As I said at the beginning of this blog entry, the members of Linux International were fully behind the creation of LPI in 1998. It was even suggested that LPI become a branch of Linux International, but I felt that this would be a bad idea. It would be better, I felt, to have a separate organization focused solely on certification, but I did volunteer my time, effort and experience to help move LPI along. Then one day in late 1999 the fledgling LPI had a slight problem, one that I am proud to say I helped to rectify. In order to verify that the exams were psychometrically accurate, fair and worthy of the LPI brand, LPI had to have a certain number of the exams performed and graded. But without the brand, there was nothing to induce a candidate to pay the money to take the exam. No inducement, no exams taken. No exams taken, no way to prove the validity of the exams. This was the classic “chicken and egg” problem.
CloudLinux, as well as Canonical and its Ubuntu Linux, highlight the head start Red Hat, and to some extent its enterprise Linux counterpart Novell, have given other companies ready and willing to serve up Linux in the cloud. These vendors, many of which base their own offerings on CentOS, also highlight the ongoing presence of community Linux in cloud computing, a topic we’ve covered as well.
Virgin Mobile officials announce on the carrier's Facebook webpage that they have plans to add Samsung Intercept to their offering in the coming weeks. While the announcement doesn't specify the exact release date, Virgin Mobile subscribers should be thrilled as this is the first Android smartphone coming from the carrier.
From these battery power consumption results from the past five Fedora releases using three different notebooks, it does not appear that the power performance is vastly improving -- or at least just not in the past two years for the selection of hardware we used. The Lenovo ThinkPad R52 tended to go through the least amount of power when running Fedora 14 Alpha, but the notebooks with newer Intel hardware did worse so we will have to wait and see how the final release performs. Coming up next we will be looking at the battery power consumption rate as we test each major Linux kernel release and that testing will be on a greater selection of hardware (netbooks including) as we look for any definitive changes in the power consumption rate of Linux. We will also be trying out Intel's historical MeeGo/Moblin releases to see how its performance-per-Watt has changed with their intended Atom hardware configurations.
OpenShot is a non-linear video editor for Linux (GNOME) with an amazing set of features: you can resize, trim or cut video, it comes with video transitions with real-time previews, image overlays, title templates, video encoding, digital zooming, audio mixing and editing, digital video effects and well, most of the features you can think of.
Hotot is a new lightweight Twitter client for Linux which although still in Alpha, it already looks very interesting! It doesn't come with many features by default for now (other than the basic features you would expect to find in a Twitter client, including search), but it's extensible through add-ons.
This state tracker does not use any Microsoft code, as confirmed by its developer. However, some are still uncertain about the legal status of Direct3D on Linux (along with the *BSDs and elsewhere that Gallium3D is compatible) and whether Microsoft could end up providing legal challenges to its adoption.
Corbin Simpson even wanted to pull this Gallium3D state tracker out of Mesa, but VMware's Jose Fonseca is in opposition to it being dropped and is calling for more discussion (mailing list). In another message, Jose mentions the D3D1x state tracker could be split into run-time and client driver components where the Wine developers (or ReactOS) could then re-code the run-time if they are concerned about the one living in Mesa.
The debate over this fascinating Direct3D 10/11 state tracker is ongoing. Meanwhile, Luca has committed Wine DLLs that use this state tracker so that in fact Wine can now hook into Gallium3D for this Microsoft Direct3D acceleration on the GPU (or on the CPU if using LLVMpipe). See this Git commit.
AssaultCube is available for Windows, Linux or Mac. The moment I installed and launched AssaultCube, I knew that I was in for a treat. Type in your nickname, set the screen resolution and you’re off and running. You’ll see yourself and your teammates in the map at the upper left of the screen. Obviously, you won’t see your opponents – you have to hunt them down!
So what makes LXDE? On the one hand, its modularity allows for better customization and easier implementation of its tools in other DEs. This comes at a price, however, and that price is an identity as a unified DE.
Nokia's Qt Software subsidiary released version 4.7 of its Qt cross-platform application and UI framework, touted for offering much faster performance. The Linux-compatible Qt 4.7 adds two building blocks of an upcoming high-level animation- and touch-enabled UI stack called Qt Quick: a Javascript-based QML language and a "Qt Declarative" C++ module.
Nokia announced yesterday the release of QT 4.7, which comes with very interesting new features, the most notable of which is probably speed.
With the release of Qt 4.7.0 it’s time to use it to build KDE packages destined for openSUSE 11.4. This means that Qt 4.7 will shortly land in KDE:Distro:Factory repositories. In a couple of months’ time it will be followed by betas of the KDE 4.6 releases. If you are using KDF just because it’s the latest KDE release, consider replacing it with KDE:Release:45 now, which will remain 4.5 and Qt 4.6 based.
Nokia has announced the official release of Qt 4.7, a new version of the company's open source development toolkit. The update introduces an impressive new framework called "Qt Quick" that accelerates the development of mobile user interfaces that work across multiple platforms and form factors.
If you are a regular reader of our blog, you probably need no introduction to GNOME Shell and its capabilities. We had a complete review of GNOME Shell before, and we were quite happy with the way it was evolving. GNOME Shell, even though it is still in its early stages of development, was an absolute delight to use.
I have a love/hate relationship with gnome. I use it, I develop for it and at the same time I dislike the way the gnome project produces functional libraires.
A few days ago, Mark Shuttleworth took some time to address critics who scoff at Canonical's contributions to GNOME and the Linux kernel itself by sharing his thoughts on the subject in his personal blog. The post, titled "Reflections on Ubuntu, Canonical and the march to free software adoption", reflecting on Canonical and Ubuntu's contributions to the world of free and open source software. There are a couple of interesting stories, some obvious rationalization, some genuine insights, and more than a few nods to the various forces that come together to create a Linux distribution.
Seif is proposing that the Activity Journal could pop out at lightning speed when the mouse hits a side of the desktop, in this case, the left side. He also wants people to notice how quickly the journal appears.
A core design element of the Impression themes is dark desktop and menu panels which displays well with the Ubuntu default wallpaper. A specific design element of the menu is the decision on how to “prelight” each menu item. The Impression themes use a prelight tint which is subtle to reduce strobing.
Google is doing it. Facebook is doing it. Yahoo is doing it. Microsoft is doing it. And soon Twitter will be doing it.
We’re talking about the apparent need of every web service out there to add intermediate steps to sample what we click on before they send us on to our real destination. This has been going on for a long time and is slowly starting to build into something of a redirect hell on the Web.
A few days ago, former Mandriva employees as well as community members banded together to announce the Mageia project, from the Mandriva sources which, they say, will ensure the project's survival.
Mandriva has now come out to clarify the project's future and has said that Mandriva will continue to be supported and developed on the desktop in both free and paid flavours.
In a reaction to the founding of the Mageia project and to a question posed on the Cooker mailing list, the French Linux distributor Mandriva has commented on its current situation and future plans. The company says the Mandriva distribution is far from dead and will continue to be consistently maintained. The next release of the Mandriva Community Edition is reportedly planned for the beginning of 2011.
Red Hat continues to report strong quarterly results as the company plans to ramp up its cloud management capabilities.
The company on Wednesday reported earnings of $23.7 million, or 12 cents a share, on revenue of $219.8 million, up 20 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 19 cents a share.
Red Hat's shares rose 1.4 percent in extended trading to $37.25 after closing at $36.75 on the New York Stock Exchange.
A few months back Glyn Moody, noted open-source journalist, asked the question, "Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies?" Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's CEO answered, "Red Hat could get to $5 billion in due course, but that this entailed 'replacing $50 billion of revenue' currently enjoyed by other computer companies. Guess what? Red Hat is on its way.
In its latest quarter, Red Hat's total revenue was $219.8 million, an increase of 20% from the year ago quarter. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Subscription revenue for the quarter was $186.2 million, up 19% year-over-year. I guess Oracle's attempt to snatch Red Hat's business away with a re-branded RHEL really hasn't worked.
Red Hat is still a strong presence in the Linux distribution market as its latest financial results prove, declares a senior company executive who noted that the company's success comes despite targeted maneuvers by its competitors, specifically, Oracle.
Alex Pinchev, executive vice president and president of global sales, services and field marketing for Red Hat, told ZDNet Asia in an interview Thursday that the software company has increased its share of the Linux distribution market from 80 percent four years ago to 87 percent today. This growth comes despite of competition from companies such as Oracle and Novell, he said.
At the Fedora 14 Beta Go/No-Go meeting today, the Fedora 14 Beta was declared GOLD and ready for release on September 28, 2010.
For those disappointed by Oracle's decision to discontinue supporting a free version of its Solaris Unix-like operating system, a new alternative emerged to take its place. OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos Foundation. OpenIndiana will be built on the last available version of OpenSolaris and will contain bits of Solaris 11. OpenIndiana is the new OpenSolaris.
OpenIndiana is said to be compatible with Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express and should be an easy drop-in replacement for those systems. Initially OpenIndiana will contain some closed-source code since the current code-base is not fully open. These bits will eventually be replaced by fully Open Source code.
In Software Market 3.0, it's not so much that the Freedom of the software leads to the freeness of the software - although, if you have the resources in-house, you never need pay anyone outside (that's a big "if" by the way). In Software Market 3.0, everything is available at no charge to somebody because of the need for developer freedom, so it's tempting to think it's all available to everyone at no charge - but it's not.
Our second confirmed keynote speaker for lca2011 is the original author of Sendmail, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Sendmail, Inc., and co-author of Sendmail, published by O'Reilly and Associates. He has presented numerous papers on email and programming and while at U.C. Berkeley, he was the chief programmer on the INGRES relational database management project. He then led the Mammoth project to provide large-scale research software and hardware infrastructure. He has also designed database user and application interfaces at Britton Lee (later Sharebase) and has contributed to the Ring Array Processor project for neural-network-based speech recognition at the International Computer Science Institute.
Among all new browsers, Mozilla may have found the best compromise to bridge the old and the new. Users can easily switch between the new naked interface and the old legacy interface. The new reduced menu that hides below the orange Firefox / Minefield button feels lighter and more organized.
Also new is a major update of the Gecko layout engine, which hits version 2.0 and delivers rendering improvements. Mozilla has not released a lot of information about its Mozilla 2.0 platform so far, but we will be updating our coverage as soon as more information becomes available.
Firefox 4 Beta 6 was released on September 14. Beta 7, which is currently under development, is slated for release sometime in the second half of September and the first release candidate is expected to be delivered in the second half of October.
You would think a firm that fancies itself a Linux development company would have some respect for the GPL. With most companies, you’d be right. But not with Oracle. It becomes more obvious with each passing day that Larry Ellison has absolutely no respect for the GPL. The FOSS community would do well to consider Ellison to be the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing and act according – for “FOSS-friendly” Oracle might pose more of a threat than Microsoft ever did.
Ellison seems to be making the GPL his play toy, shamelessly looking for holes in the license to exploit to his own advantage. Several years back, to show his displeasure at Red Hat for potentially moving into his territory when they acquired JBoss, he boldly announced the release of Unbreakable Linux, which was really Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) rebranded as an Oracle product (which he was perfectly free to do under the terms of the GPL).
The new kernel is faster than RHEL 5, the company says--though that's not too surprising, given that the current RHEL is based on an older version of the Linux kernel. The next version, RHEL 6--due later this year--will presumably be similarly updated, with all the speed and other benefits that brings.
What's more concerning, I think, is the way Oracle is trying to introduce vendor lock-in in an area that's supposed to be defined by openness.
The company has already been showing its true feelings about openness lately. First, it sued Google over Android's use of Java, then it pulled the plug on OpenSolaris, the open version of Sun's Solaris operating system. One can only worry for OpenOffice.org.
But not everyone has made the adjustment. The Bells haven’t. Tech lobbyists like the Progress and Freedom Foundation haven’t, talking of “property” as sacrosanct even when it leads to monopolies that frustrate change, growth, and competition.
Oracle most definitely hasn’t, and this is a big problem given their control over what many still consider the crown jewels of open source — Java and Open Office.
Oracle’s ambitions were on display all week in San Francisco, along with its proprietary attitude, best summed up by the adage “what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is none of your business.”
There is nothing “socialist” about sharing infrastructure. America’s growth is based on it. From canals to railroads, from ports to freeways, from convention centers to the Internet, shared infrastructure has lowered costs for America’s businesses throughout our history, and made our economy the envy of the world.
After years of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the basis for its own "Unbreakable Linux" distribution, Oracle this week announced that it has created its own version of the Linux kernel that's optimized for use with its other enterprise offerings.
Oracle is announcing its plans for advancing the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and optimizing it for new application models and hardware, including extended support for scripting languages, increased developer productivity and lower operational costs.
The announced roadmap for the OpenJDK accelerates the availability of Java SE with two releases, one in 2011 and one in 2012. These OpenJDK releases will continue to serve as the basis for the Oracle Java Development Kit (JDK) 7 and JDK 8.
The UK government’s deputy Chief Information Officer has outlined plans to hand public sector IT contracts over to small businesses and suppliers of open-source and cloud-based solutions in an attempt to balance the books.
Speaking at the 360IT conference in London on Wednesday, Bill McCluggage also promised greater transparency over IT procurement, with tenders and contracts published online.
"It is quite an interesting time, with some 120 days since the new government,” he told delegates. “The new administration's policy is to promote small business procurement so that 25 per cent of government contracts should be awarded to SMEs.”
"We want to move away from large system integrators," he added.
McCluggage said IT projects across all departments were being reassessed ion a bid to cut the bill for central government IT, which currently stands at more than €£7 billion – nearly half of the €£16.9 billion spent nationally on public sector IT services.
A few months ago, opensource.com ran a story on a textbook for college students learning programming (Can Professors Teach Open Source?, Greg DeKoenigsberg, Apr 6 2010). The textbook, "Practical Open Source Software Exploration," was created the open source way on the Teaching Open Source wiki. (Read Greg's article for more on what we mean by creating the textbook "the open source way".)
Although the textbook was written with students in mind, it turns out that professors are pretty important when it comes to teaching, too.
Late July, I sat in on a conversation between primary authors of the textbook on my team at Red Hat and Timothy Budd, associate professor at Oregon State University's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Budd used "Practical Open Source Software Exploration" in an introduction to free and open source software course in the spring 2010 semester. He reported that the book has potential, but that there are a few major things to get fixed.
Today, the company announced the beta launch of four new European mapping sites built on OpenStreetMap data, in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The AOL company says all four sites will utilize the new MapQuest brand and UI and will have data from OSM, allowing users to improve areas like streets in their neighborhoods, bike paths, parks and hiking trails. Each site will be a stand-alone offering that lives alongside the existing MapQuest sites – which are based on commercially available map data – in the four countries.
At the worldwide OpenOffice.org Conference 2010 in Budapest I have participated giving two talks: the main one was about ODF Scripting, which is about how to generate office texts, presentations and spreadsheets automatically. The other (very short) talk was about ODF-next, that is what should be in my opinion the evolution of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) for office documents.
Radio One DJ Chris Moyles has played down an on-air tirade about not being paid, in his first show since he made the comments.
Moyles said he was "not embarrassed, just very bemused" by the furore surrounding his "rant" on Wednesday.
"Yesterday was a ridiculous day," he said as his show began at 0630 BST. "Hopefully, this will go away."
The National Bureau of Economic Research, the arbiter of the start and end dates of a recession, determined that the recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009.
If you have a startup in a city outside of the San Francisco Bay Area, ecosystem is a word you hear pretty frequently. And Montreal is no exception. I’ve been part of Montreal’s startup scene since I moved here from the Bay Area in 2002. I’ve been active in local events and projects since our first BarCamp in 2006. And I’ve taken an amateur’s interests in other cities’ efforts to kickstart their own startup virtuous cycle – New York, Portland, Vancouver and others.
On Thursday, the House Committee on Administration will take a vote on the Fair Elections Now Act — the bill that we, along with many others, have been pushing for the past two years. The Committee will pass the bill. With a bit of luck, and a lot more pressure, the managers of the bill believe it could have the votes to pass the House as well. If they're right, and if the Speaker allows the bill to come to the floor, then for the first time in a generation, the House will have ratified fundamental and effective campaign finance reform.
This optimism will surprise many of you. As I've travelled to talk about this issue, the overwhelming attitude of people who want better from our government is that our government is incapable of giving us better. The House ratifying Fair Elections would be the first, and best evidence, this skepticism might be wrong. It would also be a testament to the extraordinary work of organizations like Public Campaign and Common Cause (especially the campaign director, David Donnelly), as well as many others, including MoveOn, the Coffee Party, You Street (as in "not K Street") and many of you. This victory would give American voters an idea worth fighting for. It would be a critical victory, at least if we can gather the final few votes needed in the House. (You can help in that by using our Whip Tool).
When Google’s services are blocked or filtered, we can’t serve our users effectively. That’s why we act every day to maximize free expression and access to information. To promote transparency around this flow of information, we’ve built an interactive online Transparency Report with tools that allow people to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked. We believe that this kind of transparency can be a deterrent to censorship.
After signing its intention to conform its copyright act to World Intellectual Property Organization standards 11 years ago, the Canadian government has introduced Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act, to fulfill that mandate.
But after the failure of two previous attempts — Bill C-60 and Bill C-61 both died on the vine due to unexpected election calls — some are warning the same fate could befall the CMA, especially since federal conservatives remain in charge and could be toppled by the opposition at any time.
Stevie Wonder launched his “Declaration of freedom for people with disabilities” which he said was “a call to action, a plan to empower the independence of people with disabilities by providing them with the tools to learn and grow.” In addressing ministers and policy-makers from WIPO’s 184 member states, he said, “through your legislative efforts, incentives can be created to advance the blind and visually disabled towards the promise of a better life.”
A senior judge has given the clearest indications so far that patience could be running out with “pay up or else” letters currently being sent out in their thousands to alleged file-sharers. At a hearing to authorize yet more, the judge called the schemes “a huge sledgehammer to crack a nut” adding that once the Digital Economy Act is in force, further applications may not be successful.
Perhaps in response to this, apparently Google is now asking people in their forums to identify books within Google Books that are in the public domain, so that Google can investigate and see if they should be opened up as public domain books (found via Glyn Moody).
The context is a discussion over whether it should be legal for users to strip off TUR (technological usage restrictions), also known as DRM, when the validation servers for their legally-purchased content (that is, music, video, and software) are shut down. Should Windows XP stop working when Microsoft shuts down its Genuine Disadvantage servers? Should people who bought “protected” music lose when Wal-Mart or Microsoft or Apple decide to shut down their authorization servers?
[...]
Now, we must understand that copyright and patents do not exist to enrich media and technology companies, but only to benefit society as a whole. The RIAA, the MPAA, and the BSA consist mostly of large and rich corporations. They are large and rich, I surmise, because misinterpretation of a simple clause of the Constitution into a near-perpetual right to compensation has enabled corporations and “stars” to get very high returns for their efforts. The bad thing about those ultra-high returns is the belief that they are entitled to them, which was the reason behind technological usage restrictions in the first place.
The US Supreme Court is weighing in on the first RIAA file sharing case to reach its docket, requesting that the music labels’ litigation arm respond to a case testing the so-called “innocent infringer” defense to copyright infringement.
The case pending before the justices concerns a federal appeals court’s February decision ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750—or $750 a track—for file-sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader. The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400—or $200 per song. That’s an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright act.
Musician Carole Pope has an op-ed in the Globe and Mail today calling on the government to reform Bill C-32 by extending the private copying to MP3 players. That approach was derided by both Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement as the iTax last spring and Clement tweeted a response today. Regardless of your view on the levy, the op-ed highlights just how divided the music industry in Canada is on Bill C-32. While sites like the CRIA-backed Balanced Copyright for Canada seek to project an image of strong support for the bill, the reality is that the Canadian music industry is deeply divided on many aspects of the proposed legislation. In fact, in recent weeks it has turned increasingly critical, touting the need to pass the bill, but simultaneously offering mounting criticism of its provisions.
Industry Minister Tony Clement’s iPod contains 10,452 songs, he told reporters on May 26, most of them transferred from CDs he bought. It’s a widespread practice generally known as “format shifting,” and in Canada, it’s illegal.
The theory behind copyright is simple – if we allow anyone to copy a good new idea, then no one will come up with the next one. The theory makes perfect sense – in theory. In previous posts, however, we have described how fashion designers, chefs, comedians and pornographers all continue to create, even though others are free to copy their fashion designs, recipes, jokes, and . . . images. In this post, we’ll take a look at something different: football.
enator Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA). This flawed bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites. The bill would also create two Internet blacklists. The first is a list of all the websites hit with a censorship court order from the Attorney General. The second, more worrying, blacklist is a list of domain names that the Department of Justice determines — without judicial review — are "dedicated to infringing activities." The bill only requires blocking for domains in the first list, but strongly suggests that domains on the second list should be blocked as well by providing legal immunity for Internet intermediaries and DNS operators who decide to block domains on the second blacklist as well. (It's easy to predict that there will be tremendous pressure for Internet intermediaries of all stripes to block these "deemed infringing" sites on the second blacklist.)
Read that bold part carefully. What this is saying is that despite the fact that you can be kicked off the internet based solely on accusations, not convictions, and despite all of the problems with false accusations and the fact that an IP address alone does not accurately identify an individual, and despite the fact that the massive number of notices being sent out mean that there will surely be false positives, the only people reviewing these notices to make sure they're accurate will be employed by the agent hired by the copyright holders themselves. Due process? It's dead.
As pressure on file-sharing continues to mount, many people are searching for ‘safer’ methods to acquire music. Today we bring news of an application that seems to be almost too good to be true. With a huge database of songs, Mulve delivers music to users’ desktops at amazing speeds at the touch of a button with zero uploading, meaning that “getting caught” is no longer a concern. Question is, how long will it last?
Country’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) confirms that no democratic institution in the UK has yet seen a draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
More news of the frighteningly secretive nature of the ongoing Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations has appeared with the confirmation by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office that no text of the treaty has yet been shared with any MP or the country’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
What this means, as has been the case in other countries where the ACTA is being debated, is that to date no democratic institution in the UK has seen a copy of the ACTA draft.
While it's not clear that it's done much, at least at the last few ACTA negotiation meetings, time has been set aside for various "civil society groups" to meet with the negotiators and ask some questions. Apparently, the ACTA negotiators would rather not do that anymore. Sean Flynn has detailed just how difficult the negotiators made it for such groups to attend the latest meeting in Tokyo. Everyone knew that the meeting was happening in Tokyo, but the rumors were that it started next week.
Nokia N900 user Interface
