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It's a little-known secret, but what you see in the interface of version 2.0 of OpenOffice.org isn't what you have to settle for. Hidden throughout version 2.0 are dozens of pieces of functionality, each available in a few seconds by customizing the menus, toolbars or keyboard shortcuts of OpenOffice.org applications. Some of these hidden treasures are small tools useful only to users with certain work habits. However, perhaps the most useful customizations are older versions of tools that have been redesigned in version 2.0. In several cases, these older versions are designed better than their replacements. And, if nothing else, they often are more familiar.

Apple Computer may be forced to pay royalties to Microsoft for every iPod it sells after it emerged that Bill Gates's software giant beat Steve Jobs' firm in the race to file a crucial patent on technology used in the popular portable music players. The total bill could run into hundreds of millions of dollars. Although Apple introduced the iPod in November 2001, it did not file a provisional patent application until July 2002, and a full application was filed only in October that year. In the meantime, Microsoft submitted an application in May 2002 to patent some key elements of music players, including song menu software. Editor's Note: What were you saying about the fairness of patents?

August 14, 2005 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) - Linux management firm Levanta, today announced that the Levanta Intrepid M Linux management appliance has been chosen as the "Most Innovative Hardware Solution" in LinuxWorld's Product Excellence Awards. "The industry has been waiting a long time for more sophisticated Linux management tools," said Matt Mosman, CEO of Levanta. "Attendees here at LinuxWorld have been amazed by how much the new Intrepid M appliance simplifies Linux management."

he DCC Alliance plans to assemble a common, standards-based Debian core for Debian-based Linux distributions, accelerate worldwide commercial adoption of Debian, promote compatibility among the growing community of Debian derivatives, and work with Debian on features important to commercial adoption such as a predictable release cycle and Linux Standard Base (LSB) compliance. Founding members of the Alliance include credativ, KNOPPIX, LinEx, Linspire, MEPIS, Progeny, Sun Wah, UserLinux, and Xandros. The initial release of the Debian Common Core, expected in the September time frame, will be based on Debian 3.1 (“Sarge”) and certified to LSB. The common core will be the basis for future releases of each member's Linux products, and the DCC Alliance will serve as a single point of contact for software and hardware vendors who want to ensure that their products will work with Debian.

Sun Wah Linux (Sun Wah), a China-based Linux solution provider today announced the immediate availability of RAYS ES, claimed to be the first Debian-based commercial Linux server platform in Asia. The launch of RAYS ES is expected to give network administrators a reliable, stable and secure platform that is more cost effective than its competitors. RAYS ES is a server operating system that reportedly provides both reliable performance and advanced security. RAYS ES can function as a web server, FTP server, e-mail server, DNS server, SQL database server, remote login server, web proxy server, corporate firewall or any combination of the above, the company noted.

The Debian project adds security support for the stable amd64 distribution. This port is not yet part of the Debian archive, but it will be included in unstable/testing soon and users already benefit from security updates distributed via security.debian.org. A special advisory will be released soon by the security team to cover newly built amd64 packages for all security updates since the release of sarge. These packages will replace already existing files in the proposed-updates directory in the amd64 archive.

The Debian project is pleased to announce that it is funded by the LinuxFund with $500 per month for an entire year. The Linux-oriented credit card organisation will be disbursing $6,000 in total.

Evans Data Corporation released a study which predicts fast growth for Asia-Pac open source. The survey, in which more than 400 developers throughout the region weighed in, indicates that 47 percent of the respondents plan on increasing their use of open source in the next year.

The KMyMoney development team is proud to announce the availability of the newest stable release of KMyMoney, version 0.8. A lot of progress has been made since version 0.6 was released. Existing features have been improved and many new features have been added. (Editor's Note: Suggested Reading)

Veritas - er, Symantec rather - has upgraded its server and storage management products to put versions of the software meant for Linux on equal footing with Unix code. Version 4.1 of Storage Foundation, Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC, Storage Foundation Cluster File System, Storage Foundation for Databases, Volume Replicator and Cluster Server will all now work with the latest versions of Red Hat and SuSE's server operating systems. In addition, the Veritas software packages now work with Intel's Itanium and Xeon 64-bit chips and AMD's Opteron processor. All in all, these products - long popular with Sun Microsystems' Solaris OS and versions of Unix from IBM and HP - are tuned to work with the latest and greatest technology in the x86 Linux realm.

A growing number of Linux-powered desktops and laptops are finding their way into the retail market -- driven by a more receptive system builder channel that includes the likes of Mustek, Rectron, Pinnacle and Esquire. "We are very enthusiastic about the sales through the OEMs as they are growing on a month-by-month basis, though obviously off of a low base," says Hodgson. "The biggest deal we have done to date was the deal with Rectron for 2000 units ... and those units are also apparently selling well through their channel.

In the complex world of wireless LAN security protocols, two major open-source development projects are serving as "standards cops": xsupplicant and wpa_supplicant. I first met Chris Hessing, the lead developer of xsupplicant, at Interop in 2003. Since then, he has continued to develop xsupplicant in his spare time away from his day job as the wireless network architect at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. I recently had a chance to talk with Chris by phone about xsupplicant, his views on wireless security protocols and what he's trying to do on the one of the largest decentralized secure wireless networks in existence.

After writing code for booting dozens of different hardware platforms on numerous embedded operating systems (including VxWorks, Nucleus, pSOS, uC/OS, among others), Ed Sutter decided to develop a common boot platform for embedded devices. In 2000, his employer (Lucent) granted him permission to post "Micromonitor" (aka "uMon") on Lucent's Software Distibution Website for free public download under the Lucent Public License. Sutter has continued to enhance Micromonitor over the past five years, and has just issued the 1.0 milestone release. In this whitepaper Sutter discusses uMon's features, capabilities, typical uses, and APIs, before listing new features in version 1.0.

Startup EnterpriseDB said it aims to compete with MySQL AB, the open-source database leader while also taking on rivals Pervasive Software and Greenplum. Greenplum recently unveiled a software and hardware bundle that includes data analysis tools and an early version of the company’s specialized business intelligence database, which is built around a version of the PostgreSQL open-source database designed specifically for building large-scale analysis databases. PostgreSQL is the collective work of hundreds of developers which started at the University of California at Berkeley. Pervasive Software touts Pervasive Postgres as community-maintained open source database along with a bundle of connectivity drivers and management tools like views, triggers, stored procedures and security.

AUGUST 12, 2005 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer halted the steady market share advance of The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser in July, a Web site monitoring company announced today. Last month, Internet Explorer, by far the most used browser, regained lost ground and pushed back the upstart Firefox for the first time since Version 1.0 of the open-source browser debuted late last year, according to NetApplications.com, an Aliso Viejo, Calif., maker of applications for monitoring and measuring Web site usage. Firefox's share shrunk to 8.07% from 8.71% in June, while Internet Explorer grew its market slice to 87.2% in July from 86.56% last month. (Editor's note: Anyone interested in a bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn?)

Coverity, a maker of software analysis tools, said it had analyzed the 2.6.9 version of the Linux kernel in December and a newer version of the kernel (2.6.12) in July. The study found that open source developers who write and maintain the kernel had fixed some significant issues with the software over the six-month study period. Linux kernel code analyzed in December of 2004 was found to have five file system buffer overrun weaknesses and one major network buffer overrun issue. Both of these were corrected when the code was re-analyzed in July, the company says. The study says that the code base for the Linux kernel grew from 5.76 million lines of code to 6.03 million lines. Total code defects found in Coverity's study increased overall from 985 in December 2004 to 1,008 in July, but the number of defects per lines of code decreased from .17 per 1,000 lines of code to .16.

In a market climate, where IT is being asked to do more with smaller budgets, how prevalent is the issue of cost? Some IT organizations are turning to Linux as an alternative to reduce the licensing costs of software. So taking that thought the next step further, if the Linux platform is looked upon as a bargain or lower cost solution, then, are IT organizations less likely to pay for management tools for this platform?

Today, as the FBI sought to take former Microsoft lobbyist Jack Abramoff into custody, a friend forwarded a supplement to a NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING asking if it was OK to limit access to a Federal Agency by only allowing people with Internet Explorer to access a Federal Web Site.

Red Hat, Inc. has recently announced the availability of Red Hat Network with Monitoring Module and support for Solaris. Red Hat and BMC Software also announced collaboration to extend cross platform support for heterogeneous configuration management. In the Monitoring Module, customers can create dozens of monitoring probes for each of their systems, configuring warning and critical thresholds for each probe. Probes can monitor systems, network functionality, or applications. Over 60 pre-built probes are available initially, including many for applications from Oracle, MySQL, Apache, and BEA. Meanwhile, the Red Hat Network Solaris Management is a simple and inexpensive tool to patch legacy Solaris environments. Customers with both Solaris and Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed will be able to leverage the benefits of a single, unified systems management system with Red Hat Network.

Every software company worth its salt already has some open-source strategy. IBM may have set the pace with its early support of Linux, but it has become common for tech companies to release open-source versions of software that does not earn its keep. What better way to undermine a more successful rival?