The public perception of open source software is changing fast, said Mark Shuttleworth, who leads distribution of the Ubuntu operating system (OS).
I went to the OpenMoko talk on Wednesday and it was very well attended with lots of interesting questions from the audience. Ole Tange gave a humourous and informative presentation and then dismantled one of his two Neo 1973 phones so anyone who was interested could get a first hand look at the hardware. Meanwhile, others were gathered around one audience member who (in a nice display of one-upmanship) had a working prototype of the Neo Freerunner which has not even gone into production yet.
The organisers of the meeting were handing out copies of the UKUUG press release about their seeking of legal advice on BSI's suspicious last minute U-Turn on OOXML.
There will be a free UKUUG evening talk on 2008-04-09 in London by Ole Tange. He will be looking at OpenMoko which is described in the abstract:
OpenMoko is the GNU/Linux distribution that runs on the free phone Neo Freerunner from FIC. It is completely Free Software. Being able to completely control a cell phone gives new posibillities that people only dreamed of.
I only just found out that CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System developed by Easy Software Products and used by most Linux distributions, is now owned by Apple Inc (but it uses the standard Internet Printing Protocol and is licenced under the GPL).
Less Watts is a website about saving power on Intel based Linux systems.
Groklaw has a roundup of The Media on SCO Bankruptcy. Choice quotes include "SCO files Chapter 11 bankruptcy - Seeks court protection from its own lawsuits" and "SCO files for Chapter 11, threatens business as usual."
The Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development.
Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group have merged to form the Linux Foundation.
A European Commission Report has concluded that in "almost all" cases long-term costs could be reduced by switching from proprietary software produced by firms such as Microsoft.
I just read a glowing review of The Debian System Concepts and Techniques by Martin F. Krafft.
The Open Invention Network has acquired some new patents to help protect Linux.
The Free Software Foundation recommends avoiding Intel chips in favour of AMD, who have been much more helpful in terms of support for the ability to run a Free BIOS.
It seems that the devfs/udev confusion I mentioned on this page nearly two years ago has resolved itself with devfs falling by the wayside. See this udev-FAQ for example.
There is a good Wikipedia article about Linux Adoption.
Also check out Rick Moen's influential 1999 Fear of Forking essay.
Togaware have produced some useful looking free documentation for users of GNU/Linux in general and Debian in particular. It is called the Debian GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide.
Pamela Jones explains what the Linux Mark Institute is for.
LUGRadio Live 2005 on 2005-06-25 in Wolverhampton looks pretty cool.
The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 3.1 codenamed "sarge" after nearly three years of constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of eleven processor architectures, includes KDE, GNOME and GNUstep desktop environments, features cryptographic software, is compatible with the FHS v2.3, and supports software developed for the LSB.
Martin "MC" Brown explains why he resigned from LinuxWorld magazine.
In fact, in news I missed it seems that on 2005-05-14 the entire editorial staff of LinuxWorld magazine announced that they were leaving! This was reported on Groklaw, and the announcement was accompanied by the following statement:
We regret that Sys-Con Media has been unable to apply a standard of journalistic ethics that we can comfortably operate under. We feel that recent articles published with the consent of Sys-Con Media fail to meet minimum generally accepted journalistic codes, and because the management of Sys-Con Media has failed to acknowledge that the articles are by all informed judgment ethically unsupportable, we have decided we must find other avenues for our work.
Jeremy has posted an excellent feature called The Linux Kernel Archives at KernelTrap.
Stuart Cohen has a Viewpoint piece in the current Business Week, in which he says that we should thank SCO for greatly accelerating Linux use in the enterprise. Groklaw elaborates.
The Debian Women Project was founded in May 2004.
There is an excellent "Switch to Linux" Flash animation at uberGeek.
I was surprised by the number of different Debian Installers.
It looks like Munich is going ahead with plans to switch from Windows to Linux, despite the spectre of patent issues.
I have just got back from Leeds where I attended Linux 2004 - if I have time I will write up a report.
IBM pledges no patent attacks against Linux.
Tim Lambert has created an excellent run-down of some of the Microsoft funded Think Tanks that have been attaching the Open Source movement.
It turns out that Ken Brown's "Samizdat" is so dire that even Microsoft are distancing themselves from it. Lee Gomes wrote a report, "Recent attacks on Linux come from dubious sources", for the Wall Street Journal which concluded:
With growing numbers of businesses turning to Linux, its pros and cons are fair game for debate. But cynically manufacturing confusion isn't debating. Even Microsoft didn't like the way this report turned out, though it indirectly helped subsidize it. A company spokesman called the study, "an unhelpful distraction from what matters most - providing the best technology for our customers".
With today's multi-GHz CPU clock speeds, why does it still take what often seems like an eternity for your computer to boot up? In the case of the venerable Intel x86 architecture, much of the blame can be attributed to the pre-historic BIOS. Check out LinuxBIOS for a promising alternative.
I have learned that the Ken Brown "book" is to be titled "Samizdat". It has been suggested that it may be the first book ever to have been disowned before publication by every source who was interviewed for it. For more critical analysis of the book check out this page at sourcefrog.
Grokline, the UNIX Ownership History Project, has just been launched.
Ken Brown, President of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, is apparently writing a book about Unix, and has recently made a claim that Linus Torvalds probably stole from MINIX to write Linux. Strange because Ken interviewed Andy Tanenbaum, author of MINIX, and Andy does not think that Linus stole anything from MINIX. In fact, it seems that Ken is not at all interested in the truth but is instead just stirring up FUD about Linux on behalf of the mysterious financial backers of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. If you want to know more then I suggest you read this article by Andy Tanenbaum himself.
I have just signed up for a free dialup account at uklinux.net which seems pretty cool.
Apparently SCO's Polish office has shut down, and the former head has set up a business helping people migrate from SCO to Linux - see this Groklaw article for comment.
A student was telling me about confusion in the Linux kernel development world about how the user-space device tree should be maintained. I was not familiar with the issue but I have done some surfing and now know a bit more about it. If you are interested try Googling for linux+devfs+udev and see what you come up with.
The UKUUG 2004 Linux Technical Conference has been postponed by one week because of clashes with other events affecting speaker/exhibitor availability. The event will now start on 2004-08-05.
It seems like SCO has dropped it's absurd claim that the GPL is unconstitutional.
Open Source Risk Management have certified the Linux Kernel to be free of copyright infringement and are putting their money where their mouth is by offering insurance against the potential cost of defending against baseless legal attacks. Note that there is much debate in the Open Source community as to whether this sort of insurance is good or bad.
Groklaw has an article which sheds some light on the murky history of the entity known as SCO.
Since I already have sections of my website for the other two operating systems I use (Mac OS X and Solaris), I decided that it was about time to create a Linux section. I will try to add some content soon, but for now I have just teased out the following notes from my existing Internet Notes page.
Fyodor terminates SCO rights to use Nmap.
Open Source Development Labs today released a new Position Paper on the SCO lawsuit with Novel.
I have obviously heard a lot about Bruce Perens, creator of the Open Source Definition, but today is the first time I have actually looked at his own Home Page.
Over at Groklaw you can read Linus Torvalds' first analysis of the files which SCO are claiming to own. It looks like the claim is trivial to disprove.
Pamela Jones is a paralegal who maintains a weblog called Groklaw that is probably the premier source of information on the SCO case. Groklaw is powered by Geeklog and licensed under a Creative Commons license.
In the latest twist to the SCO/Linux battle, SCO has asked a federal judge to declare the GPL unconstitutional. Read the story here.
Arie Rubenstein has parodied the SCO/Linux battle as an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard. For the full background to the case I would suggest referring to the OSI Position Paper.
What are SCO playing at? They have filed a lawsuit against IBM, but rather than wait for the result of this case, they are attempting to extort money from Linux users. Take a look at this Open Letter to Darl McBride by Eric Raymond and do what you can to ensure that the greed-heads at SCO get their just deserts!
www.zenatode.org.uk Ian Gregory 2010