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Links 10/1/2012: Linux 3.3 Plans, More Desktops With GNU/Linux





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Prof: Schools moving to OpenSim should pay for hosting


  • Google's Open Source Video Player
    Perhaps Google isn't all bad these days! A new open source HTML5 video player is yours for the download. As well as being a good showcase app it is also practically useful. It is the architectural core of the new 60 Minutes and RedBull.tv apps available in the Chrome Web Store.


  • Google open sources new HTML5 video tool
    Google chose the PR graveyard shift slot of 4:30 USA Pacific time on Friday afternoon last week to put out its latest communiqué to us, the consuming masses.

    The 'search giant' has pushed its latest HTML5 video tool to open source.

    The new Video Player Sample is built with open web technology and is designed to allow developers (and other users) to wrap video up in the required code to be able to release it as a web store application.


  • Rackspace open-sources Dreadnot for failure-free software deployment with Node.js


  • IBM Delivers Open Source Version of EGL Tools


  • Consolidation enables open source software strategy


  • AT&T Signs On With OpenStack Open-Source Cloud
    AT&T on Monday officially signed on with the OpenStack cloud, the Rackspace- and NASA-created open-source cloud computing project.


  • An Interactive eGuide: Open Source


  • ChannelEyes Social Media Cloud Built On Open Source


  • OSQA, the open source Q&A system
    OSQA is the free, open source Q&A system you’ve been waiting for. Your OSQA site is more than just an FAQ page, it is a full-featured Q&A community. Users earn points and badges for useful participation, and everyone in the community wins.


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • The new MPL
        Last week the Mozilla Foundation released version 2.0 of the Mozilla Public License. Immediately recognized as a free software license by the Free Software Foundation and approved as an Open Source license by the Open Source Initiative, MPL 2.0 is a well-crafted modern license that ought to be considered by any open source project desiring a weak copyleft licensing policy.






  • Databases



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Unused LibreOffice Code Expunged
      The more code an application accumulates, the heavier it gets and the slower it performs usually. It's just basic physics of programming. Since years of neglect left lots of unused code in LibreOffice, contributors have been busy cleaning it up. The latest scan by Michael Meeks shows the efforts are really paying off.




  • Project Releases

    • LSU Releases First Open Source ParalleX Runtime Software System
      Louisiana State University's Center for Computation & Technology (CCT) has delivered the first freely available open-source runtime system implementation of the ParalleX execution model. The HPX, or High Performance Parallex, runtime software package is a modular, feature-complete, and performance oriented representation of the ParalleX execution model targeted at conventional parallel computing architectures such as SMP nodes and commodity clusters.




  • Public Services/Government

    • NASA: Prize money a bargain for better software
      In October 2010, NASA and the Harvard Business School launched the NASA Tournament Lab, an online platform for contests between independent programmers who compete to create software and algorithms and solve computational problems.




  • Licensing

    • Mozilla Releases OSI-Approved MPLv2
      Last week saw a quiet landmark in the history of the open source movement with the formal release of version two of the Mozilla Public License (MPLv2) and its approval as an official open source license. While to many it may look like just another legal detail, it is significant both for the way it was conducted and for the intent with which it has been created. This is a license aimed at unity.


    • 2011: Top Ten FOSS Legal Developments
      This year, 2011, was one of the most active years in legal developments in FOSS. This activity reflects the increase in FOSS use: Laura Wurster of Gartner, noted in the Harvard Business Review blog that open source has hit a “strategic tipping point” this year with companies increasingly focused on using “open source” software for competitive rather than cost reasons http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=619.




  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming

    • Zend Updates PHP Server Stack for IBM i
      Zend Technologies has launched a major update to Zend Server for IBM i, its PHP server stack for the IBM i platform. Version 5.6 marks the general availability of the new XML Toolkit, which provides a new way for integrating RPG logic into PHP apps, and a new application deployment mechanism. DBi, the drop-in replacement for MySQL on the platform that was slated for release about this time, is not yet ready.






Leftovers





  • Finance

    • REO To Rental Fed Plan Would Do Little For Housing, Says Goldman Sachs
      The Federal Reserve's foreclosure rental program would do little to lift the ailing housing market, Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a research paper released on Friday morning.

      The analysis, written in response to a Federal Reserve paper released earlier this week, calculates the nationwide effects of renting foreclosed properties as "positive but modest," possibly fostering a 0.5 percent increase in home prices in the first year of program implementation, and a 1 percent increase in the second year. But those are Goldman's maximum increases, and the researchers are quick to add that the "actual effect would likely be less."


    • Goldman's Infamous 'Sh*tty Deal' Turns Out Not To Have Been As Sh*tty As Others
      The infamous Abacus transaction that cost Goldman Sachs $550 million might have been designed to fail, but it turns out that it actually performed better than its peers, according to a new study co-authored by BlackRock and Columbia Business School.

      The Abacus CDOs' performance, "while undoubtedly bad, was actually better than average among all bonds that had been similarly packaged."




  • Copyrights

    • Copying the copyrighted is okay if it transforms: What's that?
      Writing in the New York Times, Randy Kennedy reports on a court decision that would make it illegal to use most work of others still under copyright as the basis for new works which "transform" the original link here.

      "The decision, by Judge Deborah A. Batts, set off alarm bells throughout Chelsea and in museums across America that show contemporary art. At the heart of the case, which Mr. Prince is now appealing, is the principle called fair use, a kind of door in the bulwark of copyright protections. It gives artists (or anyone for that matter) the ability to use someone else's material for certain purposes, especially if the result transforms the thing used or as Judge Pierre N. Leval described it in an influential 1990 law review article, if the new thing "adds value to the original" so that society as a whole is culturally enriched by it. In the most famous test of the principle, the Supreme Court in 1994 found a possibility of fair use by the group 2 Live Crew in its sampling of parts of Roy Orbison's "Oh Pretty Woman" for the sake of one form of added value, parody."






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