Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Open source community members expect the long-awaited GPL 3 (or at least another draft of it) to be unveiled this Saturday at a Free Software Foundation meeting in Cambridge, Mass. GPL 3 proponent Bruce Perens told reporters Monday that he would bet that new license will be disclosed at this meeting, although he said he did not know for certain.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software, today announced the addition of a new client, the GNOME Foundation. The GNOME Foundation supports the development of the open source GNOME Desktop Environment, a user interface used by millions of people around the world and distributed with all major versions of Linux and Unix.

The mission for today’s article is to find a Kiosk Live option that will fit the needs of a small bookstore that wishes to provide a free-to-use PC for their customers. My options that are currently available for this test include Portable Firefox Live, BoothCD and LiveKiosk (Free Edition).

The launch of a forum for Australian women in open source coincides with a debate about discrimination in the industry, writes Sarah Stokely. Women working in open source IT suffer "overt hostility", according to new national group AussieChix. Founder Mary Gardiner says the group aims to encourage participation and combat discrimination with an online forum for "social and technical interaction". An amalgamation of several state-based LinuxChix groups, AussieChix was launched on March 8, International Women's Day, and arrives at a time when the open source industry is dogged by gender issues.

SALT LAKE CITY -- For the last couple of years, Novell has been a whirlwind of change. From its change from its own Netware platform to its all-encompassing embrace of Linux and open source technology, and from Microsoft's main network operating system competitor to a close, if controversial, partner of the software titan. But now, CEO Ron Hovsepian has one more change in mind -- less change.

Dell Inc. launched an online survey last week that it hopes will help determine what versions of the open-source Linux operating system it eventually might include in its desktop and notebook computers.

[Sander: The FUD stinks high in this article. Tread carefully!]

Ian Murdock founded Debian GNU/Linux nearly fifteen years ago, and today it provides the foundations for many well-known distros such as Ubuntu and Knoppix. LinuxFormat caught up with Ian, who currently chairs the Linux Standards base, and asked him about Debian politics, leadership and the rise of Ubuntu...

Microsoft's Vista operating system should give the company a revenue stream that will run for years, but experts at Wharton say the January 30 launch of the consumer versions of Microsoft's flagship software may be among the last of its kind—a product sold for a flat fee in a shrink-wrapped box. Indeed, many wonder if the software business model that has made Microsoft so dominant may begin to fade as new software business models—from open source to advertising supported—gain increasing traction.

Red Hat is planning a packaged Linux desktop solution that it hopes will push its Linux desktop offering to a far broader audience than exists for its current client solution. The move is designed in part to compete with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform, which includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, which were released in July 2006.

Ever wanted to take the window open on your desktop and set it on fire? If you happen to be running Linux, you're in luck. Jaw-dropping 3D desktop effects first came to the Linux desktop by way of the Novell sponsored Compiz effort which got started over a year ago. An open source community fork of that effort called Beryl is now moving beyond its base, taking Linux desktop effects to the next level.

IT professionals are being forced to adopt Microsoft's operating systems — even if they tell their PC supplier they want a system free of Microsoft software, ZDNet UK's research has revealed.

Daddy's got a brand new toy to play with :-) A few months ago swbrown posted a fantastic tutorial on the LXer forums that gave a short overview of setting up RAID with LVM, Xen and LUKS. Around that same time I noticed a decommissioned HP server at my job. I decided to buy it off my boss and see if I could get to swbrown's nice setup. Here's how I fared in making this new toy into a flexible Xen server.

One of your developers wants to extend an open-source application to solve a company problem, then contribute the code back to the community. That's fine. But making that process work in enterprise terms involves more than getting the legal department to recover from its fainting fit.

If the thought of Microsoft Vista's DRM restrictions, restrictive EULA, version confusion and user lock-in has you scared then you definitely do not want to know what the lads from Redmond have in store for the next version. If Microsoft's latest patent application is anything to go by then the next version of Windows, Vista+1 is really going to give you nightmares.

EMI has stopped publishing audio CD's with DRM. It is the last publisher to do so. This means no DRM audio CD's will be released anymore.

[Not FLOSS or Linux related, but definately good news. DRM hits us all, even in FLOSS-land -- Sander]

Today in Iowa, attorneys have once again taken Microsoft to court over anti-trust charges associated with its Windows operating system. [...] The lawyers are also seeking compensation for the time people have had to spend repairing security breaches--a figure that they put at a minimum of $50 million. “The illegal bolting of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system created a larger ‘attack surface’” and made the operating system more vulnerable, asserts Richard Hagstrom, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs.

[This is a first :-) MS getting sued for it's security record. If it sticks it could mean a quick death for Windows when world+dog starts doing the same -- Sander]

Last week at the Ubuntu Developer Summit the release goals for Feisty Fawn were discussed and drawn up. Ubuntu's next version is aiming for some pretty good features. There's one change that bothers me to no end though: composite by default. In order to reach this goal, they want to install and configure binary video drivers by default. That is a firm slap in the face of long term Ubuntu users everywhere though.

The news of the Microsoft–Novell deal is hard to miss in the Linux community. The most interesting bit of the agreement are the patent clauses. Did Novell sign away it's future by mistake or did it cleverly safeguard the future of Mono, Samba and OpenOffice.org?

After a long and ambivalent discussion during the last weeks the project "Dunc Tank" (short DT from now on) has recently started. We consider that to be a major change to the Debian project culture: For the first time Debian Developers are paid for their work on Debian by a institution so near to the project itself.

With this mail we would like to summarize our thoughts about the DT project and the idea behind it. We also want to raise some questions we still consider unanswered and open.

The french telephone company Neuf Cegetel is giving away a free Linux PC with every broadband connection: an all-in-one box with an Intel 852 GM chip, Six USB Ports, 512 Mb of RAM, 512 Mb of Flash memory and integrated broadband modem/router and even a telephone. All for 150 euro. It will be running a custom distro containing Firefox, Abiword, Gnumeric, GIMP, Gkview, Ekiga, MPlayer, and Bizanga, among other things.