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Digital Techniques has used embedded Linux, off-the-shelf mini-ITX parts, and high-end PCI sound cards to build a line of digital home music servers. The Blackbird servers have 80-300GB hard drives, lots of networking options, and a web interface supporting control from a wireless PDA.

It's sometimes easier for a successful volunteer Free Software project to get money than it is to decide how to spend it. While paying developers is easy, it can carry unintended negative consequences. This article explores problems and benefits of paying developers in volunteer free and open source projects and surveys strategies that projects have used to successfully finance development while maintaining their volunteer nature.

ImpiLinux 2005, the homegrown South African Linux distribution making inroads into the SA market is an attractive and usable platform for users. Walter Kruse takes it for a spin to see see what has changed since the last big release seven months ago.

Microsoft has agreed to make it easier for competitors around the world to gain access to detailed technical information about the Windows server operating system as part of its plan to comply with the European Union's March 2004 ruling against the company and its abuse of monopoly power. Microsoft's proposal, which the EU Commission is now checking for compliance, would make Windows compatible with more open source software, but disagreements over licensing and distribution rights remain.

The Korean language Mozilla Web site was hacked and defaced this week, prompting calls from some corners of the open source community to gain control of the independent site.

Foreword -- Paul McKenney recently summarized seven approaches to real-time Linux, in an epic 6,000-word post to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml). McKenney's original post is reproduced below; curious readers are invited to consult the lkml

While the headlines have been dominated by what Apple is bringing to the Intel platform and what Microsoft is taking out of Longhorn, Linux vendors Linspire and Xandros have continued to improve their business desktops.

As a software version-numbering aficionado, I have recently concluded that the FOSS world has gone mad and is hurling itself -- users and developers alike -- into a black hole of confusion and long-winded explanations.

Taiwanese network equipment manufacturer Planet used embedded Linux to build a small VoIP proxy server that supports 50 concurrent users. The SIP-50 is a standalone SIP-compliant proxy server with NAT traversal capabilities that can connect public and private VoIP networks, Planet says.

It seems that in its history former proprietary workstation maker Silicon Graphics has been in and out of the channel more times that a hovercraft. But now it is back, with a soon to be announced Suse Linux based Itanium II powered server and a storage product which will be reseller exclusive. Details in July.

While the federal government encourages agencies to consider open source, local and state governments will more aggressively push adoption in the long run.

The new ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Installer makes installing the ATI Linux driver a much simpler and user friendly experience. The installer provides for automatic and custom driver installations. Further, the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Installer provides an option to generate distribution specific driver packages.

"We remain a Linux development company with 100 percent focus on the Power Architecture (IBM, Freescale)," Terra Soft CEO Kai Staats wrote in an e-mail to MacNewsWorld. "We will not transition to support an x86/ia64 architecture."

It seems there are moves afoot to get rid of open source software at the Beaumont Hospital -- one of the few institutions to wholeheartedly adopt this ICT strategy. The Irish Times got sight of internal correspondence which shows that IT project manager Tony Kenny is deeply worried about moves by hospital management to junk the open-source solution in favour of Microsoft, citing staff dissatisfaction with the open source software. Kenny claims the move could cost the hospital EUR2 million.

Power.org, a sui-disant open source organisation based around IBM's Power instruction set, has just expanded. It shows, said IBM, the health of the open source movement, this time in hardware not just software.

Recent research from IDC shows that Linux server sales grew to $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2005, marking the eleventh consecutive quarter of growth for the open source server platform.

The Association of the Computer and Multimedia Industry of Malaysia (Pikom), will hold FOSSWorks, the free and open source works conference, for the first time on June 21, 2005 [KUALA LUMPUR] The event is expected to bring together leaders in the development of open source technologies around the world.

A Debian developer has warned around 30 percent of users upgrading to the new version of his project's Linux distribution would seriously disrupt their systems in the process.

Apple’s Safari team launched the WebKit Open Source Project Web site this week. The site provides source code access for the software Apple uses to create its Safari Web browser. The project will hopefully assuage the concerns of open source code advocates who felt Apple was taking too proprietary an approach with the development of its browser, which uses technology originally developed from the open source world.

As the first Debian release to use the new installer, version 3.1, a.k.a. Sarge, goes a long way to detonating the myth that Debian is hard to install. Moreover, because it includes -- for the most part -- up-to-the-moment software while conforming to strict free software guidelines and offering better than average security, 3.1 is easily the most accessible version of Debian ever released.