FreeSoftNews

The GPL is the most widely used open source license on Earth, yet it has never been tested in a U.S. courtroom.

That’s not to say that alleged GPL license violations aren’t already hitting the country’s judicial system. In fact, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), a pro bono legal firm assisting open source projects, has filed three different actions concerning the GPL this year. Two of those lawsuits came just last week.

The ultimate impact of these actions could well serve to either spurn or spawn even greater open source adoption, industry observers say.

All three suits involve violations with the codebase for BusyBox, a collection of UNIX utilities that have been optimized for size and are most commonly used in embedded environments.

The GPL is a reciprocal license and requires that users make the source code available to end users. In a pair of suits filed Nov. 19 in New York, the SFLC alleged that two companies, Xterasys and High-Gain Antennas, illegally distributed BusyBox without the source code.

In October, the SFLC settled an earlier lawsuit that had made similar claims against Monsoon Multimedia.

Read more at InternetNews

Try to describe Hotwire, and you’ll eventually wind up saying something that sounds like an oxymoron, like “command-line GUI,” “graphical shell” or “GUI xterm.” Well, that’s pretty much what Hotwire is: something halfway between a text-based shell and a modern graphical user interface.

In part, the confusion stems from the fuzzy definition the typical desktop user has of the Unix shell. For the most part, it is transparent to us. We probably know that some commands (like ls and chown) are separate binaries, while others (like cd and umask) are actually internal functions provided by the shell. But unless we do a lot of scripting, it can be hard to remember which is which; we type whichever we need at the prompt and get back to business.

Read more at Linux.com

At 36 years old, William Hurley has been involved in IT for more than half his life, starting after a car accident that left him badly injured. While recovering, he began hacking X-objects for MacroMind and later Macromedia Director in the open-source multimedia community, then went to work at Apple Inc. and IBM, where he was a master inventor and senior manager of targeted Internet applications. Later, he joined a string of start-ups, including Qlusters Inc., where he was chief technology officer; Symbiot Inc., where he was a co-founder and CTO; and HireStorm Inc., where he was the founder and CTO. He has combined his love for open source with his longtime work in IT systems management, which he has pursued at BMC since joining the company in February.

Read more at LinuxLookup

As we begin to slip into the festive season and things begin winding up for the year, we thought it would be an ideal opportunity to check out some of the best Linux games available.

We are opening nominations for the games to be entered into a poll for the best Linux games available.

The requirements for games to be included are:

- they must run on Linux, without Wine
- they must be completely free
- they must be a complete game and not an add-on to a commercial game
- installation must be relatively easy

To get the ball rolling, we had a look around and listed some of the top games available at the moment.

Read more at Tectonic

The first alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04 was scheduled to be released today, but the official release has been pushed back until tomorrow. However, a preliminary CD image of this first alpha release for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has surfaced today on the Internet. While there is still seven more Ubuntu 8.04 test releases planned before the final release of Hardy Heron in April, we have already started exploring this first Hardy Heron LiveCD.

Read more at Phoronix 

xTuple, a startup maker of open source ERP software, announced Wednesday that it has certified its OpenMFG and PostBooks software products for use on Apple’s new Mac OS X Leopard operating system. The products are advanced ERP software solutions built with open source components. OpenMFG is available under a hybrid license whereby customers have full access to the source code, and any enhancements made to the product flow back to xTuple for review, quality testing and possible incorporation into the baseline product.

Read more at LinuxInsider

If you’re looking for an alternative to Microsoft for running your small business, Novell, Inc, may have the answer you seek. Last month, the company introduced the Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition, a Linux-based program that includes desktop and server operating systems, management tools, an office productivity suite, collaboration software and numerous applications.

“The suite was specifically tailored to meet the needs of businesses and other organizations of up 200 employees,” said Novell spokesperson Kevan Barney. “These small organizations have similar needs to big organizations, but don’t have the same resources to acquire the software and administer it.”

Read more at Detamation

I am a long time Linux user (almost 10 years), but I do not consider myself an expert by any means. I guess I would consider myself a power user. I started with a floppy disk install of Slackware. From there I moved to RedHat, Mandrake, Vector, and SUSE. I used SUSE’s 9.2 through 10.1 versions. After that, I started searching for an alternative. I tried Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Mepis, Freespire, and finally settled on PCLinuxOS. I really love PCLinuxOS and have enjoyed it for about a year and six months. It is not coming off of my desktop machine for sure. However, I have just acquired a very nice ThinkPad T61, with the new Intel GMA X3100. The fact that Intel released open source drivers for this graphics card made me chose it over the Nvidia options, and of course the fact that it consumes less power and gives longer battery life was also a consideration. However, being that this chipset is so new, I wasn’t too sure that my favorite distro was ready to support it with its usual polish. So, this was the perfect opportunity to do some distro hopping and see how the rest of the Linux distros are doing, especially in regards to supporting my hardware.

Read more …

A recent crack-down on piracy in Kenya has driven a number of internet cafes to open source.

The Business Daily in Nairobi reported that the raids on the internet cafes came after the expiry of the October 30 deadline set by the Kenya Copyright Board.

Interestingly, the estimated value of the pirate software found on confiscated machines was just short of the value of the machines themselves.

Business Daily reported that 50 computers containing unlicensed versions of Microsoft Windows Office 2003 were confiscated in the raids. The computers were valued at 1.5 million Kenyan shillings (R162 000) while the cost of Windows and Office were estimated at 1.4 million Kenyan shillings (R151 000).

Read more at Tectonic

The familiar CRT monitors or backlit LCD screens on our desks continuously consume power in order to hold an image. Electronic paper (e-paper) is different: power is only needed to change the image. Just like paper, e-paper is able to hold the image permanently without consuming any power. Displays using CRT, backlit LCD, plasma and OLED technologies are all emissive, meaning that they have to produce the photons that reach the eye. This implies that they have to compete in brightness with ambient lighting, which can result in eye strain. E-paper is the opposite: it is reflective, which makes it possible to read the display using ambient light even in the brightness of a hot sunny day.

Read more at LinuxWorld 

This article covers two beneficial Linux tools,
grep and sed. If searching for or handling text, grep and sed can
increase your efficiency with Linux bash scripting and configuration
files. We'll learn how to use these commands and get some helpful tips,
too.

read more

Your network is
growing in size and complexity. It's taking on a life of its own,
spreading and growing and absorbing everything in its path. You're
tearing your hair out trying to keep track, and your users have somehow
discovered your secret phone number and are pestering you with endless
questions and demands — where do I find this; I don't want to keep track of a dozen different passwords; nothing works like it should.

read more

I have heard a number of people tell me that as much as they love the speed of development and the community, sometimes Ubuntu just gets ahead of itself. And I suppose in a larger sense, this is what makes Linux such a fantastic platform in the first place. If you dislike GNOME, you can use KDE, or instead, pick a slimmer desktop manager like Fluxbox. Wireless woes? Try another distro, use Wicd, instead of network-manager or opt for a wireless switch. The point is that there is always more than one way to overcome a challenge in the Linux world. Unfortunately with Windows, if Vista is terrible, you have XP or the option to move to OS X with a Mac. Linux provides you with choices, despite their clunkiness from time to time.

Read more at OSWeekly

Many of us wonder, why is there so much excitement over Skype when, at its core, Ekiga is a more robust application with even more maturity behind it? The answer to that is rather simple - provide a compelling reason to use something besides Skype. Honestly, I believe Ekiga blows Skype out of the water with mature features (video calls) and it’s open source heritage, which means that nothing ‘weird’ is going on without you knowing about it. Yet many Linux users by the truckload will still migrate over to Skype because they ‘know’ about this application from other platforms.

Getting the Word Out About Ekiga. If Skype is ever to be toppled, we must embrace Ekiga on other platforms more regularly. Unfortunately, word of mouth outside of Linux has been fairly weak. In the past, people have pointed to Ekiga as saying that unlike Skype, it has challenges with bypassing firewalls. Be this as it may, the fact remains that this is too geeky for most people and hence why Skype sees broader usage.

Read more at MadPenguin

Switching operating systems is not for the faint of heart. You’re essentially forcing yourself to do some serious remapping of your ingrained work habits, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. With both Vista and Leopard off to somewhat bumpy starts, Linux is starting to look better everyday, but what about all those software tools you’re used to from Windows and Mac OS X?There’s a number of resources out there that will help you find equivalent replacements for most of your favorite software, but one of the better ones we’ve run across is Linux App Finder. Linux App Finder is a straightforward two column list, on the left you have your popular Windows and Mac software, and on the right a list of Linux equivalents. You can also search for your favorite Win/Mac programs to find a Linux replacement.

Read more at wired

With Vista's first service pack due for wide release early next year, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is intent on addressing the many things which need to be fixed in its still-young operating system. The question is, are they going to fix the right things? I think not, since the problems this time 'round aren't bugs so much as performance. Read on for my list of five must-have Vista corrections.

# 1) Good Performance From SP1.

read more

The OpenOffice.org Community announces the opening of the OpenOffice.org
Community Forum http://user.services.openoffice.org. This new Forum goes
beyond being simply a knowledge base of questions and answers and is
rather a place for OpenOffice.org users to interact freely with each
other.

The Forum has been established by a team of enthusiasts who bring a wealth
of expertise gained in providing OpenOffice.org forum-based support.
Initially launched in English, the new platform has the
capability to support multiple languages in future. Your
native-language community can tell you what support is available in your
language http://projects.openoffice.org/native-lang.html

This free resource powerfully complements the other user services and
support OpenOffice.org offers to individuals, companies, and governments,
including those listed on the Support Page, http://support.openoffice.org.

The Community Forum organizers would like to express their gratitude to
all those who’ve made this possible, including:

* The OpenOffice.org Documentation Project
http://documentation.openoffice.org/
* The Sun community support group
* The Sun network support staff in Hamburg, Germany
* All their colleagues who have spent an incredible amount
of their personal time in setting up this new site

The Forum is available now for all to use and is ready for your
participation. Whether you have questions to ask or answers to provide,
you are very welcome.

The OpenOffice.org Community

*** Glom

With Glom you can design table definitions and the relationships between
them, plus arrange the fields on the screen. You can edit and search the
data in those tables, and specify field values in terms of other fields.
It’s as easy as it should be.

More information and screenshots are at
http://www.glom.org

*** Glom 1.6.5:

Changes since 1.6.0:

* Make sure that the self-hosted postgres server really shuts down.
(Murray Cumming)
(Bug #420962, Craig Keogh, Denis Leroy, Perriman)
* Field Definition: Changing of field types was broken. Now it works again.
(Murray Cumming)
* Avoid a SQL error when using numeric calculated fields in non-English
locales.
(Murray Cumming)
Bug #499459 (Perriman)
* Prevent crash when all fields have been deleted from a table, also when
then trying to reopen the file. (Murray Cumming)
* Find: prevent duplicate error dialog when no find criteria was entered.
(Armin Burgeier)
* Initial support for the Maemo platform,
with client-only non-developer features.
(Armin Burgmeier, Johannes Schmid)

http://www.glom.org

–
Murray Cumming
murrayc@murrayc.com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com

GNOME 2.20.2 Stable Release

This is the second update to GNOME 2.20.0. The update fixes all known
and unknown bugs and crashers.

The next and last stable release for 2.20 branch will be 2.20.3. The
tarballs for that release need to be delivered to our lovely window
before January 7 2008 23:59 UTC.

Please test this as much as you can and file bugs in
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/ if you want them fixed in the next stable
release.

To compile GNOME 2.20.2, you can use GARNOME
(http://www.gnome.org/projects/garnome/, which supports users and has
additional/different modules available), or the jhbuild
(http://www.gnome.org/~jamesh/jhbuild.html) modulesets (which use the
exact tarball versions from the official release) available at:
http://download.gnome.org/teams/releng/2.20.2/

The release notes that describe the changes between 2.20.1 and 2.20.2
are available. Go read them to learn all the goodness of this release:

platform - http://download.gnome.org/platform/2.20/2.20.2/NEWS
desktop - http://download.gnome.org/desktop/2.20/2.20.2/NEWS
admin - http://download.gnome.org/admin/2.20/2.20.2/NEWS
bindings - http://download.gnome.org/bindings/2.20/2.20.2/NEWS
devtools - http://download.gnome.org/devtools/2.20/2.20.2/NEWS

The GNOME 2.20.2 release is available here:

platform sources - http://download.gnome.org/platform/2.20/2.20.2/
desktop sources - http://download.gnome.org/desktop/2.20/2.20.2/
admin sources - http://download.gnome.org/admin/2.20/2.20.2/
bindings sources - http://download.gnome.org/bindings/2.20/2.20.2/
devtools sources - http://download.gnome.org/devtools/2.20/2.20.2/

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
————————–

This release is a highly stable. Crashers should not be reported as
these only occur during the planned crash time.

To read the GNOME 2.20 release notes, wait no longer and click on:
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.20/
For more information about 2.21, lookie here:
http://www.gnome.org/start/unstable/
or take a look at the abbreviated schedule reminder page at
http://live.gnome.org/Schedule

We hope you’ll love it,

The GNOME Release Team

Hello,

AsiaBSDCon 2008 will be held in March 27-30, 2008, in Tokyo. We are
now requesting proposals for papers, presentations, and tutorials.
The submission deadline has been extended to December 11, 2007.

Due to some server problems submission interface in the official web
site is not ready yet, so please submit your proposal directly to
secretary@asiabsdcon.org via email (submission via web site will be
available this weekend).

Also, if you are interested in attending the conference, please
subscribe the announce mailing list. See
http://lists.asiabsdcon.org/mailman/listinfo/announce for details.
You can find the last time conference program, proceedings, and so on
at http://2007.asiabsdcon.org/.

Important dates:

11 December 2007 (extended)
Extended abstracts for papers and presentations acceptance ends.

24 December 2007
Authors and presenters notified by the program committee.

31 January 2008
Final papers and presentations due.

27-30 March 2008
Day of the conference

–
| Hiroki SATO