Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Red Hat wants to talk interoperability, but Microsoft's reluctance says much about real objectives behind recent patent agreements. Microsoft's childlike "that's mine" attitude about intellectual property and patent violation claims against open source doesn't explain the company's resistance to Red Hat. The question to ask: Whose intellectual property rights is Microsoft seeking to protect?

Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) has long been one of my favorite features on Linux systems. Using FUSE modules, you can mount all sorts of innovative resources -- Gmail, your Flickr photos, a remote SSH server -- directly into your local machine's filesystem and use their contents exactly as if they were normal files. Now you can do the same thing on Mac OS X, courtesy of MacFUSE.

I run a small but fairly active Web site from a home server, as was commonly done back in the early days of the World Wide Web. What started as a learning project soon grew to be my primary hobby. It takes a bit of knowledge of Linux systems, various open sourced applications, and how the Internet works to start a Web site from scratch. Here are some of the applications and tools that help me stay on top of things.

A spoof cartoon of ever increasing war of OS between Microsoft and Linux.

Neuros Technology has rolled out pre-release firmware for its Linux-based OSD networkable set-top box that allows the gadget to suck down and show YouTube content. The firmware allows the OSD to be used to browse and play the entire YouTube video collection on any standard-definition or HD TV.

David Kline left a comment regarding my blog on Intellectual Dishonesty. There are a few points that David makes to which I’ll respond and then I’ll touch on his invitation to show “…any evidence at all…” that supports the view that the patent system is being used to stifle innovation.

Nora Denzel says open-source software is changing the landscape of an industry led by Hewlett-Packard and IBM. You might dismiss her as just another fan of open source, the freely available software best known by Linux. But Denzel is the former head of HP's software group. She resigned last year. Denzel recently spoke with IBD about open-source management software.

I had a surreal experience with Dell today. Wanting to support Dell in their decision to sell computers with Ubuntu installed, I decided to order one for our small, non-profit business. Stargely, they REFUSED MY MONEY because I was buying it to use for a business. What business model does that fall under?

In this article I will explain how to set up Apache 2 on Debian Etch and make it talk to an Active Directory 2003 server. After that I will show you how to setup Subversion and use LDAP groups to control access to multiple subversion repositories. After I rant a bit about my two-day nightmare with Active Directory that is…

Another one bites the dust. After Novell and Xandros, Linspire has signed away their future as well for a wad of cash in the short term. The reaction of the Linspire community isn't as negative as the Xandrosians but that should be no surprise. The effects of these deals and Microsoft's patent protection racket will be discussed this week at the Linux Foundation summit at Google's Mountain view headquarters.

Asus chairman Jonney Shih sprang a surprise during Intel's Computex keynote today with the announcement of a $189 laptop. The notebook uses a custom-written Linux operating system, much like the OLPC, though unlike the OLPC, Asus has chosen a more conventional interface. The laptop will be available in all areas of the world, not only developing nations.

I love how Microsoft tries to blur the lines between its patent folderol and interoperability agreements (notice how it tries to obscure this in the press release, talking about Novell, Xandros, XenSource (no patent agreement), JBoss (no patent agreement), Zend (no patent agreement), etc. They talk about them all as if they're the same thing, but they're not. The smart companies are buying into interoperability, not FUD.

Last week, Microsoft sent certified letters to its OEM partners regarding Vista's anti-piracy technology -- or, more accurately, what happens if they dare ship a system with a "non-genuine" copy of Vista. The answer: The system is crippled for 30 days, then hosed entirely until you pony up for a license. This is apparently what Microsoft means when it warns of a "diminished user experience."

Matt Lawton of IDC has a great job. He gets to spend his time analyzing open source business models and markets to see where it's all going. According to a research report he just released, it's going up. Way up. He has the standalone open source software market pegged to grow 26% through 2011 to hit $5.8 billion by that year. Not too shabby.

"Microsoft, Xandros Broad Collaboration Agreement Extends Bridge Between Commercial Open Source and Microsoft Software". And so it begins again ... Xandros is looking for love (possibly in all the wrong places). A quick tour of DistroWatch for the comparative view for Xandros over the past 12, 6, 3, and one month periods shows it falling from 25th to 28th to 31st to 40th respectively.

I have a small company that builds websites for equally small businesses in the area and it's Linux that made this possible. If we would have been stuck on the Windows platform there is no way we could have done what we do because it would simply have been too expensive. I am sure the same is true for many start-ups. It is no coincidence that virtually all the successful start-ups of today are powered by open source software.

Recently, Nicholas Carr wrote an article titled "The Ignorance of the Crowds" in the Strategy+Business Magazine. In the article, he tries to portray open source as a hybrid Bazaar-Cathedral model and warns the businesses against any reliance on the open source process to drive innovation. In this post, I am going to take his arguments and show how he has got it totally wrong.

LXer Feature: 16-May-2007

The technology industry has been in a buzz since last Monday's Fortune article in which Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith claims that the GNU/Linux operating system infringes 235 of Microsoft's patents. Microsoft refuses to tell the community what those patents are, but they told you, Novell.

Today’s news brings the major reason you should run away from depending on Microsoft technology like it had a case of Ebola. What you as a customer are being told, in essence, is that if you use any technology but Microsoft’s (or those of a company paying blood-money to Microsoft), you are likely to be sued. Finally, this is the do or die moment for the FOSS community. There’s a wolf knocking at the door, and everyone who ever committed a line of code to a project has a stake in keeping it out.

Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you, maybe. Fortune's Roger Parloff reports.

[A very good read and a good recap of events. Just one factual error: Not all GPL software copyright belongs to the FSF. — Sander