07.25.10

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Games

  • Free PC game makes leap to consoles using brand new game engine

    First released as a free, open-source download for PC gamers in 2005, the fast-paced twitch shooter Nexuiz is to arrive on consoles as a downloadable title, powered by the tech behind visual feast Crysis 2.

    [...]

    Originally expected to launch during summer 2010, development studio Illfonic decided to re-code Nexuiz using Crytek’s CryEngine 3 after seeing it in action at E3. The team have until September to get that new version up and running in time for an appearance at the PAX Prime expo in Seattle.

• Distributions

  • On Variety and Linux

    Ernest Hemingway once said that one cat just leads to another. Somehow, the same happens with Linux: rarely is it that penguin lovers only try one distribution. Of course, the enormous variety of distributions can be frightening to beginners but, once they get over this initial reaction of confusion or fear, if they decide to learn, they benefit from the vast assortment that Linux provides. Yes, one Linux leads to another. Once you try several Linux distributions, you pick your favorite one and, in the process, you learn to navigate several other OSs. Today, that is TRULY A GOOD THING.

• Devices/Embedded

  • HawkBoard introduces open source embedded processor development board

    According to HawkBoard, the development board based on OMAP-L138 processor integrates an ARM 926 applications processor processor enables Linux developers to harness the power of floating-point DSP to design open source applications.

  • Android

    • Motorola Droid 2 Appears on Camera Showing Slide-Out QWERTY Keyboard [Motorola Droid 2 Gets Leaked Again, This Time In The Flesh Showing Off Slide-Out QWERTY Keyboard]

Free Software/Open Source

• The Role of Open Source

  In his latest pricing and licensing column, Doug Carolus of N’Compass Solutions discusses Digium, Asterisk, and open source software as it relates to enterprise communications. As an aside, Doug provides the best thumbnail definition of “free” software that I’ve heard, and one that’s good to keep in mind when thinking about this category of product. Open source software is “free” in the sense of “free” speech—i.e., relatively unrestricted—as opposed to “free” in the sense of “free” stuff—i.e., it costs you nothing. Theoretically, Asterisk doesn’t cost you anything either, but as Doug demonstrates, actually obtaining it and following through all the way to deployment in an enterprise is not at all without cost.

• Migrant starts up EOSS open source operation

  McArdle is developing an integration framework for a suite of open-source applications to ensure they all communicate with one another. He is pulling standard applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning, customer relationship management, database and records management, a web content management system and “telephony solutions”, all free open source products, into the framework. The integration element will include an enterprise service bus, a portal, rules management and business process management engines and an overarching administration and configuration console.

  The entire package will be known as EOSS, for Enterprise Open Source Solutions, with a company of the same name to sell and support it.

• TeamLab.com: Leveraging Employee Productivity for Zero Cost

  For companies which are interested in installing collaborative tools on their own servers or modifying the platform in accordance with their specific needs, TeamLab is offered as a free open-source software. TeamLab open-source solution is distributed under GNU GPL v3 license terms and listed in SourceForge open-source library.

• Open Source In The SME

  There is no doubt that open-source technologies have gained traction in small to midsized enterprises, especially when IT budgets are tight. But as enterprises take a hard look at open-source technologies, relevant issues must be considered before taking the plunge. Can open source really benefit the enterprise? What areas offer the most potential for SMEs? What are the potential concerns?

• How open source software can benefit a business

  The development of open-source software has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers, according to a report published by the Standish Group. That probably means that consumers who would have to pay to use those products, now may use them for free, under a special software license, which also allows users to contribute to further develop the concept.

• New Zealand Open Source Awards 2010 Now Open For Nominations

• The State of Open Source for the Smart Grid

  What’s the reason for the lack of adoption of open source software — software developed and shared by a community and available for free — for the power grid? Well, according to our Open Source Smart Grid Primer, published on GigaOM Pro (subscription required), some of the reasons for the lack of support is that utilities are risk averse, used to working with proprietary gear and vendors, and need to recover costs and earn profits on investments into their grid.

• Imixs Open Source BPM

  The Open Source Project Imixs Workfow provides a Business Process Management Solution based on Java.The project focus on human based business process solutions also known as workflow Management Systems (WfMS).

• The Luther Rice Seminary and University Partners with ByWater Solutions for Koha Support and Hosting

  ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the Luther Rice Seminary and University, of Lithonia, GA. has partnered with them for the hosting and support of their official Koha integrated library system installation.

• The ASF Asks: Have you met Apache Pivot?

  Did you know that 50% of the Top 10 downloaded Open Source products are Apache projects?
  Did you know that most Enterprise Java solutions are built using Apache?

• Vodafone

  • Vodafone Gives Away Its $30 Million Wayfinder As Open Source

    Two years after it bought Wayfinder for 230 million Swedish crowns (now $31 million) to power its location services, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) is now giving it away – it’s making almost all Wayfinder code available via open source.

  • Vodafone navigation software goes open source

  • Vodafone makes location software open source

• IBM

  • EGL Saga Continued

    Q. IBM is making EGL open source. What does this mean, really? Will IBM open source all of EGL? Or just parts, like a community edition?

    Darnell: The open source offering will definitely just be parts of EGL and its tooling. From my perspective, the best parts are slated to be made open source while some of the “baggage” is being left behind. For instance, the Java and JavaScript generation targets are definitely making the trip to open source but COBOL generation is being left out. Developers working to enhance EGL under the open source project won’t be burdened with ensuring compatibility with COBOL, nor will time have to be spent developing and testing COBOL generation, compile, and debug features.

    [...]

    Ultimately, I don’t expect the IBM i community to pay much attention to EGL going open source and I think that is a mistake on their part. I also don’t expect that IBM is going to go out of their way to sell EGL (in any form) to the IBM i community–a huge mistake on IBM’s part because EGL has so much to offer to that customer base. I suspect that IBM has a different audience in mind for EGL open source than their traditional customer base. Does that audience exist outside of the imaginations of IBM’s project team? Only time will tell.

• International

  • Liferay Continues Global Expansion with New Office in Brazil

    Liferay, Inc., provider of leading open source portal software for the enterprise, recently inaugurated a new office in Recife, one of Brazil’s growing IT centers, as part of an ongoing global growth strategy. The new office will act as a strategic center for sales, development, training and support services to the fast-growing South American market.

  • ‘Democratised web’ helps Malaysian’s life quality

    Prominent Malaysian software developer Colin Charles says the site, www.malaysiacrime.com, which is also available as a iPhone app, is made possible by Malaysia’s open source codes policy.

• Mail

  • Germany’s Regional Carrier NetCologne Replaces Webmail with Open-Xchange

    Open-Xchange, a provider of business-class open source e-mail and collaboration software, announced today an agreement with NetCologne, one of the largest regional telecommunication and Internet service providers in Germany, to replace its existing webmail solution with Open-Xchange. Plus, NetCologne will offer its users additional Open-Xchange groupware and mobility features as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

  • Germany’s Regional Carrier NetCologne Replaces Webmail With Open-Xchange

• Events

  • A panel debate on open source models – FWS-2010

  • Future World Symposium Debates the Domino Effects of Open Source

    The panel will be chaired by the journalist, author and passionate open source advocate Glyn Moody.

    Starting on the 15th September at London’s historic Lord’s Cricket Ground, the two-day conference seeks to unveil the paths of global technological innovation throughout the next decade.

  • Workshop on ‘Free and Open Source Software’ held in Velalar College campus

    The engineering and technology students were called upon to work together to promote and encourage the use of open source software at all possible levels of computing.

    Participating in the State-level workshop on Free and Open Source Software organised by the Free Software Foundation – Tamil Nadu at Velalar College of Engineering and Technology here on Saturday and Sunday, resource persons said that open source was a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process.

  • Report from 2010 Community Leadership Summit

    It’s hardly pertinent to summarize an unconference, because it’s all over the map by (lack of) design. Anyway, you don’t need me to tell you about the the topics at this year’s community leadership summit because you can view the wiki pages for the Saturday and Sunday sessions. What I like each year is the little space we all create for ourselves at CLS in a forlorn corner of an overwhelming, cold conference locale that makes it very hard to feel community.

  • OSCON

    • Palm and HP at OSCON2010: ‘Open source is inevitable’

      Palm was naturally a part of this presentation as many components of webOS are open source, from the Linux Kernel all the way up to the WebKit web browser and V8 JavaScript engine. Unfortunately, Robb didn’t really delve into how Palm fits into HP’s overall open source strategy as I anticipated he would – he mentioned the company maybe once or twice – and Josh Marinacci from developer relations gave a brief 15 minute demonstration of Ares and gave a few phones away at the end of the presentation.

    • How to make money in open source

    • Open Source users need to ‘pick up the poop’

    • Mayor Adams pitches technology, beer at OSCON

      Beer is near and dear to the open source community, though, and his remarks were well received. The mayor also plugged Portland’s commitment to open source in government, touting technology as a tool to interact and collaborate with citizens, a theme of this year’s conference.

• Mozilla

  • Firefox Just Perfected Tabbed Browsing. It’s Like Apple’s Expose Plus Spaces For The Web

• SaaS

  • When Buzzwords Collide: Open Source Meets the Cloud

    OpenStack, a new open source cloud computing initiative, is like the porcine ice cream.

• Databases

  • Apache CouchDB 1.0 Now Available for Free Download

• CMS

  • NSW council websites get open source overhaul

    Joomla vendor Jentla and its integrator, Energetica, won the Local-e contract following a competitive tender process involving both open source and proprietary bidders.

• Healthcare

  • Electronic Medical Records: Let’s Leave Room For Open Source

    After years of talk about taking medical records online, serious action is afoot. The Obama administration is waving $27 billion in incentives at doctors and medical offices to take records online, Verizon is touting its Health Information Exchange as a cloud-based way for records to be shared, and Google has a pilot project focused on electronic medical records, too. Will there be room for open source software solutions as the transition to electronic records begins in earnest?

• Funding

  • Puppet Labs Secures $5 Million Funding for Open-Source Server Automation

    Portland, Oregon-based Puppet Labs, commercial sponsor of the open-source server configuration framework Puppet, announced today that it has secured a $5 million Series B funding round, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Existing investors True Ventures and Radar Partners also contributed, bringing Puppet Labs’ total funding to date to over $7 million.

• Project Releases

  • FOSSology 1.2.0 released

    The FOSSology Project has announced the release of version 1.2 of their free software tools for the study and analysis of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The project began as an internal software development effort within Hewlett Packard’s (HP) Open Source and Linux Organisation. Using FOSSology, which originally only consisted of a few simple shell scripts, developers and IT buyers can locate open source software within an enterprise and perform various tasks, such as licence management.

  • OISF introduces new open source engine for intrusion detection

    The Open Information Security Foundation (OISF) has introduced Suricata 1.0, an Open Source engine for Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) that will secure networks against next-generation network security threats.

  • Open Information Security Foundation Launches Suricata 1.0

    The Open Information Security Foundation (OISF) today announced the introduction of Suricata 1.0, an Open Source engine for Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) that will secure networks against next-generation network security threats. Available immediately for download under the Open Source GPL (GNU General Public License) version 2, Suricata includes innovative new features that will enable it to identify and prevent more of the pressing security concerns faced by organizations today.

• Government

  • The open source level playing field

    In other words no more LA wide deals. None of the VLE or Assessment tracking agreements or MIS lockins are guaranteed anymore. It is one thing to accompany BECTA execs to see Bill Gates in Seattle then ‘help’ LAs back home to ‘make choices’ for schools than it is to jolly along thousands of Head Teachers.

    If it bodes ill for the likes of RM in education, DELL who is the second biggest hardware supplier in education and also features prominently in the Public Sector generally is feeling chill from the OGC so much that its public sector VP Ferenc Szelenyi was also moved to make a statement a tiny clip of which follows:

    ‘…the coalition government’s approach to public sector procurement is too one-sided…’

    this was after having just not been invited to a big meeting with the Cabinet Office attended by rivals HP, IBM and Fujistu!

• Licensing

  • Gostai Frees Urbi Kernel Source Under AGPL

    There’s one more free/open robot operating system option out there today. Jean-Christophe Baillie of Gostai SAS writes, “I thought you might be interested to know that the Urbi Operating System for robotics is now going open source.”. If you’re familiar with Urbi, you may know that the component architecture and library code have been free software licensed under the GPL but the actual Urbi kernel has been proprietary up until now. With this announcement, the kernel is being relicensed under the Affero GNU GPL v3, allowing it to join the other components as free software (or open source software if you prefer).

• Openness/Sharing

  • 15/07/10….Thame MP’s influence grows with new government

    The MP has been given the job after producing a blue-print for a reformed planning system before the election, called Open Source Planning. It is this document that will apparently underpin the reforms.

  • Open Source Senate

    Basically, open source software is software that can be tweaked and modified. It’s a way for developers like Headd to build new tools.

  • OpenGov Tracker puts the best open-government ideas in one place

    IdeaScale Application Programming Interface; Tornado, a lightweight, open-source web development framework; MongoDB, an open-source, document-oriented database; Googlechart, an API for chart generation; Uservoice, a free, Web feedback forum; and Github, a Web-based hosting service for projects that use Git revision control system.

• Programming

  • SourceForge Launches New Open Source Software Development Forge

  • SourceForge 2.0 beta: better tools for open source projects

    Our sister site has rolled out the beta of SourceForge 2.0, aimed at offering better tools and an improved experience for anyone developing open source projects. It’s a whole new forge development platform.

Leftovers

• The Nature of Science Blog Networks

  Much of the reflection has focussed around what ScienceBlogs, and indeed Nature Network is, or was, good for as a place to blog. Most have mentioned the importance of the platform in helping to get started and many have mentioned the crucial role that the linking from more prominent blogs played in getting them an audience. What I think no-one has noted is how much the world of online writing has changed since many of these people started blogging. There has been consolidation in the form of networks and the growth of the internet as a credible media platform with credible and well known writers. At the same time, the expectations of those writers, in terms of their ability to express themselves through multimedia, campaigns, widgets, and other services has outstripped the ability of those providing networks to keep up. I don’t think it’s an accident that many of the criticisms of ScienceBlogs seem to be similar to those of Nature Network when it comes to technical issues.

• Murdoch’s paywall will lose in the end, just like proprietary software

  Figures (albeit unofficial) released today claimed The Times’ website had lost two thirds of its readers since its paywall introduction, leaving just 15,000 clicking through. This was despite 150,000 registering for it when the trial was free.

• Security/Aggression

  • Ian Tomlinson and Misconduct in Public Office

    For it seems clear to me that on that day Simon Harwood wilfully misconducted himself to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in him as as a police officer without reasonable excuse or justification.

• Finance

  • An A.I.G. Failure Would Have Cost Goldman Sachs, Documents Show

    Since the United States government stepped in to rescue the American International Group in the fall of 2008, Goldman Sachs has maintained that it would have faced few if any losses had the insurer failed. Though it was the insurer’s biggest trading partner, Goldman contended that it had bought credit insurance from financial institutions that would have protected it, but it declined to identify the institutions.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Porn sites still up in China

    Word leaked out slowly, spread by Web-savvy folks on Twitter: Internet porn that once was blocked by Chinese government censors was now openly available.

  • Court Rules Bypassing Dongles Not a DMCA Violation

    tcrown007 sends along an appeals court ruling that, for once, limits the reach of the Digital Milenium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention clause.

• Copyrights

  • ISPs ask government to protect them from ‘policing’ role

    ISPs have called on the government to protect them from having to police their networks for copyright infringement, arguing that such a regulatory change would lead to “de facto censorship”.

  • Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits Now Target Private Trackers

    Mass lawsuits against alleged file-sharers, such as those from the US Copyright Group and lawyers ACS:Law and Gallant MacMillan in the UK, are generally accepted to have been generated from evidence gathered from big public BitTorrent sites. Now it appears that at least one other firm has jumped on the bandwagon, this time targeting a large private tracker.