09.15.09

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• ‘Only Open, Evolving Companies will Survive’—John E Kelly III, IBM

  Is the “Smarter Planet” concept something limited to IBM?

  No, it’s open. We are developing a system based on an open-source standard, not a dedicated system. It is very important to be using Linux, or open communication standards or protocols, for example. If each manufacturer uses its own dedicated components, it will be impossible to interconnect them. That’s why we all have to cooperate with open systems.

• Tom’s Definitive Linux Software Roundup: Internet Apps

  The first part in our comprehensive Linux App Roundup covers Internet Apps. In this segment, we’ll be looking at Web browsers, RSS readers, podcatchers, FTP clients, download managers, BitTorrent clients, and a slew of other file sharing solutions. There’s also a spotlight on Miro Internet TV, a piece of software that defies category. This does not include apps used to communicate with other specific people, but simply to retrieve content from the Web. The next segment will feature Communications Apps, and will include those titles.

• Parallels updates its Windows and Linux desktop virtualization application

  The renamed app runs eight times faster than the previous version and adds a number of tools from the Desktop for Mac product

• Episode 9 – “FISL10″ Has Been Released

  Highlights from FISL10 in Porto Alegre, Brazil including interviews with Chris DiBona and Michael Tiemann, using Open Source to make things out of computer junk, and President Lula da Silva speaks out on free software.

• Server

  • Is Microsoft as Free as Open Source?

    Lastly, I find that Linux/Unix is more appropriate for servers than Windows, and once you know how to manage Linux, it is hard to go back to the Windows way of doing things. However, most people do not like change, even though we say we do, so our arguments will always be tainted by our own experience.

  • Oracle renews push into embedded open source software market

    Oracle redoubled its efforts in the $2 billion embeddable database market on Monday updating two members of its open -source Berkeley DB family to include support for Windows programming environments. It’s a move Oracle believes could benefit both developers and IT shops.

    [...]

    Other new features in Berkeley DB 4.8 include refurbished APIs designed to simplify application development that reduce time and cost, and better flexibility for addressing applications scalability and on-disk storage requirements. Ease of use improvements include support for foreign keys to help guarantee referential integrity and improved failure handling for multi-threaded applications.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux Plumbers Conference schedule posted

    We’d like to remind everyone that Linux Plumbers Conference
    is next week (Sept 23-25), and share our latest news with you.

  • The Linux Foundation welcomes ARM

    To date, ARM has shipped more than 10 billion ARM processors in mobile devices, many of which run Linux. Ian Drew, EVP Marketing at ARM, said that “joining the Linux Foundation is a natural step towards advancing innovation in the Linux community for a rich, always-connected, computing experience.”

  • ARM Joins The Linux Foundation

    The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that ARM (LSE: ARM; Nasdaq: ARMH) has become a member.

    ARM designs the technology that lies at the heart of advanced digital products, from wireless, networking and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security and storage devices.

• Gaming

  • Free RPG Editor is Open Source, Runs on Linux

    RPG programmers who are looking to escape the limitations and fees associated with IBM’s flagship RPG editor, Rational Developer for i (RDi), now have another option with RPG Next Gen, a free and open source RPG editor that is based on Eclipse and runs under Linux. Created by Mihael Schmidt of Germany, the RPG Next Gen project is still fairly young, but it shows promise as a lightweight and easy-to-use source code editor.

  • Rage and other Tech5 games might be Linux-friendly

    id’s idTech game engine has a long history of running well on Linux-based machines. Games such as Quake were one of the very few really big PC titles that found themselves installed on all the many flavors of Linux out there.

  • Linux users show their love for indie game

    As you can see Linux is way up there, which is quite a surprise to say the least. For every 232 Linux visitors I get on my website, one of them buys my game. If you compare that to windows users, I need 526 of them to get a sale. For Mac OS X it’s 256. So who would have thought that Linux users are the most eager to buy an indie game? Certainly not me.

• Desktop Environments

  • KDE 4.3 review

    After 18 more months, 4.3 is the release that 4.0 should have been, and it’s now stable enough for critical use. KDE is also now stuffed full of eye candy.

  • Oxygen is dead, long live Oxygen

    The shadow/glow generation code is being enhanced to offer more options and better glow. It introduces a new approach to the division between oxygen and ozone dilemma, that was suggested by another great hacker/designer Thomas Luebking, that ofers a nice option to people that want to color active and inactive windows in different colors, without making it look completely awkward.

• Distributions

  • SystemRescueCD 1.3.0 Has Linux Kernel 2.6.31

    This Gentoo-based distribution features, among the other graphical tools, the latest XFCE desktop environment, version 4.6.1. Even if it’s just a stripped-down desktop, with the unnecessary bits removed to keep the distro size low, the amount of included functionality is amazing. You will also find Firefox 3.5.2 and Python 2.6.2, all of them in a 235MB, live Linux system.

  • Absolute Linux 13.0. with IceWM and PCMan

    Paul Sherman has released version 13.0 of his Slackware-based distribution, pulling it level with Slack in the version stakes and relying on the slimline IceWM as window manager.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Meshcom rebrands as EmbedOne for Linux business

    Wireless mesh-enabling software provider Meshcom Technologies has announced its embedded Linux line of business brand name, EmbedOne.

  • Phones

    • Fragmentation good for the user, says Nokia

      Fragmentation within mobile platforms helps handset manufacturers and software developers to properly address customers’ needs, a senior Nokia executive has said.

    • N900 PUSHed as a hacker’s best friend

      This past Sunday I was invited to London’s Southbank to take a peek at a number of arty hacks centred around the new Nokia N900 tabletyphonething. The hackers involved were from Tinker.it, a creative consultancy that seems to specialise in making physical things that represent the digital world. A lot of what they do seems to revolve around the Arduino platform (a small microcontroller that can talk to sensors and various external modules) and Nokia gave them the task of taking us back to the 80’s.

    • HTC Hero firmware upgrade goes live on UK site

      It’s taken them a while to catch up, but HTC have finally added the new Hero firmware to their UK download page. The English 2.73.405.5 ROM brings with it a new lease of speed and general perkiness to the Android smartphone, together with adding touch-to-focus to the Hero’s 5-megapixel camera.

Free Software/Open Source

• IBM extends Lotus Symphony with widgets

  In an attempt to broaden the appeal of its Lotus Symphony productivity software, IBM has released a number of widgets that boost the suite’s collaborative capabilities.

• Making preparations for the OpenOffice.org 3.2 release

  Regarding the current developer snapshot DEV300_m58 the branch-off date for the OpenOffice.org release branch OOO320 is not so far away.

• Asterisk Gets 400 Million New Users

  Traditionally something of a niche phenomenon, open source PBXs have seen a significant surge over the past few years and it has become much more mainstream and more competitive with traditional communications systems. According to The Eastern Management Group, open source PBXs claimed 18 percent of the North American market in 2008, a 40 percent growth from the previous year.

  [...]

  Skype for Asterisk, which Digium co-developed with Skype, is the first Skype-sanctioned connector to a full-fledged PBX system. The add-on to an Asterisk PBX lets businesses register as many Skype accounts as they need, allowing users to receive calls from Skype accounts, right on their IP deskphones. With a bit of additional configuration, users can also place outbound calls to Skype accounts through their Asterisk PBX.

• TwitApps Shutting Down; Code Goes Open Source

  Twitter application TwitApps has announced on their blog that the service will be shutting down at the end of next week. TwitApps provided two services: Replies which sent you any replies via email and Follows which sent you an email of your new followers regularly instead of getting each follower individually emailed as Twitter does now. The followers function is something I’ve asked Twitter to provide for a while – a digest of daily activity.

• Open source loves profit

  Some people within the FOSS community do feel that way, of course. They are idealists first, developers second. It is thanks to such people that software is now a hollow mountain, the insides visible and little bits of open innovation pushing through the crust here and there.

• Open-source software may unify the medical-records realm

  Open-source medical software has been around for over 30 years. Unless you are in healthcare IT, however, chances are you’ve never even heard of it. But that’s poised to change.

  With the passage of ARRA (the American Recovery And Reinvestment Act of 2009, also called the federal stimulus package), some $19 billion dollars have been earmarked for Medicare and Medicaid technology incentives over the next five years. This program is known as HITECH (PDF), short for Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health.

• Peerless Foods Selects Open Source Solutions From Ingres for Mission Critical ERP and Business Intelligence Platforms

  Ingres Corporation, the leading open source database management company and pioneer of the New Economics of IT, announced today that Peerless Foods, Australia`s largest privately owned producer of edible oils, fats and
  margarines, relies on Ingres as the underlying database for its mission-critical business enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) platforms. Ingres Database is theleading independent open source database that helps organizations develop and manage business critical applications at an affordable cost.

• OpenLogic and Nuxeo Partner to Support Integrated Open Source Enterprise Content Management Stack

  OpenLogic, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source software solutions encompassing hundreds of open source packages, and Nuxeo, an open source enterprise content management (ECM) software and services provider, today announced they are partnering to provide top to bottom support on a robust ECM stack, which includes Nuxeo’s Enterprise Platform, the JBoss application server and the PostgreSQL database.

• GroundWork Open Source Launches MonitoringForge.org

  Additionally, MonitoringForge provides a unified, professional project and plugin listing for all open source solutions involving monitoring. This web platform is designed to give the project developer control of how their material is presented and managed.

• Infinispan narrows the gap between open source and commercial data caches

  Many of the projects that I have been involved in do not use a cache solely for the reading of frequently accessed data. This is a common scenario when using caching technologies and is prevalent in the Web 2.0 world (Facebook, Twitter etc.). The applications that I work with process large amounts of data (up to a million objects per day), performing massive numbers of ad-hoc reads, write and update operations.

• Events

  • Dave Page on PostgreSQL and PGDay.EU 2009

    PGDay.eu 2009 is the third big PostgreSQL conference to be held in Europe. It’s a chance for existing users and developers to meet and learn more about each other, both person to person and through the great lineup of talks we’re planning which will offer something for everyone.

  • The Apache Software Foundation to Host Most Extensive Conference Program to Date, with Free Community Events and Festivities at ApacheCon US 2009 Apache Members, Event Sponsors, and Open Source Community-at-Large Celebrate a Decade of Open Source Leadership at the 10th Anniversary of the ASF

    The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced its program for ApacheCon US, taking place 2-6 November 2009 at the Oakland Marriott City Center in Oakland, California. Reflecting the tremendous impact Apache technologies have had on computing over the last decade, this year’s conference program features more trainings, tracks, sessions, speakers, and events than any other previous ApacheCon. Early registration incentives end 25 September 2009.

  • First Open Source GIS UK Conference Webcasts

    In June of this year Nottingham University hosted the First Open Source GIS UK Conference. The aims of the event included hearing presentations from government, academic, industry and policy makers on open source geospatial technologies, providing a platform to network and develop ideas for future collaborative work in open source GIS, developing an understanding of current developments in open source GIS and enabling a focus for open source GIS research.

  • The Schedule is Out for linux.conf.au, the .nz Edition

    The announcement arriving today from New Zealand is a lot like a birth announcement. It’s been nine months in the making, reveals all the vital statistics, and encourages everyone to come and visit. In that spirit, we are pleased to announce the arrival of the conference schedule for the 2010 linux.conf.au.

• CMS

  • XOOPS CMS Releases Version 2.4.0 RC

    XOOPS Project, an Open Source Content Management System, has reportedly launched the latest version, 2.4.0 of its software – XOOPS.

  • Open Source XOOPS CMS 2.4.0 RC Brings Usability Fixes

  • SilverStripe CMS Extends Its Global Footprint to Australia

    SilverStripe (news, site), the open source CMS that brought you the Democratic Convention website among others, has hopped the waters of the Pacific Ocean, in a sense doubling their real-world presence.

• Business

  • Into the Cloud: Upwardly Mobile Funambol

    In any case, it certainly provides a handy way for Funambol to distinguish between the open source community edition of its synchronisation software (available under the AGPL), and the commercial version aimed at carriers who have suddenly discovered a violent desire to jump on the cloud computing bandwagon and offer synchronisation services to their customers.

  • ClearFoundation Unveils ClearOS 5.1, Open Source Distribution for Networks and Server based Internet Gateways

    ClearFoundation announced today that ClearOS 5.1 will be available September 30, 2009 at www.clearfoundation.com, the newly unveiled Web site for ClearFoundation. ClearOS is a next-generation Linux server operating distribution for the small organizations and distributed environments. The
    ClearOS Linux distribution has an installed-base of over 120,000 systems that serve approximately 1.2 Million users. It is available in over 20 languages and is utilized in more than 122 countries around the globe.

• Fog Computing

  • Market Parallels – Cloud and Open Source?

    Any new technology market has its own lifecycle and rhythm. From mainframes, through smartphones, there’s the early years, the rapid growth, some slowing down and inevitably a decline. Some technologies never go away completely (e.g. mainframes), while others never really get a foothold (insert your own example here).

  • Red Hat: Understanding the business benefits of an open source SOA platform

    In a highly competitive business environment, the ability to adapt the IT infrastructure quickly is imperative. Many businesses are turning to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to create a flexible infrastructure. SOA enables organisations to build and deploy IT systems that directly serve the goals of the business faster and more easily than traditional approaches.

• FSF/GNU

  • Interview with Richard Stallman

    Q: How effective do you think you’ve been at creating change?

    A: I cannot impartially estimate my own capacity, so I cannot answer that question. What is clear is that we have at least gained a foothold for using computers in freedom, but that we are still far from our goal: that all software users should be free. At least the free software movement continues to grow.

    Q: What would you consider your most significant accomplishments as an activist?

    A: We have developed free operating systems, free graphical environments, free applications, free media players, free games — thousands of them. Some regions have adopted GNU/Linux for their public schools. Now we have to convince the rest of the world to do the same.

• Government

  • Kerala’s new IT revolution: ‘Email to All Employees’

    In a unique venture in the country, all state government employees in Kerala have been initiated into the world wide web with the state government initiating its ‘Email to All Employees’ project.

    The new initiative was kicked off today by the Chief Minister of Kerala, V.S.Achuthanandan. The Kerala State IT Mission is the agency implementing the project.

    [...]

    The project has been developed on the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) platform, configured and tested for hardware and software and finally rolled out by the Centre for the Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT) led by P Gigy, team leader, Open Source Technology Team.

• Openness

  • Steven Chu Suggests Open Source to Design Net-Zero Energy Buildings

    “We’re talking about an open-source software platform,” Chu said. “You begin to develop a method, just as there is Windows or Linux…There is still incentive for private commercial development, but you set the building industry on a new commercial path.”

  • EDAG ‘Light Car – Open Source’ updates to be presented at IAA in Frankfurt

    In cooperation with the other open source partners TESTA MOTARI (supplier of lighting technology) and Proof Design (composite solar module specialist), the EDAG Group will be integrating all the concepts shown in an EDAG Light Car test vehicle, and presenting this vehicle at the next Geneva Motor Show, in spring 2010.

  • Next: An Internet Revolution in Higher Education

    Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems (JAVA), met me for breakfast at an unassuming little restaurant in a strip mall tucked into the woods a few minutes’ drive from his house. We discussed one of his recent passions: applying technology’s open-source model to education. Sun was an early proponent of open source, giving the concept a huge boost when it opened up its Java software. And McNealy funded and helped promote a project called Curriki to create open-source textbooks that will ultimately be free, via the Internet.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Accelerated 3D Graphics In Your Browser!

    Given the inherent speed in Web-standards deventevelopment, I imagine you’ll be seeing finished browser implementations of WebGL in a matter of months.