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Primary school pupils in 16 Mexican states will soon be using Linux-based IBM desktop PCs. The 1,000 ThinkCentre desktop PCs were recently donated to the schools by Omnilife, a Mexican retail business. IBM Global Services is providing support services.

In this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter we'll tell you about version 2.0.51 of Portage, which is currently in testing. You'll also find security and community coverage as well as a tip on using 'make' for backups. Enjoy!

As further proof that open source technologies are bleeding into the mainstream, start-up Active Endpoints has hatched a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) initiative and submitted core technology under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Shelton, Conn.-based Active Endpoints Monday announced the formation of ActiveBPEL, LLC, an open source subsidiary whose goal is to stimulate interest in, and educate the industry about, BPEL.

Lorenzo de Francesco is an IBM senior project manager within the EMEA Region. He is a multi-channel transformation solution leader. In this role he has responsibility for providing project management integration services and e-business solutions on major bank accounts. In a recent interview with IT-Director.com, Lorenzo de Francesco described the successful implementation of a Linux based solution for the domestic Italian branches of Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM).

Linux could soon be in more devices following the release of the first specification and reference implementation from the CE Linux Forum (Celf), a consortium of manufacturers which aims to optimise the operating system for information appliances and other devices.

IBM is expected to announce a new generation of Unix servers on Tuesday, systems it believes powerful enough to let Big Blue topple rivals Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.

Transcript of an interview with Richard Stallman that took place at the School of Informatics, Edinburgh University, on 27th May 2004. Full audio Interview (ca. 8 MB - 22 min.) available in ogg- vorbis audio format...

The French Ministry of Equipment is to migrate 1,500 ageing Windows NT servers to a specially developed version of MandrakeSoft's Mandrake Linux Corporate Server, amid growing evidence that large European organisations are treating open-source software as a serious alternative to proprietary offerings.

Ben Goodger has updated the Mozilla Firefox Roadmap with the latest information about the path to 1.0. Development will remain on the AVIARY_1_0_20040515_BRANCH (itself cut from the Mozilla 1.7 branch) until 1.0, with three releases candidates planned. The launch of Mozilla Firefox 1.0 for Windows and Linux is currently scheduled for Tuesday 14th September. The Mac OS X version will be released a little later, following additional work to make Firefox fit in the Aqua look and feel. Further details about the updated Roadmap, including information on nominating blocker bugs, have been posted to the Firefox General forum.

Researchers at three French government funded research organisations have introduced a new licence which is compatible with the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GPL). Plenty of free software licences exist already, but they are mostly written in English, from the point of view of the US legal system, which can pose a problem in countries where the legal system is based on different assumptions.

In a bid to boost the spread of open source software in France, a group researchers have announced a new software license they claim is compatible with the Free Software Foundation's GNU general public license (GPL). The authors, whose work has been funded by three government bodies, say the license is necessary because of idiosyncrasies in French law. These that mean consumer product manufacturers can't absolve themselves of total responsibility for their product, meaning open source writers often can't release code without exposing themselves to financial risk.

The latest issue of the Mozilla Links Newsletter features an interview with MozillaZine admin Jason Kersey. Kerz discusses the history of the site, describes some of the technology that holds it together and talks about future plans.

"My absolute favorite (extension) is AdBlock," wrote Alec Berry in an e-mail. "It gives you very fine-grained control of images, iframes, scripts and embedded content (like) Java and Flash. You can use wildcards to block just the parts of pages you don't want. I have been using it for months now, Mozilla and Firefox, Mac and PC. Works great!"

Microsoft has commissioned studies left and right to counter Linux's perceived cost advantages. These studies have been universally decried among Linux enthusiasts, and every flaw has been pointed out in one way or another. Rather than completely debunking the flaws, most of the critics simply point out that there is still a lot of work to do on the Linux front.

SAP AG and development partner MySQL AB are readying an upgrade to SAP's open-source database that will add support for 64-bit computing, along with new monitoring and management features. SAP inked a deal with open-source database vendor MySQL in May 2003 to take over much of the development, support and marketing of the SAP DB software, which MySQL renamed MaxDB.

Red Hat remains the leading Linux distribution in use on the Internet, experiencing slight market share erosion in the first six months of 2004, but still showing a healthy net gain of sites under its new licensing structure. Debian and SuSE show market share gains among Linux distributions detected by our Hosting Provider Switching Analysis, while Gentoo has the fastest percentage growth rate.

Scali, whose software helps connect clusters of low-end machines running Linux into a single supercomputer, raised $7.5 million in funding to boost U.S. expansion and product development, the Norwegian company reported Monday. Atlas Venture, a new investor, led the round, in which earlier investor Four Seasons Venture participated.

According to research and analysis firm Netcraft's (netcraft.com) hosting provider switching analysis, Red Hat is the leading Linux distribution on the Internet, holding a 49.8 percent share of the market. Over the last six months, Red Hat has lost 1 percent market share but still had a six-month growth rate of 10.1 percent. Red Hat runs on 1,465,310 hostnames, according to Netcraft.

Open Country officially launched its system management solution for Linux today. The company says the product is designed to help small departments with as few as five Linux systems, and enterprises with up to 5,000 Linux installations, reduce the costs, time, and complexity of managing Linux IT operations.