Showing headlines posted by dcparris

Start-up Hyperic launched an open-source project on Monday around its namesake software, looking to shake up enterprise management software with a low-cost product and an open-source business model.

Emerson Network Power, a division of Emerson Electric, will demonstrate MontaVista's Carrier Grade Linux distribution at the Freescale Technology Forum next week in Orlando Fla. MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) will be shown running on Emerson's KatanaQP ATCA blades and PmPPC7448 ProcessorPMC modules.

Both developers and business managers need to know open-source options and limitations.

The strength of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is its openness and transparency, and community support. Anyone can contribute, not just elite coders with lush geekbeards and ratty sandals. So what can a non-coder do?

Serendipity is a PHP-based content management system (CMS) for powering blogs and other sites, and has a feature set that should make any blogger happy. After several years in development, the Serendipity team hit the 1.0 mark on June 15. Let's see how the 1.0 release shakes out.

[Let's see, just because it uses the BSD license, it's supposed to be better for "commercial" sites? Bartender! I would like to try whatever these guys have been drinking. - dcparris]

The question of if and when Reiser4 will be merged into the mainline Linux kernel has been an on-going debate for a couple of years [story]. The filesystem was described as being "fairly stable for average users" by Hans Reiser [interview] over two years ago, in March of 2004 [story]. It has been merged into Andrew Morton [interview]'s -mm kernel [story], though issues such as Reiser4 plugins [story] and coding style [story] caused lengthy discussions last year. Two recent threads on thelkml raised the question again, asking at a non-technical level why Reiser 4 has not been included in the Linux kernel. Some have offered theories that Reiser4 is being blocked for political reasons, others because of concerns that once Reiser4 is included Namesys might forget it and move onto another filesystem. Responses to these theories point out that in reality there are technical issues that must be resolved before the filesystem will be merged, and that much progress has been made toward this end. Additional discussion can be found on a relevant and recently createdkernel newbies wiki page.Hans Reiser posted a "short term task list for Reiser4" to address the remaining technical issues. The todo list included getting batch_write merged into the -mm kernel [story], getting read optimization code merged into the -mm kernel, documenting everything in theNamesys wiki, exploring and addressing reports of system pauses when using Reiser4, a complete review of the crypt-compress code, a large effort in optimizing fsync, a review of installation instructions, and a review of the kernel documentation. Hans explains, "unfortunately, our code stability is going to decrease for a bit due to all these changes to the read and write code --- no way to cure that but passage of time. On the other hand, our CPU usage went way down. Reiser4's only performance weakness now is fsync. Once the crypt-compress code is ready, we will release Reiser4.1-beta (with plugins, releasing a beta means telling users that if they mount -o reiser4.1-beta then cryptcompress will be their default plugin, and if they don't, then they are using Reiser4.0 still). Doubling our performance and halving our disk usage is going to be fun."

HP points to a Forrester Research study in 2005 that showed lack of support, immaturity of products and the lack of applications at the top of the list of problems.

(Fortune International) -- Francisco Mingorance was on vacation in Spain last winter when he logged on to an Internet webcast and heard French politicians debating how to require Apple Computer to disclose its secret underlying code for iTunes software - a move that would allow millions of music lovers to play downloaded music and video on any device they chose.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has revoked certification of the open-source encryption tool OpenSSL under the Federal Information Processing Standard.

[Hmmm... One wonders at just how the re-evaluation process, which should have noted corrections to the original problem, wound up leading to a revocation. One assumes that the problems will be made known to the OpenSSL folks - if it's so proprietary that even they can't find out what's wrong, someone needs to examine the process. - dcparris]

In their recent plenary session, EU parliamentarians have voiced their support for an open information society. A text adopted by a majority of the EU parliament to implement the Lisbon program of the European Community under the motto "More research and innovation - investing for growth and employment" aims, among other things, to send a signal to the EU commission, which is constantly expanding intellectual property rights to the benefit of rights holders. The parliamentarians countered that the concept of "Open Innovation" is the best way to increase investments in research and development and attain the Lisbon goals. In these goals, the EU Plans to become the most competitive, dynamic economic area in the world by 2010. [Is it possible that Europe could become more "free" than the U.S.? - dcparris]

Douglas Goldstein and Peter Groen have an informativearticle with a wide ranging perspective of FOSS in medicine.'...It is important to recognize that a wide range of OSS solutions are already in use in health care, generally consisting of technical tools and business applications - Linux, Apache, Open Office, mySQL, FireFox, and other fairly well known products. In addition, there are a large number of health care specific OSS solutions that have also been developed and are being widely deployed, such as OSCAR, FreeMed, MedLine, BLAST, Epi-X, SaTScan, VistA, and many more...'

Feather Linux is a Knoppix-based Linux distribution that can run from a CD or a USB pen drive in under 128MB of space. According to its Web site, it "tries to include software which most people would use every day on their desktop."

Welcome to our issue number 55 of Fedora Weekly News. http://fedoranews.org/wiki/Fedora_Weekly_News_Issue_55 In this issue, we have following articles: 1 FC6 test2 freeze slipping by a week 2 Packaging Committee Information 3 How was NECC 2006? 4 SELinux blocks local privilege escalation vulnerability 5 Linux Magazine: AppArmor vs SELinux 6 New Linux Hardware Compatibility List Launches 7 Fedora Weekly Reports 2006-07-10 8 Fedora Core 4 and 5 Updates 9 Contributing to Fedora Weekly News 10 Editor's Blog

Hackers are taking a page from the open-source playbook, using the same techniques that made Linux and Apache successes to improve their malicious software, according to McAfee.
[This is a different take on an earlier article posted here at LXer. - dcparris]

Open-source project OpenIPMP today announced the release of OpenIPMP v2, a major upgrade to the leading open- source and open-standards based DRM (Digital Rights Management) system originally released in 2002.

[It's a disgrace that Free/Open Source Software users embrace the idea of restricting freedom this way. Some who host their projects on Sourceforge may wish to move them to Savannah. - dcparris]

Very nicely done video on the Veterans Affairs hospital system VistA system can be foundhere. From the video:"VA is a leader in electronic health records...VHA patients received higher quality care...higher quality of overall, chronic disease and preventive care..."

SAN JOSE, Calif., July 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX) today announced the immediate availability of the Integrated Software Environment (ISE(TM)) WebPACK(TM) 8.2i release -- the latest version of the company's free* downloadable programmable logic design suite. This new version includes all the features of the 8.2i release of the popular Xilinx ISE Foundation(TM) software with full support for optional embedded, digital signal processing (DSP) and real-time debug design flows. Most notably, ISE WebPACK 8.2i builds on the ISE Fmax Technology with the integration of the Xplorer utility enabling designers to easily explore multiple design rule settings and constraints to improve design performance by 10 percent.

Timid about diving into the oceanic waters of open-source projects? A few former Microsoft employees have launched a website that evaluates open source projects. The site, called Ohloh, is not a reviews site but instead a directory of open source software, its co-founders said.

Red Hat, the open source solutions provider, announced the growth of its partner network, presence and services to Bangladesh. While the new partners include Base, Thakral, Daffodil, Flora and Technohaven, Red Hat's customers are offered support by key ISVs, software resellers, OEMs, SIs and business partners operating from Bangladesh. The sales, pre-sales and technical support requirements for Bangladesh will be addressed through Red Hat's Kolkata office.

Red Hat has announced the growth of its partner network, presence and services in Bangladesh. The company said this enhanced network enables it to continue providing regional support, training and sales activities, in addition to localized solutions for Bangladesh.