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The history of Unix and its various children and grandchildren has been in the news recently as a result of a book from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. Since I was involved in part of this history, I feel I have an obligation to set the record straight and correct some extremely serious errors.

Andrew Tannenbaum, author of the Minix operating system, talks about Ken Brown, the president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, and the history of Unix-like operating systems.

The Apache Software Foundation, the leading open source community partner for commercial companies, has announced that BEA's "Project Beehive" is now

A Microsoft official has claimed that governments supporting open-source software are not helping build a viable software ecosystem in their communities.

Today marks the official launch of a new open source project. Utkarsh is an operating system based on Linux and localized in the Gujarati language, spoken by more than 5.5 million in India's Gujarat state and worldwide. Utkarsh (which means progress or rising high) version 0.1 is now in beta testing, and the team is bubbling with ideas for future growth. Recently Mayank Sharma spoke with the young Gujarati entrepreneur behind the project, Nirav Mehta.

Issue Number : 21 Publication Date : 2004-05-26 Table of Contents 1. New document proposals 2. Updated HOWTOs, FAQs and Guides 3. News in The LDP world 4. Discussions on The LDP lists 5. HOWTO contribute to The LDP

Linux founder Linus Torvalds has proposed changes to the Linux kernel development process designed to make it easier for kernel developers to respond to questions of source code ownership, like those raised by The SCO Group Inc. in its multi-billion dollar lawsuit with IBM Corp.

When a start-up firm called OSRM (Open Source Risk Management) announced two months ago that it planned to offer standard product liability insurance to Linux users and developers, many in the Linux community wondered why. For some, such coverage appeared to be an unwarranted admission that there was something wrong with Linux. Sure, vendor specific indemnification of users was appearing, but IBM itself, the first target for SCO's absurd legal claims denied the need. As recently as the last LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, IBM's Jim Stallings, general manager for Linux at Big Blue, was quoted as saying, "The claims that have been alleged [by SCO] against IBM [have] no basis, so indemnification is not needed." NewsForge recently interviewed OSRM's founder and CEO, Daniel Egger, to gain his perspective on the issue.

A new open source evaluation model will be published this summer that will finally shed some long-overdue harsh light on a key business and development question

If working from home is hard work, then working from home on free software sounds insane. Yet there are a few people who have achieved

San Francisco-based Macromedia today announces the immediate availability of Macromedia Flash Player 7 for Linux - a new version of Macromedia Flash Player

Debisys, a prepaid phone transaction service processor, thought it would be a Windows shop forever. Debisys runs Windows 2000 servers, a SQL Server database, and Windows desktops. "There was a perception that we'd always buy Microsoft software," says MIS Manager Mike Figeuroa. But that is all about to change. "We are doing a complete migration to open source."

Sun President Jonathan Schwartz explains in detail why Red Hat Linux is proprietary, but others disagree and wonder what Sun is accomplishing with its confusing open source views.

NEXT time you chat to a colleague about open source, take a moment to check you are both talking about the same thing: there's a good chance you are not.

Imagine for a moment that Windows XP came with Office XP Professional and Visual Studio .NET preinstalled with it. Imagine it was significantly more secure and easier to use. Imagine that it cost only $50 for all of that software. Sun's new Java Desktop System Release 2 is like the bizarro world equivalent of that kind of Microsoft software package. It's in the same league, except it doesn't use Microsoft technologies. If only it actually worked.

This week's little computer-based irritations have reached the overload state for me. I need to vent a little to folks who'll understand the frustrations.

By Cynthia Peterson. Confidence in Linux as a platform to run mission- critical applications is expected to rise in the enterprise market.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system, on Monday announced the launch of the Linux Developer's Certificate of Origin (DCO), a new system

Scripting in the GNU environment and parsing HTML in bash.

Linus Torvalds trusts that when any of the 25 or so Linux kernel subsystem maintainers collaborating on the operating system send him code, it hasn't been stolen from anyone. Starting today, the approval process will be formalized to document a "chain of trust" to deter intellectual property claims like those leveled by SCO, according to a proposal from Torvalds and the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL).