlight of this release is the inclusion of the ie7 verb, now with just a couple mouse clicks you can install and have Internet Explorer 7 running on your favorite UNIX Operating System.

One good sale deserves another. That’s one way to think of the Ubuntu PC market, where ZaReason is the latest company to offer special Cyber Monday sales to Ubuntu desktop and notebook shoppers. Here are some details.

A recent article in Communications of the ACM argues that "continuous upgrading" is crucial for software maintenance. This piece argues why FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) can and should be continuously upgraded and notes how Debian and Ubuntu have made the process fairly smooth.

The 8th release of Linux Mint comes with numerous bug fixes and a lot of improvements. In particular, Linux Mint 8 comes with support for OEM installs, a brand new Upload Manager, the menu now allows you to configure custom places, the update manager now lets you define packages for which you don't want to receive updates,the software manager now features multiple installation and removal of software and many of the tools' graphical interfaces were enhanced.

Most of us still rely on CD/DVD writing software applications for file backup, data transfer and distribution, and for ripping audio and video content among other things. If you are using Linux, there are plenty of optical disc-authoring programs to choose from. Here are some of those that I like..

Over the past few weeks, I have been busy. My regular job, my hobby and working with the folks at Linux Journal. Along the way, I have been thinking about the Open Source world more than I have in the past. And as I have been talking about it with people, I have been getting the standard responses you might expect.

The SCaLE University training program continues for SCALE 8X. It is presented by the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) in partnership with SCALE. The classes give a more intense and personal learning experience than a 45-minute seminar. We are offering four half-day classes for system administrators of all skill and experience levels. The SCaLE University Pass includes a full day of training (two classes of your choice) and full access to all three days of SCaLE. To register, select the "SCALE 8X Full Access Pass" and then the "SCALE University Pass" which will include a $60 discount on your total charge. The SCALE University classes will be held on Friday, February 19th. 2010.

Writers at MakeTechEasier taken more screen shots than many other computer users will take in their lifetimes. We all use our favorite programs and usually do not give them a second thought. The user who might occasionally want to give an instructional lesson or just show off some desktop eye candy will probably need a little more guidance. After all, there are many screen shot programs to choose from, and not all of them are equal. KSnapshot for KDE stands out as one of the best screen shot tools available and is unquestionably the best one for KDE. It is a standard KDE program and should come packaged with any Linux distributions that offer KDE. It is very easy to learn, but as we always do at MTE, we are about to make it easier.

Concurrent has revised its Red Hat-based real-time Linux distribution, adding support for Intel Nehalem and AMD Opteron processors with up to 48 cores, among other enhancements. RedHawk Linux 5.4 also improves NUMA performance and provides enhanced Nvidia drivers that support Nvidia's "Cuda" parallel computing technology, says the company.

Dell Technology Strategist Doug Anson has announced that, after "doing some tinkering", he has gotten Dell's Mini 10v netbook working with Google's Chromium OS, the open source branch of the Chrome OS. In a post on the Direct2Dell Blog, Anson says that "Without a network connection, Chromium OS is not very interesting. With a network connection, Chromium OS shines."

Sometimes it's the little things that trip us up, like a filename that begins with the wrong character. Juliet Kemp knows what to do when Linux becomes confused and won't operate on a file the way we want it to.

From Washington, D.C., to Silicon Valley, senators and software industry CEOs are pressuring the European Union to make a decision on Oracle’s proposed buyout of Sun Microsystems and the MySQL open source database. Here’s the latest chatter, including a letter from JasperSoft CEO Brian Gentile to the EU.

Mainstream Linux distro developers have to make decisions that affect thousands of potential users. Should they include or remove a particular package? Should they apply a patch that may break compatibility with older machines? These matters are discussed fiercely in forums where trolls growl, flames burn and project leaders defend their decisions against an onslaught of dissident. But as an individual you have none of these issues. You can install and remove packages as and when you want to, and you can choose whether to install free or non-free software on your system. Why should you have to live with community decisions when you can make Linux work your way?