Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Chipmaker AMD has thrown its financial clout behind a non-profit organization setting up Linux-based computing and communication centers in East Africa. Inveneo initially used Wyse thin clients, but the organization has now switched over to MiniPCs based on AMD's recently-launched Ultra-value client reference design.

Software behemoth Microsoft could be one of the biggest losers from proposed license changes to the Linux operating system unveiled Wednesday. That’s a possible outcome of updates to the license pushed by the Free Software Foundation. The FSF wants to make mutually exclusive pacts such as the Novell-Microsoft open-source agreement (see Exit Interview: Jeremy Allison, Strange Bedfellows) a violation of the next iteration of the GNU GPL (General Public License), the license that governs Linux use.

The Library of Congress, where thousands of rare public domain documents relating to America's history are stored and slowly decaying, is about to begin an ambitious project to digitize these fragile documents using Linux-based systems and publish the results online in multiple formats.

CodeGear has announced that Delphi for PHP – an integrated visual Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment for the popular PHP Web development language – is now shipping worldwide. Delphi for PHP brings the RAD productivity benefits that Delphi users have enjoyed for years to PHP Web developers. PHP, designed to allow Web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly, is the most prominent dynamic Web language today and has become one of the top 10 programming languages overall.

Germany's next-generation TerraSAR-X uses sophisticated ground infrastructure to deliver Earth observation data to scientists and commercial customers. Open-source software developed at ESA's Operations Centre is helping to make the mission a success.

Despite evidence of open source creep, Kagermann thinks it is still a database and OS-level model. He tackled the rise of open source in a recent interview with Computer Business Review. "It is an option for operating systems and databases but not at the business application level," he said. "There are no open source ERP products that are any good for the high end, although it could be argued that they could be developed for the low end."

This afternoon the the third draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3) was released. This improved draft of the GPLv3 aims to better protect the open source community. Accompanying this delayed draft is a 60 page rational for the draft (PDF) featuring a large section responding to the Microsoft-Novell deal in November, which was a key factor in the draft's much overdue release.

You can almost set your watch by it nowadays: Twice a year, we have a new version of Ubuntu Linux to explore. April will bring the release of Feisty Fawn, also known as Ubuntu 7.04. (The "04" indicates April; the "7" stands for 2007.) I've been running prerelease versions of Feisty for about a month. In a moment, some notes on what I've discovered. But first, a bit of context and history.

GroundWork Open Source, the leader in open source systems and network management software, has announced that it has purchased support from Actuate Corporation, the leader in Business Intelligence, Performance Management and Reporting Applications, to create the first Open Source reporting framework for IT infrastructure monitoring and management.

Firms would love to have you dump your computer every year, and your accesories, and your MP3 player, and your DVD, and your entire movie collection, and replace it with new ones. The software world is getting closer.

3Dconnexion's SpaceNavigator is a compact, programmable USB input device designed for 3-D applications. It's a six-axis controller that senses tilt and rotation as well as x, y, and z linear motion. The product was released in November, and this month 3Dconnexion (a subsidiary of peripheral specialist Logitech) announced initial Linux support, including preliminary application functionality and a software development kit.

I have just completed a preliminary version of a (ClearHealth+CK-ERP) connector. [CK-ERP is a CRM/ERP/MRP/accounting system.] A demo of CK-ERP operating within ClearHealth 1.0RC3-2006-10-24 is available at http://ck-erp.org/clearhealth/ .

Does it pass, or should I? It's funny how you can find yourself transported back, when faced with a set of stimuli. Pick up an old book, listen to a piece of music, or put on a jacket, and sometimes a wealth of memories and feelings can come rushing back. It can be slightly disorienting and it's not always pleasant, but for me at least, it never ceases to marvel.

Scott Shreeve, MDweighs -in on the recent Practice Fusion announcement:'All this"paradigm shifting" and"revolutionary" talk is good - way good - and part of the fulfillment of the vision that so many within healthcare IT have had. However, the means by which they are able to deliver it FREELY raise the inevitable red flags. I have several major issues with the enabling mechanism of this"free"dom (or more appropriately Free Dumb). While I have never been a huge privacy guy, and not being an information conspiracy theorist, I am still pretty concerned about how personal health information can be utilized...'

The first Guademy event finished yesterday at the university of A Coruña, Spain. Organized by the GPUL (Grupo de Programadores y Usuarios de Linux), the Linux User Group of A Coruña, it was an event which brought together people from the GNOME and KDE camp (thus the combination of "GUADEC" and "aKademy" that forms the name of the event).

An upcoming report by the Yankee Group warns that Microsoft Exchange may lose around 23 percent of its customers to open source mail solutions in the next year and a half. To be released in April, the report claims that companies will move to an open source mail solution because decision makers believe that open source is both easier to manage and cost-effective.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released the third draft of the revised third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). Some of the changes in the new draft, such as the increased clarification and legal language, or the housekeeping changes that reflect new aspects of the license are likely to be accepted. However, the license also includes a new approach to the controversial issue of lock-down technologies as well as more explicit language about patents, including language designed to prevent a re-occurrence of agreements such as the one that Novell entered into with Microsoft -- all of which is apt to kindle heated debate as the revision process enters its final stages after fifteen months of intensive work.

Since the earliest days, free software and its representatives on earth have been the subject of attacks that serve to question the originality, authenticity, authorship, identity and parentage of the software - but the loose communities (if such they are) of hackers, users, developers and proponents of GNU, Linux and free software have always been quick to respond, as Stallman observes in his history of the GNU project.

Terra Soft Solutions today announced the release of Yellow Dog Linux 5.0.1, a specialty distribution for older, PowerPC-based Apple G3, G4, and G5 computers. The distribution is said to have added more than 500 package updates to go with its 2.6.17 kernel and Enlightenment E17 desktop

The Italy-based project team for Sabayon Linux -- whose name refers to a light, airy, custard-like dessert -- released its v3.3 miniEdition distribution this week, featuring a 2.6.20 kernel and KDE desktop. Sabayon Linux miniEdition is a CD version of the latest Sabayon Linux x86/x86-64 DVD, a team member said.