Showing headlines posted by dcparris

For several months ZNet, an activist website, has been exploring the possibility of converting to free software and so joining the 'free software movement', a movement that advocates for certain fundamental freedoms for computer users. Both ZNet and the free software movement will be described in more detail below.

"Most operating systems were developed for commercial or technical motives, but GNU was developed for the sake of giving users the freedom to cooperate in a community," said Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project. "If users don't know this, they will be in danger of losing their freedom."

Specialist EPOS provider Viridian Sun and distributor DED Limited offers retailers cost savings when it comes to their EPOS systems with Open Source.

OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt began developing OpenBSD in October of 1995. KernelTrap first spoke with Theo back in November of 2001 [interview], around the time that OpenBSD 3.0 was released, discussing much of the early history of the project. The project has continued to offer regular releases of their "free, functional& secure" operating system every six months, with OpenBSD 3.9 made available yesterday, May 1, 2006.

In this latest interview, Theo examines the past five years of OpenBSD development. He also discusses the OpenBSD 3.9 theme song, "Blob!", detailing what blobs are, why OpenBSD avoids them, and how OpenBSD developers work to reverse engineer them. Looking to the development process, Theo talks about recent and future "mini-hackathons", small and focused OpenBSD development gatherings. Finally, Theo also discusses the OpenBSD project's funding issues, and the response to requests for funding from users of the project's OpenSSH software.

Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) will present several new open source-based desktop and security applications on Wednesday at a local Linux event.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – It’s a rare day indeed when chairmen and chief executive officers go public with complaints about a rival, let alone a long-time partner. But when Larry Ellison of Oracle took some pot shots at Red Hat in an interview with The Financial Times two weeks ago, the Red Hatters’ CEO Matthew Szulik was quick to respond.

People all over the world use Linux in dozens of languages. Since Linux's source code is free and open, speakers of minority languages can add support for their languages themselves, even though a large corporation might not consider them a worthwhile market. If you use more than one language, or a language other than English, you should know about Linux's use of locales to support different languages. Indeed, understanding locales can be useful even if you only use English.

Special to LXer: 2-May-06

Microsoft extended an olive branch to the open source community with the launch of Port 25, but visitors to the Web site have been treating the branch as if it were poison ivy.

[Lxer regulars will enjoy this one. Word of warning: Loftis is apparently confused about the Korea issue - that was very recent. Otherwise, he was dead on about what LXer's new Editor-in-Chief said. - dcparris]

Devicescape has partnered with wireless and wireline switch and router specialist LVL7 on Linux-based "wireless LAN switch" software expected to ship this quarter. LVL7's FastPath Wireless LAN stack leverages Devicescape's Wireless Infrastructure Platform (WIP) to support a variety of intelligent wireless network capabilities useful in enterprise environments, the companies say.

EXIST Engineering, a global company founded by a Filipino, is providing open source technology training in Manila this month, INQ7.net learned.

Wireless networking specialist Devicescape has added standards-based self-configuration capabilities to its WiFi stacks for consumer electronic devices and wireless infrastructure products, including those based on Linux. The "Easy Access" capabilities are based on Wi-Fi Alliance standards, and make setting up secure, WPA2-encrypted wireless networking trivial, the company claims.

Open source Windows Lasso

Bob Beck announced the release ofOpenBSD 3.9 today:

"We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 3.9. This is our 19th release on CD-ROM (and 18th via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of eight years with only a single remote hole in the default install. As in our previous releases, 3.9 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system."

OpenBSD 3.9 can bepurchased as a 3-CD set to help support the OpenBSD project [story], or freelydownloaded. The theme song for the upcoming OpenBSD release is titled "Blob!", a cautionary tale about the growing prevalence of binary blobs among open source operating systems and where this might lead [story]. Read on for a detailed overview of what's new in this latest OpenBSD release.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT--May 1, 2006 -- Systems & Software Technology Conference (SSTC), Booth 610 -- Green Hills Software, Inc., the market leader in safe and secure operating systems, today announced that its INTEGRITY Workstation operating system is the first desktop and enterprise class system to be certified to a product standard based on the latest edition of IEEE 1003.1, "Standard for Information Technology -- Portab le Operating System Interface (POSIX)." INTEGRITY Workstation joins the Green Hills Software INTEGRITY real-time operating system (RTOS), used in embedded systems, as the first operating systems to be certified under "POSIX®: Certified by IEEE and The Open Group" program. INTEGRITY Workstation has been certified to the 1003.1(TM)-2003 System Interfaces Product Standard and is listed on the certification register at http://get.posixcertified.ieee.org.

The SANS Institute conducted a security briefing today in a teleconference hosted by Alan Paller, director of research at SANS, with a guest panel of Internet security experts on hand to elaborate. A press release from SANS warns of a surge in zero day attacks -- those which have been identified in the wild but have not yet patched by the vendors or projects involved -- and in attacks on the Apple OS X platform.

[In the Marine security forces, our motto was "complacency kills". The same applies to your IT systems. - dcparris]

BOSTON, May 1 /PRNewswire/ -- From the animated world of Pixar Animation Studios to the around-the-world network of PlanetLab, the 2006 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, May 30 - June 3 in Boston, presents cutting-edge technologies in a wide variety of environments. Featuring five days of training -- 30-full- and half-day tutorials -- USENIX '06 provides immediately useful information on the latest techniques, effective tools, and best strategies on topics including Ajax, administering Linux, next-generation storage networking and VoIP.

AN FRANCISCO -- For Golden Gate University, patience and sticking with a legacy application may end up paying dividends. An e-mail/collaboration package and related products long used by the university have matured to a point of being positioned for a glove-like fit with the university's aggressive new Linux and open source strategy.

A new security company says it has developed a novel approach to protecting PCs from software that exploits unpatched Windows vulnerabilities. Exploit Prevention Labs Inc., founded in 2005 by some of the same executives behind the PestPatrol antispyware product, has developed software that scans network traffic for known exploits, called 0days, which take advantage of unpatched bugs in Windows software.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is frequently considered an organization for developers rather than end users, but Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF, would disagree. "We don't just want freedom for software developers," Brown said in a telephone call interview last month. "We want freedom for all." One of the ways that the FSF promotes this goal is with its high-priority project list.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., May 1 /PRNewswire/ -- NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, has selected and installed DataCore's SANsymphony software to manage its growing storage area network (SAN) complex that serves over 5,000 users and adds an automatic fail- over architecture to eliminate downtime from failures, upgrades and change requests. Data is absolutely critical to hospital operations and patients' well-being, so it must be not only highly available, but safeguarded against catastrophe. Downtime previously incurred by routine tasks, such as maintenance and upgrades also has to be eliminated in order to spare users from the pain of disruption.