• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Will I ditch Windows 7 for Linux…???

Frankly, given what I’m looking for there’s really no compelling reason to shell out cash for a new OS when Ubuntu can do what I need (minus the games, which I must say I don’t spend as much time playing as I used to and I must admit that if I was younger and single I might opt for using Windows 7 more for the gaming factor but that’s not a good enough reason these days).

Kernel Space

• NVIDIA Developer Talks Openly About Linux Support

  Q: What code management does NVIDIA use and are team members allowed to keep private branches in order to target specific issues (like new kernel or X.Org support)?

  We use Perforce for source control. Large new features are generally implemented in development branches, and then that code is promoted to our main line of code once it passes an internal quality bar. Release branches are then created off the main line of code.

  For miscellaneous hacking or experimentation, we’ll generally use private branches in Perforce. Occasionally, individual engineers might track private changes using quilt or git before submitting their changes to Perforce.

  Q: Which text editors or IDEs do NVIDIA Linux developers use?

  Most of the engineers on the Linux driver team use emacs and/or vim for their day-to-day development work.

• Linux Weather Forecast

  This page is an attempt to track ongoing developments in the Linux development community that have a good chance of appearing in a mainline kernel and/or major distributions sometime in the near future. Your “chief meteorologist” is Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor at LWN.net. If you have suggestions on improving the forecast (and particularly if you have a project or patchset that you think should be tracked), please add your comments to the Discussion page. There’s a blog that reports on the main changes to the forecast. You can view it directly or use a feed reader to subscribe to the blog feed. You can also subscribe directly to the changes feed for this page to see feed all forecast edits.

• Kernel summit group photo

  The attendees of the 2009 Linux Kernel summit, October 20, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan.

Distributions

• Puppy Linux 4.3 gains bugfix, rave reviews

  The Puppy Linux project has released a 4.3.1 bugfix upgrade for last month’s major 4.3 release of the popular, lightweight GNU/Linux distro. Puppy Linux 4.3, which has been rebuilt with a new “Woof” build system and PPM package manager, has received a number of positive reviews.

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora 12 Beta now available!

    Fedora is a leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release every six months. We have reached the Fedora 12 Beta, the last important development milestone of Fedora 12. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates leading up to the general release of Fedora 12, scheduled to be released in mid-November. We invite you to join us and participate in making Fedora 12 a solid release by downloading, testing, and providing us your valuable feedback.

  • Red Hat share price passes Microsoft’s

    Analysts say that while Red Hat’s share price has been higher than today what is important is that actually it is worth the figure.

  • Red Hat Ranked as #1 Software Vendor for Fifth Time in CIO Insight Study

    Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it has received the highest rank among software vendors in Ziff Davis’ 2009 “CIO Insight Vendor Value” study, which polls IT executives on the value of their vendors’ product and service offerings. This is the fifth time the company has received the top rank among software vendors. In addition, Red Hat received the highest rank among software companies on the overall list of IT vendors across software, networking, hardware and security.

  • Red Hat and Google share the CIO love

    For years, Red Hat sat unopposed at the top of the CIO Insight Vendor Value study. In 2008, however, Google pushed Red Hat aside with its low-cost, easy-to-use enterprise applications. This year, Red Hat has come roaring back to share the top ranking with Google.

    Could this be a sign of CIOs’ restive relationships with traditional vendors and an increasingly insatiable appetite for the cost and ease-of-use advantages of open source and software as a service/cloud computing?

• Debian Family

  • System76 Prepares Ubuntu 9.10 PCs, Notebooks

    As major PC makers prepare to introduce Windows 7 systems on Oct. 22, upstarts like System76 are maintaining their focus on the Ubuntu market and preparing to preload Ubuntu 9.10 on a range of PCs starting Oct. 29. Here’s a preview of what’s to come.

  • Ubuntu Business Model – A Misunderstood Concept

    Canonical, the business arm of Ubuntu, has one of the most promising business models in the Linux world, and also the most misunderstood. First of all, Ubuntu is in a market termed by economists as a perfectly competitive market. This means that it cannot charge any price beyond that which is determined by the market. The only way to make profit, as has rightly been identified by Canonical is to create an ecosystem of products and services around Ubuntu, which would complement the functions of the OS.

  • Ubuntu One Rocking The House

    Karmic is rocking, and Ubuntu One is just another great reason why. Good work, Ubuntu One folks!

  • Humanity To Others: Five Years Later

    Five years ago today, the first ever Ubuntu (Warty Warthog) was released. Back then I was an Open Source Consultant working for the government-funded OpenAdvantage and had a (more) stupid beard. Five years later, I am working on my seventh release since I joined Canonical three years ago, and a more refined beard.

  • Happybuntu! 5 Years Ubuntu

    The Ubuntu community has a lot to celebrate this month: on October 16, 2004 the German ubuntuusers.de went online for the first time and October 20 of the same year saw the release of Ubuntu 4.10, alias Warty Warthog.

  • Happy Birthday Ubuntu

    Today, 5 years ago, on October 20th the very first version of Ubuntu was shipped – Ubuntu 4.10 “The Warty Warthog”.

IBM

• IBM and Ubuntu roll Linux for U.S desktops vs Windows 7

  A few weeks, back IBM and Canonical (the lead sponsor of Ubuntu Linux) announced a plan to deliver Linux desktops and software to Africa. At the time, I questioned why the offer wasn’t being made available in the U.S.

• IBM’s Windows 7 rival: Linux

  For businesses, IBM is pitching the “IBM Client for Smart Work” as a less-costly alternative to a Windows 7 upgrade, particularly for companies that skipped Windows Vista and would be making the upgrade from Windows XP. IBM cites market research estimating the cost of migrating to Windows 7 as high as $2,000 per user, if new hardware is required as part of the shift.

• IBM and Canonical Launch Linux- and Cloud-based Desktop Software in the U.S.

  The IBM Client for Smart Work (http://www.ibm.com/lotus/openclient), based on IBM productivity and collaboration software, helps organizations save up to 50 percent per seat on software costs versus a Microsoft-based desktop, in addition to avoiding requisite hardware upgrades. The package allows companies to use their existing PCs, lower-cost netbooks and thin clients.

• IBM & Canonical to launch Ubuntu desktop for business

  While this far from an attempt to offer a universal Linux desktop replacement for Windows, it is a concerted effort to offer business users an affordable Windows replacement. With Windows 7 Professional Upgrade listing for $199 for Vista users, and XP users facing a situation where buying a new PC is probably their best ‘upgrade’ choice, the Ubuntu-powered IBM Client for Smart Work may well find some customers.

• IBM and Canonical Launch Linux- and Cloud-based Desktop Software

Devices/Embedded

• Android e-reader boasts dual displays

  Spring Design announced an Android-based e-book reader that boasts two displays and full browser capabilities. The WiFi- and 3G-enabled “Alex” offers both the typical 6-inch monochrome EPD (electronic paper display) display for reading, plus a linked, 3.5-inch color display for Android content and multimedia, says the company.

• MontaVista Brings Carrier Linux to LTE

  Linux vendor MontaVista Software is expanding its Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) product offering to include new next generation LTE (define) wireless and networking capabilities.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you

Software had this problem first, by virtue of its non-corporeality. How many people are selling Free Software on eBay? We deride these sellers as “scammers,” but in truth the only time they run afoul of the law is when they attempt to rebrand your software without acknowledgement, or when they fail to abide by some other intentionally inside-out clause of the license that you chose in the first place (e.g. selling GPL’d binaries without offering source code).

[...]

So I am grateful for this anonymous soul who woke up one day and said to herself, “You know what I should do today? I should try to sell copies of that Free book that Pilgrim wrote.” Grateful, because it afforded me the opportunity to remind myself why I chose a Free license in the first place. My Zen teacher once told me that, when people try to do you harm, you should thank them for giving you the opportunity to forgive them. In this case it’s even simpler, because there’s nothing to forgive, just explain. She’s redistributing the work that I explicitly made redistributable. She’s kind of the point.

Open Source and The Geographic Divide – Europe and North America

Free vs. open source, the debate is alive and well, although certainly of a different character, and more subtle than the in the past. During the event, and the five days I spent in Paris, I had numerous opportunities to engage in group and individual conversations, mostly centered on the commercial aspects of free and/or open source software. I’ll use the term FOSS to cover both sets of terminology. My general observations on how the various geographies use the terminology consists of North Americans almost exclusively use the term “open source” which has more of a connotation of commercial software and Europeans mostly, but not entirely, use “free software” as their term of choice.

SpringSource Delivers Spring 3.0, Focused on Web Apps

“Spring 3.0 makes it even easier for developers to build flexible, high-quality applications while providing a foundation for innovation in other open source projects and commercial products,” said Rod Johnson, general manager of the SpringSource division of VMware.

Open-Xchange and SugarCRM Join Forces to Integrate and Share Data

Technology companies negotiate a particularly messy obstacle course from the moment of conception — jumping hurdles associated with venture capital, fending off and holding their own with fierce (and worthy) competitors, constantly changing and innovating products and services to meet the demands of the customer base. Open source companies have an additional complicating factor — the business model is mysterious to many potential customers, and competitors (fierce, worthy, or otherwise) are often 800 pound gorillas with names and logos recognizable to CTO, CIO and Luddite alike.

Open-Xchange, SugarCRM Collaborate to Challenge Microsoft

Cloud Computing Too Costly in the Long Term?

Standards, like those on Linux, are key here, too–McCormack cautioned in his presentation that customers should avoid vendor lock in. This is exactly the sort of lock in that projects like Red Hat’s Deltacloud are trying to prevent.

Sun/OpenOffice.org

• results of automated tests for OOO320m1 and OOO320m2

  Automated testing of recent OOO320_m1-OOO320_m2 builds is finished. All Cat0 tests were run on English builds by automation team and have been completed. On OOO320m2 there is 1 warning only in automated tests (105967) except on MacOS we have 2 errors and 3 warnings (generated by issue 105275). Issue 105967 is handled in CWS automation320m2 and issue 105275 in CWS impress178. Green state of automated cat0 tests is expected with integration of those CWS’.

• A sneak preview of new OpenOffice 3.2 part 1

  The last developer milestone ( DEV300m60) of OpenOffice.org has been released. The next version of OpenOffice.org 3.2 has more than 42 features and 167 enhancements . The final version is expected to be available at the end of November 2009.

FSF/GNU

• The Free Software Song (Instrumental)

  I am working on a Trance/Club version of The Free Software Song. Here is a instrumental version featuring a couple of Richard M. Stallman (RMS) speech samples, from interviews.

Government

• It’s Time for Obama to Come Out for FOSS

  People in Congress have it tough.

  They’re expected to deal with every new topic that comes down the pike, from regulating securitized credit swaps to beefing up cybersecurity, whether they’ve had any previous experience with it or not. Of course, there’s never a shortage of people who want to educate them, but the “educators” with the greatest access are likely to be lobbyists. And when one paid advocate is promoting one action, political physics dictates that another highly paid individual in somebody else’s pocket will be promoting an equal and opposite action. Soon, all potential solutions become obscured by a fog of business propaganda.

  What’s a poor legislator (and her staff) to do?

  Good question. There’s been plenty of fog on Capitol Hill about free and open source software (FOSS) for a decade now, and that’s hardly surprising. In the beginning, most big software companies were a’gin it, and any government agency CIO allowing a useful bit of FOSS to find a home on the servers she supervised was not likely to advertise that fact.

• Updegrove: Obama should give FOSS equal treatment

  ConsortiumInfo.org’s Andy Updegrove urged President Obama to show more public support for free and open source software.

  In a blog featured on the site today, Updegrove said open source has made huge inroads in various government sectors, especially the Department of Defense, but it’s high time that the president give FOSS equal treatment top down.

Programming

• League for Programming Freedom

Where The Hell Is The Outrage?

The number of articles and opinions on Goldman Sachs earnings, bonuses, and influence peddling over the past several days is quite stunning.

Many have pointed out the problems; few have expressed outrage over what is happening in general, not just at Goldman Sachs. Let’s take a look.

[...]

With that in mind, one is left to wonder whether Goldman was really worth saving last year. What have taxpayers received for the $50 billion worth of cash and guarantees, for giving Goldman access to the Federal Reserve as its lender of last resort?

Saving Goldman was largely about saving the derivatives market, which is so big and unstable that the death of one counterparty could mean the death of all. With big commercial banks like JPMorgan Chase in deep, saving the derivatives business was as much about protecting depositors and maintaining the integrity of the payment system as it was derivatives themselves.

Sequoia Voting Systems hacks self in foot

Sequoia Voting Systems has inadvertently released the SQL (Structured Query Language) code for its voting databases. The existence of such code appears to violate Federal voting law. Read the announcement after the jump, just as received on the Open Voting Consortium mailing list earlier today.

what is the ‘post-bureaucratic’ state?

So, following Mirowski, we might say that ‘government 2.0′ is the final realisation of the neo-liberal state. No auditors, no experts, no objective knowledge, no sense of the common good, just maximum freedom for individuals to form opinions and privately process information. As David Weinberger says in triumphant Hayekian style, “transparency is the new objectivity.” In some instances, consumer perspectives may form the basis of action – demanding change if they’re a prominent journalist or campaigner, selecting a different service supplier if they’re a fortunate lay-person, or just mouthing off on facebook if they’re not so lucky.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Chinese Authors Mull Action Over Google Book Settlement

  A Chinese authors’ group is considering legal action against Google over its book scanning project, adding to the list of countries where it has faced opposition.

• Thinking about downloads

  [Disclosure: I work for BT; we operate an ISP; our position on this subject has been made clear by CEO Ian Livingston here and by other senior executives here. As clearly stated in the disclaimer at the top of this blog, these are my personal views and not necessarily those of my employer.]

  It now appears that “internet suspension of illegal downloaders could become law”. Before that happens, I thought it would be worth while to share some of my thoughts about this.

  [...]

  Radiohead proved something similar with In Rainbows. Just because people download music, don’t assume that they’re trying to rip artists off. Most downloaders support their artists.

  3. Downloading is good business for the music industry.

  It’s not just the Amazon MP3 album chart that shows what’s happening. Digital music album sales are growing 32% year on year, while CD album sales are down 14.5%, when you compare 2008 with 2007.

  [...]

  4. Claims about illegal downloads can be misleading.

  Yesterday, Lady Gaga was announced as the Queen of Downloads. What intrigued me was the others on the Top 10 list. Kings of Leon. La Roux. Leona Lewis. Alexandra Burke. Snow Patrol. Nickelback. Not the kind of stuff I listen to. The kind of stuff my youngest child listens to.

  What struck me was this: young people seem to do the downloading, old people seem to do the anti-download complaining. I’ve seen claims that in the UK alone, £1.2bn is lost to illegal downloads. And I think there’s a fallacy there. It’s a bit like Rolex claiming lost revenues because people are buying rip-off Rolexes for $25. Does Rolex really think that someone who pays $25 for a “Rolex” is actually a potential customer for a $25,000 watch? I saw similar claims made for software purchases in India. So let’s put this in context. Does anyone really think that someone, anyone, downloads Cliff Richard illegally? Puh-leese.

• 70% oppose internet ban for filesharers, poll shows

  Plans to force internet service providers (ISPs) to disconnect suspected illegal downloaders have been roundly rejected in a new YouGov poll, the first time public opinion has been tested on the issue.

  Nearly 70% of those surveyed said someone suspected of illegal downloading should have a right to a trial in court before restrictions on internet use were imposed. Only 16% were in favour of automatic curbs based on accusations by copyright holders such as musicians, as is proposed by the business department.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

What Hinders Popular Acceptance of the GNU/Linux Desktop

My experience with forums when I switched to Ubuntu was generally positive. I asked questions, making it clear I was a newbie, and I don’t remember a single derisive comment. The only aggravation was that a couple of times I posted questions and was berated for either posting in the wrong place or for failing to look for the answer before asking. I hate being told to look harder, and I actually want to learn about technology. Imagine being an average user, just trying to take a screenshot or set up Empathy, and being told to “look before you ask.”

How to give Linux a try

Have you ever been tempted by desktop Linux’s security and stability, but you didn’t want to go to all the trouble of installing two operating systems on one PC or the expense of buying a new PC? Then, you’re in luck, because there are many ways to give desktop Linux a try without changing anything permanently or using a spare desktop.

It used to be that if you wanted to try desktop Linux, you had to be a confident power-user and make permanent changes to your PC or have another computer. Those days are long gone. Today, you have four different, easy ways to take Linux for a spin.

Audio

• LB – Episode 44 – Jay and Friends by Linux Basement

• Linux Outlaws 117 – May the Schwartz Be With You

  In this episode, we interview Randal L. Schwartz about Perl, Merlyn and Stonehenge, BSD, being a professional comedian, how Karaoke saved his life, the Schwartzian transform, FLOSS Weekly and much more.

Applications

• How to copy a live server to enable investigation of a security incident

  All you need to create this disk image and copy it over the network to another computer is a Windows version of the common GNU/Linux tools DD and netcat, which are both free and open source. DD creates the bit-image disk copy and netcat will send anything over the network. Of course, you’ll need the second computer on the network that will receive the image and has enough capacity for the image. You’ll want to put these two tools on safe media — preferably a CD. This way they are known to be “good” and won’t be compromised when used on a compromised system.

• The Future Of Docky – Docky Creator Jason Smith Tells Us Why Docky Is Going To Get Even More Awesome

  Scrolling through the blueprints on the Docky launchpad page also gives up some insight in the sheer awesomeness that Docky will morph into now it’s pandering to it’s own destiny. I’ve summarised them below, but take a look at the official Docky blueprint page for information.

• Linux-gamers -Play 33 world class games on Linux without installation

  One of the strong criticisms leveled against Linux is the lack of good quality games for the platform. A lot of strides have been made in getting games ported to the Linux platform. One of the attempts to make games playable on Linux caught my attention. It is the Live.Linux-gamers.net project.

KDE

• Virtuoso, here I come!

  Nepomuk, which is KDE’s semantic desktop framework is a very interesting new technology, and has the potential to move many applications forward. Nepomuk needs an RDF store to save and retrieve semantic information, such as data from your filesystem indexer, tags, ratings, and other, much more complex bits. Up until now, there were performance problems. There were two possible ways to store your information: redland and sesame2. Redland is written in C++, but is very simple and by far not meeting the performance requirement we need for Nepomuk’s use-cases.

• Who Needs Windows 7 When You’ve Got KDE?

  As a devoted free software user, I’m almost as likely to stick my hand down a running garbarator as buy a copy of Windows 7. In fact, so far, I haven’t tried Windows 7. But if its features list is any indication, I’m missing little that I don’t already have with the latest version of the KDE desktop.

  Of course, exactly what Windows 7′s new features are can be difficult to tell. The features list is as much a marketing document as a technical one. In places it’s more apt to give you an overdose of adjectives than any specifics. Nor is every feature available in every edition of Windows 7.

  Then, too, a few listed features, such as 64-bit support, are so far from new that I wonder why they are mentioned.

• ‘Cause it’s gonna be the future soon

  Plasma-netbook will make a big splash, and contribute to KDE’s rising visibility.. Many distros will still ignore it, but one will switch its focus to kde, and then another… other areas of KDE will mature, and the benefits of our Pillars of KDE will shine through… In two years we’ll be the default on most distros. Gnome won’t know what hit them

Distributions

• 2009′s Top 10 Reader’s Choice Linux Distributions

  Since I’m not familiar with some of the distributions on this list, most of the information is taken directly from the distribution’s own website.

  1. Arch Linux – Billed as a lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. Arch Linux is an independently developed, i686/x86-64 general purpose GNU/Linux distribution versatile enough to suit any role.

• Parsix Linux 3.0

  Parsix Linux is definitely worth taking a look at if you’re an intermediate or advanced Linux user.

  Beginners are certainly welcome to check out the Live CD but the partitioning required to install Parsix Linux might be a bit much depending on the person’s experience with such things.

• Thoughts from 6-month-old Gentoo user

  I am a six-month-old Gentoo user now! Six month ago, I posted about being a newbie of Gentoo. Now I could say I am happy with my decision of switching from Fedora. Please note that Fedora is a great distribution, I personally think Fedora is better than most of distributions—Ubuntu included.

• New Releases

  • GParted 0.4.7-1

  • Caos 1.0.25

  • Baltix 4.1

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat passes Microsoft’s stock price, now what?

    Not since the heady days of the dotcom boom has the share market for an open source company’s stock been brighter.

    As of the last Nasdaq trade on October 19, 2009, Red Hat’s share price stood at $28.46 with the mighty Microsoft in its shadow at $26.36.

    With so much noise made about IT company share prices over the years — Michael Dell said he would shut down Apple if he was in charge, but then in 2006 Apple surpassed Dell’s market capitalization — why did such a momentous occasion go unnoticed?

• Debian Family

  • Preview of Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

    The release of the newest version of Ubuntu is only 10 days away. Many sites, including MakeTechEasier have covered its pending arrival and given you a glimpse of the Beta version. Today we are going to take a look at Kubuntu, the KDE-based version of Ubuntu.

  • Ubuntu And The Opportunistic Programmer

    Not only does the up-coming Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, released on Thu 29th October 2009 bring this rich platform, as well as Quickly, but it also bring the new Ubuntu Software Center which provides a refreshed means of browsing and installing applications. My hope is that we will continue to leverage this rock-solid platform and be able to have opportunistic programmers everywhere be able to get their apps in front of Ubuntu users, in much the same way the iPhone and Android Market Place does so.

  • NetworkManager Gets Facelift for Karmic Koala Ubuntu 9.10

    Along with other updates to Ubuntu’s look in Karmic, the changes to NetworkManager reflect a solid and successful effort to meet and surpass the interface enhancements of proprietary operating systems, demonstrating that software can be Free and good-looking at the same time.

  • REvolution R coming to Ubuntu

    REvolution Computing’s enhanced distribution of R, REvolution R, has been available for free download from our website for Windows and MacOS for over a year now, and has been used by thousands of R users for high-performance statistical data analysis. Soon, we’ll be expanding our free distributions to Ubuntu Linux, with the release of REvolution R 3.0.

  • Meet the Platform Team Managers: Robbie Williamson

    In the first of a seven-part series on Where Karmic’s Karma Comes From, I’d like to introduce you to the managers of the Canonical Platform Team. The Platform Team is made up of the following teams: Foundations, Kernel, Desktop, QA, Mobile, Community, and Server. In this first interview, Robbie Williamson, the Ubuntu’s Foundations Team Manager, discusses what’s coming out in Karmic Koala and what we can expect in the Lucid Lynx release.

Devices/Embedded

• Review: Linksys WRT160NL Linux Powered Wireless-N Router

  Overall I would recommend this router. The storage and media server features are great, especially at the price. The throughput is a little lower than I expected, but more than acceptable for most uses. This combined with the Linksys interface, options, and support make it a great choice for someone looking for a reasonably priced draft Wireless-N router. If Linksys can produce a firmware update that will improve the throughput inconsistency, we’ll have a real winner on our hands. The Linux firmware? Well that’s just the icing on the cake.

• Phones

  • Android opens doors for Google’s next-gen search, ads and tools

    There’s no question that there’s been some pretty astounding growth around Android, Google’s open-source mobile phone operating system. A year ago, there was only one Android device out there – the T-Mobile G-1. Today, Android is powering 12 devices in 26 countries with 32 carriers – and there’s more on the way.

  • Toward a freer Android

    Linux-based mobile phone platforms are really just specialized distributions. Like other distributions, phone platforms will live or die based on how well they meet the needs of their users. The Android platform has a high profile at the moment as the result of the entry of more handsets into the market, but also as a result of Google’s actions toward derived distributions. Android is clearly not meeting the needs of all its users currently, but changes are afoot which may improve the situation.

Kolodner move boosts open source health IT

It’s also a big deal for open source health IT generally. It comes just as the Veterans Administration is becoming a big booster of its own VistA software, seeking industry help in making it a standard electronic health record (EHR).

Jitterbit Expands Data Integration Tools

More management features have been added to Version 3.0 Enterprise MX, Jitterbit’s open source data integration system.

Remarkable Wit is Building Nashville’s Open Source Future One Developer—and One Student — At a Time

“Some computer science students in Tennessee will graduate without having taken a single class about the open source technologies poised to become mainsteam choices for enterprise deployment,” explains Marcus Whitney, CEO of Nashville-based thought leadership and tech evangelist firm Remarkable Wit, LLC, the host of an educational Big LAMP Camp for developers and the Enterprise LAMP Summit, an IT thought leadership event for IT decisionmakers.

ING Life India adopts open source to expand business

In the insurance business, everyone’s headed into the hinterland. But the cost of every new branch can bite deeply. Here’s how going Open Source helped ING Life save US$1.7 million and funded its expansion plans.

UK trailing USA in adoption of open source defence technology

What this type of technology should open our eyes to is, broadly, the fact that the US is doing this and the UK isn’t. Alfresco chief executive and founder John Powell is refreshingly vocal on this subject and is (I would like to suggest) unselfishly highlighting his company’s success in the US to show us what we are not doing in the UK.

Perhaps the increasing adoption of open source in the commercial enterprise space will cause the government to wake up and see the benefits of these technology streams. Or maybe it won’t.

Study shows open-source code quality steadily improving

The overall number of defects in open-source software projects is dropping, according to a new study by San Francisco-based vendor Coverity Inc.

Coverity, a maker of tools for analyzing programming code, received a contract in 2006 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help boost the quality of open-source software, which is increasingly being used by government agencies for critical applications.

IBM to offer open source VoIP for small business

Small businesses can buy open source IP PBX Asterisk software as an addon to IBM’s Smart Cube office in a box package.

Statistics: Web Grows, Apache Profits

Microsoft’s webserver lost a fraction of share (-0.37%) in October. However, apart from Apache, Nginx grew a fraction (+0.39%), translating into a gain for the server developed by Russian Igor Sysoev by 1.1 million websites in October to a total of 13.8 million.

Open source vendors should focus on value and price

To reach CIOs hearts and wallets, open source vendors should rethink their messaging to move beyond just cost to talk about the “more” that they are providing for “less.” Note that “more” can actually be less, as in less complex. For instance, MySQL clearly provides a “lower cost for higher value,” in terms of less complex and fewer administrators required than Oracle DB for certain use cases. This is why Oracle continues to value MySQL as part of the pending Sun acquisition.

Next from open source: warehousing apps

As the open source movement sweeps through the world of software development, business applications based on open code are popping up all over. So it comes as no surprise that open source versions of specialized apps like warehouse management software (WMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are starting to show up.

Openness

• Start-up set to advise investors on mutual fund industry

  It says its selling point is that it operates on the same principle as open-source software, at a time of growing sentiment that professional funds charge too much and can be opaque about their internal workings.

Programming

• Moving to an IDE for programming (Eclipse with PyDev)

  In the past, I’ve always shied away from integrated development environments (IDEs), but I recently had a strong enough motivation to finally learn how to use Eclipse — one of the most widely-used free software IDEs available today. Eclipse is known mainly as a Java IDE and it does require Java itself, but it is also a powerful and flexible multi-purpose platform, and adaptations exist for programming in many languages, including Java, C/C++, Lisp, and Python. Python support is available with an Eclipse package called “PyDev”, and I have found it to be a big step up.

• Happenings: Qt Developer Days 2009

  After an eventful if not turbulent last twelve months in the history of the Qt cross platform C++ GUI tool kit, the technology now resides within the corporate acquisition underbelly of Nokia’s many-chambered stomach. Within this same time frame, Nokia’s corporate manoeuvring has also seen Qt pushed to an LGPL distribution. Where the balance now sits in terms of proprietary technology self-interest versus open source altruism may be open to question for those new to the company.

• Nikto 2.1.0 has been Released

  Nikto is an Open Source GPL web server scanner which performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 3500 potentially dangerous files CGIs, versions on over 900 servers, and version specific problems on over 250 servers.

Citibank, Your Security Breach Is Not A Credit Reporting Sales Opportunity

Joy. Citibank closed my credit card today, not because of anything I did but because of some unknown merchant problem. Aside from being an inconvenience to me, Citibank also apparently thought it was a good time to pitch me on credit monitoring. Bad idea.

Business Models That Require Restrictive Consumer Contracts for Success

Just as in the MediaFire/SkipScreen dispute, Virgin Mobile seems to have created a business that requires coercing consumers into doing something they really don’t want to do; namely, sticking with Virgin Mobile when there are less expensive network alternatives and the technological means to do something about it. Even if MediaFire and Virgin Mobile are entirely correct in their legal positions (and they may very well be), they are nevertheless swimming against the current of consumer expectations and desires. That seems like a very difficult business to sustain over the long term.

Monster Energy vs. BevReview.com

First of all, to the folks at Hansen and Monster Energy… what the heck? Ever hear of “fair use”. I fail to see anything in my reviews that could be considered us having “advertised and/or sold products bearing one or more of the Hansen marks, or confusingly similar derivations thereof.”

Will cloud computing obsolete SaaS?

Augustin is an angel investor and advisor to early stage technology companies, he currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Fonality, Hyperic, Medsphere, OSDL, Pentaho, SugarCRM, VA Software (NASDAQ: LNUX), and XenSource. Worth Magazine named him to their list of the Top 50 CEOs in 2000.

I asked Larry a few questions:

YB: Is there a future for corporate data center-centric applications? Or is the writing really on the wall?

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• Parliamentary Comms Group Says ‘No’ to UK 3-Strikes

  An increasing death-knell is sounding for Lord Mandelson’s proposals for 3-strikes Internet disconnections. The latest blow comes from the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group. After a consultation earlier this year, they have now published their response, and it’s not one favorable to ‘Darth Mandy’ and his plans.

Intellectual Monopolies

• The Copyright Lobby’s Secret Pressure On the Anti-Spam Bill

  As I posted earlier today, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act comes to a conclusion in committee on Monday as MPs conduct their “clause by clause” review. While I have previously written about the lobbying pressure to water down the legislation (aided and abetted by the Liberal and Bloc MPs on the committee) and the CMA’s recent effort to create a huge loophole, I have not focused on a key source of the pressure. Incredibly, it has been the copyright lobby – particularly the software and music industries – that has been engaged in a full court press to make significant changes to the bill.

• Hey, showbiz folks: Check your contract before your next tweet

  There’s a growing number of studio deals with new language aimed specifically at curbing usage of social-media outlets by actors, execs and other creatives. The goal: plugging leaks of disparaging or confidential information about productions via the likes of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

• Copy shop liable for direct infringement from student on-premises copying of course packets

  The Eastern District of Michigan issued a decision on Wednesday that is sure to be controversial. A group of publishers brought suit alleging that a copy shop had infringed thirty-three of their works. The copy shop had accepted course packets from professors; ensured that the course packets were in proper form to be copied; given the packets to students upon request; and provided copy machines for the students to copy the packets.

• First Read: Follow the Breadcrumbs

  New clues to the content and sustainability of journalism are all around us. They are melding good reporting, a sense of place, a passion for community, and information that adds value. To really reconstruct journalism, we need to follow these breadcrumbs, make sense of the patterns and re-imagine what news and information needs to be for the future—not just how we pay for it.