Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

On Aug. 13, 2008, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in the much-watched case Jacobsen v. Katzer, No. 2008-1001, which turned on whether violating an open source licensing agreement should be considered copyright infringement. It is important for companies to be aware of the implications of this decision.

There are several fully functional and stable Open Source operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, NetBSD, OpenBSD and so on. Each of these operating systems is competent and production ready, each has it strengths and weaknesses, each has its unique technologies and goals. So the question is why has Linux won the popularity context. Using a tool like Google Trends it is clear that searches and news stories for Linux are more than 20 times higher than that of FreeBSD or OpenSolaris. The question is why? The answer can be summed up in two words: license and hero. In this case the license is the GPL and the hero is Linus Torvalds.

I have interviewed Mike Card on the latest development of the OMG working group which aims at defining a new standards for Object Database Systems. Mike works with Syracuse Research Corporation (SRC) and is involved in object databases and their application to challenging problems, including pattern recognition. He chairs the ODBT group in OMG to advance object database standardization.

The Green Party has called for an overhaul of patent laws that would prevent software being patented. The party's policy on information technology was released by MP Metiria Turei. Ms Turei, who called for greater use of open source and locally developed software, says excluding software from patents would ensure others could develop ideas. Software would still be protected against piracy by copyright law.

The Linux Foundation on Wednesday plans to announce an event enabling Linux users to interact with the Linux community, including high-level maintainers and developers. The first Linux Foundation End User Collaboration Summit is planned for Oct. 13 and 14 in New York. During the free, invitation-only summit, there will be discussions between end users and Linux maintainers, including Andrew Morton and James Bottomley.

I received an invitation to a cool event the other day and thought this might be of interest to some of you since it looks like a fun way to spend a weekend: "Partly because we're starting to see the fruits of Box2D (an open source 2D physics engine) running on the XO and partly because we just haven't had a good one in a while, the OLPC Physics Game Jam competition is being held August 29th-31st, 2008 in Cambridge MA. Participants, in teams of 2-4, will have 48 hours to construct physics-based games for the XO laptop.

Mozilla Labs launched a new prototype Tuesday aimed at giving Internet users new ways to create mashups of online content. Dubbed "Ubiquity," the technology is Mozilla's solution what it sees as a common and time-consuming problem Web surfers face when they try to compile information from the Web.

5 ways to increase your productivity and enhance your Linux user experience: Terminator, Desktop terminals, Conky, Pidgin and Gnome-Do.

Even though the data is apparently a bit screwy, I was still really proud to see Utah emerge as the top state for "Linux" searches on Google. The data also shows that Cubans prefer "Linux" to "sex," which is almost certainly not true, but I think there may actually be something to Utah's strong affinity for Linux, at least as it relates to searches for "sex" on Google. In Utah, we already know about sex, so we don't have to spend a lot of time searching for it. I have four kids. I should probably be searching for "birth control" before I search for "sex." :-)

I have been around the Linux community for more than 10 years now. From the very beginning, I have known that there are basic differences between Linux and Windows that will always set them apart. This is not, in the least, to say one is better than the other. It’s just to say that they are fundamentally different. Many people, looking from the view of one operating system or the other, don’t quite get the differences between these two powerhouses. So I decided it might serve the public well to list 10 of the primary differences between Linux and Windows.

It seems as if Netbooks are the newest craze. I may even sell more of these Linux-loaded bad boys, then I do regular laptops. Thats fine and dandy. They also do what they are meant to do, quite well. They also make me money because they come with no optical drive, which makes me responsible for setting them all up if I need to install something. Fine. The bad? Most of the people I have seen buy these are business people, who want something small to carry around. These people know nothing about Linux. These netbooks are the introduction to Linux that these users get, and in my opinion its a horrible first look, at what Linux truly is.

Dell this morning gave its Vostro line a refresh made for regions where cost is a concern but still offering features that are rare almost anywhere. Dell vows a more aggressive update still for its Vostro desktops. The A100 is the PC creator's first Atom-based desktop and is targeted at the ASUS Eee Box and other systems for developing areas where cost is the most important factor. In addition to the low-cost, low-power processor, the mini-tower also comes with Ubuntu Linux as its only operating system choice; the system is Dell's first ultra-budget desktop to ship with the open-source as its exclusive platform.

[Probably won't come to the USA, but still good news that it's a Linux-only machine. Windows not available! -- Sander]

Dynamically linked shared libraries are an important aspect of GNU/Linux®. They allow executables to dynamically access external functionality at run time and thereby reduce their overall memory footprint (by bringing functionality in when it's needed). This article investigates the process of creating and using dynamic libraries, provides details on the various tools for exploring them, and explores how these libraries work under the hood.

There's little question that plenty of people are annoyed at how difficult it is to rip movies from legally purchased DVDs into formats readable by handheld devices or media players. The lack of consistency in document formats is an ongoing headache for anyone who receives files that are only readable with certain software. Information rights management has become enough of a frustration that a group has formed specifically to deal with the problem head on. GeekPAC is a political action committee made up of volunteers who are taking their complaints straight to Capitol Hill.

Speakers of Hindi and Tagalog will soon benefit from the work of a project called Decathlon which is translating multimedia software into these languages. Other languages from the Indian and Far Eastern subcontinent, such as Bengali, Nepali, Pashto, Burmese and Tetum, may also benefit from this venture. Organised by African localisation organisation Translate.org.za and funded by a grant from the Open Society Institute (OSI), the Decathlon project is focusing its translation energies on the VLC multimedia program.

For enterprise system administrators looking for interoperability with Microsoft Exchange, but not the high costs associated with it, PostPath email and collaboration server could be a smart business investment. Boasting interoperability with Exchange environments for a third of the cost, thanks to its use of the Postfix mail server and many other open source components, PostPath provides drop-in capability and compatibility with Exchange environments without the need for making changes to Outlook on the client side.

If your desktop hardware includes a graphics processing unit (GPU), you can do some cool image processing with the CVL suite of tools, which includes in image viewer, an image tone mapper, and a command-line tool for non-interactive image processing.

News wrap: Jerry Seinfeld's Vista gig is still causing mirth in the OSS world, while Infoworld's editors say OSS software is so good that one day all software will be made this way. And if you're a fan of Translate.org.za, hook up with them on Facebook.

I recently ordered a brand new PowerEdge T105 server from Dell because my current home server, a HP ProLiant G3, is much too power hungry for my liking. The new server came with an 80 GB hard disk. I partitioned it with LVM, installed Debian Lenny and moved over the bulk of my things from the old server to the new server. Only one thing remained: my media collection, which is stored on a 500 GB RAID1 array on the old server. That RAID1 array is also partitioned using LVM in a single 500 GB volume group. I wanted to move the OS volumes from the 80 GB volume group to the 500 GB volume group. That way I could take out the 80 GB disk and save some power. Problem: There is no obvious way to move a logical volume from one volume group to another. Cue SytemRescueCD.

A shift from multi-core power-gobbling monsters toward whisper-quiet systems with single-digit power consumption is rippling through the desktop market. This trend plays right into the hands of a Paris-based company called Linutop, which offers a miniature Linux-based desktop system. The latest version of the machine appeals to customers who are in the market for a machine with green credentials and low maintenance costs. After testing one myself, I found the tiny desktop has a lot going for it.