Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Tensions are already high over Novell's patent agreement with Microsoft, but Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth's invitation to openSUSE developers "concerned about the long term consequences" has kicked the tension up a notch.

“That was fast!” said one acquaintance on learning that the first openSUSE 10.2 release candidate put in its appearance on Thanksgiving afternoon not three weeks after beta 2 arrived. The release is currently available for downloading via both ftp and BitTorrent.

System builders considering a Linux desktop are faced with a dizzying array of choices. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Linux distributions to choose from. Narrowing the field of contenders basically comes down to what works best for both the system builder and its customers.

SOA (service oriented architecture) is a big deal, I like it. But it isn't the be all and end all of computing. Here are ten things you need to know about SOA.

Gaming equipment startup Bigfoot Networks is shipping a Linux-powered NIC (network interface card) aimed at improving network gaming performance. The Killer Network Interface Card has a 400MHz processor and hardware UDP/IP acceleration, to offload network processing. A contest for other Killer NIC apps is underway.

Deputies elected to the French National Assembly in the next legislative session will find open-source software on their desktop PCs. The use of free software will result in substantial cost savings, despite the cost of migration and training, the Assembly said.

X-Evian, a Linux distribution in English and Spanish that draws from Ubuntu and Knoppix code, last month released a live CD -- version 0.7 -- that features a 2.6.17 kernel and the XFce desktop environment. X-Evian is a compilation which has been carefully chosen and configured for activist users, for liberated cultural, technological and social production, the Spain-based project team said. It is the team's first new release since 2003 -- it was originally built upon Debian GNU/Linux and Knoppix, the team said.

Release managers are not mentioned in the Debian Constitution, yet few positions in Debian are more influential, especially in the final stages of preparation for a release. Recently, Andreas Barth, who shares the release manager position with Steve Langasek, took time from his efforts coordinating the Etch release -- tentatively scheduled for early December -- to talk about the stages in the release process, the goals for the upcoming release, and the short- and long-range problems that he faces in his role.

Japan's Vine Linux project team, whose distribution features an integrated Japanese or English environment for desktop PCs and notebooks, today released its version 4.0 for i386 and PowerPC processors. The distro features a 2.6.16 kernel and the GNOME 2.14.2 desktop environment.

This is Steve Shreeve, Medsphere's founding CEO and a current member of its Board of Directors. In my capacity as a Director of the company, and as the largest individual shareholder in the company, I am compelled to respond to a recent article that was published by Medsphere's current CEO, Kenneth W. Kizer, regarding Medsphere's open source stance, which is available at the following link:http://www.medsphere.com/press/20061121

The DSL Mall is a free market place for merchants. Basically, we are giving away store fronts to merchants who we feel may be a good match with the DSL community. Who should consider joining? Anybody that has nice merchandise to sell and is interested in having his/her items viewed by the DSL community. There is absolutely no cost to you for this store front, and you are likely to get over 2k impressions a day if the products are a good match for our community.

This is one post in a series, describing challenges we need to overcome to make free software ubiquitous on the desktop. I have this weird relationship with the words “it’s not supported”.

With quantum ‘bits’, or qubits, able to have a value of zero and one at the same time, they appear to violate physical matter’s inability to be in two places or two states at the same time. But they’re real, with scientists able to read the individual quantum values of 10,000 phosphorous atoms in a new experiment.

Like any large organisation, the GNOME Project faces a formidable challenge in maintaining an effective Web site. Trying the balance the demands of promotion, documentation, and community coordination is made all the more difficult when you only have volunteers to do the work. But over the past year the GNOME community has developed and begun to execute a well-defined process to refocus and rejuvenate its much-neglected Web presence.

Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to further the interests of free hardware and software. It is best-known as the public face of Debian. However, after several years of relative inactivity, SPI is getting its affairs in order and expanding to include other projects. At its November meeting yesterday, the SPI board of directors discussed a wide range of topics, from the status of talks with potential member projects, the removal of an apparently defunct project, and the issue of the Debian trademark in Spain.

It is with regret that I urge all FOSS developers to treat anything Novell has contributed to the community as suspect, scrutinize any Novell contributions and purge them as deemed appropriate.This threat is real, and it is not necessarily contingent upon whether or not Microsoft would actually sue customers for patent infringements. This is a classic case of posturing. Novell is now in a position to leverage its agreement with Microsoft in a way that harms all other Linux distributions and other FOSS projects. It is actively exploiting its unique position in ways that seem beneficial, but will pose risks to anyone but its own customers.

An uncompromising advocate of Java compatibility, Dr Graham Hamilton - Sun Fellow and VP - has parted company with the new "age of participation" Sun in the wake of its decision, announced last week, to open-source its implementation of Java.

Microsoft's cunning plan to be the ruler of Linux has hit a slight snag. Its Linux ally Novell is not going along with its plans to force Linux distributors to join its approved partners, pay up or be sued and the Open Sauce community has a counter attack planned. According to ZD Net, Eben Moglen, who is designing the next version of the GNU Public License GPL v3, says that the Free Software Foundation's next draft includes a new clause where those agreeing to it will not sue anyone else.

Gentoo is one of the most difficult distributions to learn, though veteran Gentoo users might point out that its friendly community and extensive documentation can help new users. Here are some tips that might make Gentoo easier for anyone who wants to give it a try.

Walking on thin ice? The terms of Microsoft's End User License Agreement (EULA) for its upcoming Vista operating system raises the conflict between two fundamental principles of contract law. The first, and more familiar, is that parties to a contract can generally agree to just about anything, as long as what they agree to doesn't violate the law and isn't "unconscionable".