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Every Open Source developer uses or has used GNU make at some point or another. Everyone who has ever compiled a piece of Open Source software has used GNU's make. So what exactly is GNU make and how does it work? Leave that to O'Reilly. The 3rd Edition of 'Managing Projects with GNU Make' tells you all about using GNU make and more. LinuxForumsDOTorg has brought you a review detailing the content and quality of said O'Reilly publication. Read it here before you buy!

The CentOS Development Team has released CentOS 4.0 (Beta) for three architectures (i386, x86_64, and ia64).

Blake Ross has written two weblog postings on Mozilla Firefox. One clarifies the developer recruitment policy and the other talks about how the project doesn't take itself too seriously.

Czech Post is the second largest employer in the Czech Republic with nearly 3,400 post offices and 40,000 employees. The company delivers nearly a billion letters and receives more than 100 million postal orders each year. Czech Post considered upgrading its existing hardware, but that would have required significant updates to its APOST software and increased training costs. As a foundation for a new and centralized system, Czech Post selected SUSE LINUX technology.

The Public Patent Foundation and others have serious questions about Sun's new open-source patent policies.

Growing support for Linux has been the single biggest technology change in financial organisations over the past twelve months, say researchers

From the Lorma College in the Philippines comes another server release. This time it is a dedicated Samba fileserver based on Slackware 10. This is a departure from their desktop releases in that the have decided to use Slackware instead of Fedora.

Open source database software maker MySQL warned its users to tighten security Thursday, after news broke about a new Internet worm that targets the popular relational database, according to a company executive. The company is looking at making bigger changes to harden its product against future attacks, the executive said.

Networking software giant Novell Inc wants to do two things this year – position itself as the preferred Linux supplier, and establish a proper “ecosystem” for its partners, be they independent software and hardware vendors (ISVs and IHVs) or resellers.

There was a partnership made this week that is probably scaring the pants off of Bill Gates and the people behind Internet Explorer - Google is shacking up with Mozilla to form Googzilla! Well, not exactly, but close enough. Just as Mozilla makes Internet news of securing almost 6% of the web browser market with FireFox - which has been downloaded an estimated 19 million times, Google starts offering positions, free lunch, and in-house dental benefits to the top Mozilla developers Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher.

Evans Data Corp.'s Winter 2005 Database Development Survey looked at the database preferences of some 406 developers in mostly medium to large enterprises. Of those surveyed, 23 percent of developers picked Firebird for use in "edge" databases—in other words, those that are embedded in systems or in devices, such as a point-of-sale system in a retail outlet or a network device. Runners-up included Microsoft Corp.'s Access, at 21 percent, and Microsoft's SQL Server, at 13 percent. RFID tagging will likely fuel interest in Firebird, said Joe McKendrick. McKendrick is an analyst for Evans.

Two software vendors announced a new partnership that pairs an embedded Linux distribution with a Java solution for next-generation mobile phones.

Commentary: There are a lot of good reasons to like the GPL: the GNU Public License. For one thing, it's a David and Goliath kind of thing. It's the little guy standing up to the corporate behemoths that run rough-shod over our daily lives by virtue of their influence, legal and otherwise, on government. For another, it's virtuous. It's a Medicare Bill which actually provides more and better health care for the elderly rather than simply pouring public funds directly into the greedy, gaping gaws of the pharmaceutical industry. It's also territorial. It's "Don't Tread on Me" applied to software. The GPL provides a legal framework for an ever improving, ever free, software infrastructure. In addition, it's what Linus chose for Linux in order that those who follow can have access to his creation. But what I love about the GPL is the same thing that Microsoft and other corporate predators hate about it: it works.

The schedule for the upcoming 7th German Perl-Workshop is online and there are still some seats available.

Sun's move to open-source the version of its Solaris operating system that runs on Intel and AMD chips is a no-lose proposition, and it might even help Sun out a bit. But it's no game-changer. After months of signling that this shift was coming, Sun CEO Scott McNealy announced the change on Tuesday, Jan. 25. "Solaris 10 is the best operating system on the planet, bar none," said McNealy. "Now we're open-sourcing it, so that takes another barrier to innovation out"

KDE Dot News recently spoke with some prominent people from the Kontact and Kolab projects. We talked about how both projects got started and how they have evolved. Enjoy the first part of this two-part interview.

Microsoft's proposed server interoperability licence - imposed on it by the EU - will shut the door on open source software such as Samba, say critics.

Reaction to Sun Microsystems' launch of its OpenSolaris initiative is apparently related to the size of the enterprise and its attachment to the open source community. In some cases, the larger the company -- and its investment in Linux -- the more vocally opposed it is to Sun's liberation of Solaris source code and the release of more than 1,600 of Sun's patents associated with the OS.

Freevo is a media platform that brings together various applications for video recording and playback. Under its open format, the user can fully customize Freevo to suit his media viewing needs. Its main feature is its ability to schedule and record television broadcasts.

BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Home to Linus Torvalds' employer Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the base for major manufacturing and research operations of IBM and Intel, the city of Beaverton -- about 20 miles west of Portland in the so-called Silicon Forest -- is ready to harness the openness backed by prominent local players and produce new ventures focused on open technology.