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01.17.10

Links 17/1/2010: New Pardus, Puredyne GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 10:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What Developers Think

    The majority of developers still write code on Windows PCs, but when they deploy apps, almost one in four targets Linux as their primary deployment operating system. And while 5% of developers have moved to a Mac as their primary development machine, most of them are targeting Linux or Windows as a primary deployment operating system, not OS X.

    Linux’s popularity has grown as more developers build Web applications and shift their focus to the server components, especially in the Java/Web space. The economies of scale when deploying to a LAMP stack, or Linux/Apache/Tomcat or Linux/Apache/JBoss combinations, make Linux on the server an attractive proposition. This is especially true in environments making heavy use of virtualization, since developers don’t have to stop and ask, “Do I have a license for that image I just created?”

  • The difference between Linux and windows settings

    Linux and windows have very different ways of storing their installed program settings. Before windows 95 came along they used to be very similar. With Linux all program settings are stored in individual configuration files. These are often well commented files which can be changed to modify the default behaviour of programs. Pre-windows 95 these type of files were called *ini files and served the same purpose. Current versions of windows use what is called a registry database which is a single file where all program settings are centrally stored. There are advantages and disadvantages to these two methods. I will discuss each one. First of all I will ramble on about the windows method.

  • Education: Malaysian TelCo to sponsor Netbook/broadband package for students

    TM has a golden opportunity to reverse that trend: if it were to introduce the systems with Linux pre-installed, the students would realise that it a viable – and completely workable – alternative to Windows. And that OpenOffice.Org is a genuine alternative to MS Office. Firefox and other browsers easily match IE and the new Thunderbird 3 is an excellent mail program.

  • RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser steps down

    Earlier this month, RealNetworks announced the acquisition of Linux-based solutions provider Varia Mobile, feeding speculation the company plans to introduce cloud-based content services.

  • A Comparison of IRC support between GNU/Linux distributions

    Finding a quick solution for your problems in any distribution is the main reason to make you rely on it. Therefore, the major distributions have many ways to provide support to their users. Among them, IRC support provides a way to communicate quickly and more interactively with users.

    [...]

    The numbers of IRC nicknames may reflect the actual number of the users for each distribution. Ubuntu, the most popular distribution, has the largest number of IRC nicknames over the six days. Mandriva has the smallest number of IRC nicknames. The activity of channel is an important thing and all distributions show that you can find an active support channel any time you want help.

  • 2010

    • A Decade’s Worth of Linux Goodness: Top 10 Linux Planet Stories 2009

      The Number One most popular story of 2009 is Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ How Many Linux Users Are There (Really)?.

    • Looking forward to 2010

      Your editor, not generally known for his good sense, has long made a tradition of putting together a set of Linux-related predictions at the beginning of each year and posting them for the world to see. There is no particular source of inside knowledge behind these predictions, and no real reason to give them more credence than is merited by much of the material found in one’s spam folder. Still, it’s a fun exercise in pondering how things could go and trying to guess what the important themes will be.

    • The decade in management ideas

      6. Open source technology. Purist geeks may point out that the concept of “open source” technology developed in the late 1990s. But it was in the last decade that the model spread beyond software code. How many things have been “wiki’ed” since Wikipedia launched in 2001?

  • Events

  • Audio

  • Desktop

    • Analysis: Will Ubuntu Take Windows 7 In Speed War?

      One potential key to the Ubuntu community’s goal of a 10-second boot time is its technology called “Upstart,” which the community describes as “an event-based replacement” for its current boot management code, which will handle “starting of tasks and services during boot, stopping them during shutdown and supervising them while the system is running.” In the Windows ecosystem, Microsoft and PC makers have approached the boot-time issue in a number of disparate ways and approaches, including so-called “instant on” technology as well as hibernation and other similar features. Upstart will be baked right into Ubuntu, and Lucid Lynx will provide the first, best look at how it all does. We decided to give it a whirl with the Alpha version. Installed on a PC built with an Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 at 2.80 GHz and 2 GB of RAM, Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 1 produced a boot time of 20 seconds. While that’s twice as much time as Shuttleworth is shooting for, it’s still pretty good. When Windows 7 Ultimate was installed on the same PC, it registered a 30-second boot time. (For measure, we also installed Fedora 12 Linux on the PC, and it took a little longer than Windows 7, but with more security features to load.)

    • The Free Ubuntu Operating System

      If you have just upgraded and have an old PC or laptop lying around then I strongly recommend before you get rid of your old machine that you install Ubuntu and give it a try. I think you will be very pleased and very impressed. I know I was.

    • From Linux VM on Windows to Windows VM on Linux

      For more than a decade, I had been a big fan of Microsoft Software, especially Windows and Office (just a fan, not a fanboy). Once in a while, when a new distro Linux comes out, I used to try it for a day or two and forget about it. And if I had to use it for a long time, I used to do create a virtual machine for linux, which again never lasted more than few weeks.

    • Ubuntu for Windows users

      QUESTIONS that I get in the mail show that quite a number of Windows users are curious about what to expect when they make the jump to Linux.

      While answering one such question this week, I realized that I’ve already written quite a bit about how things are done in Linux as opposed to Windows, but that these snippets were scattered over many columns over the last three years. I thought it might be useful to gather that information in one column, where it might help more Windows users to make the switch to Ubuntu Linux.

    • Linux Tech Support

  • Server

    • 3D Avatar – Linux Supercomputer – Of Course

      Having read about the super-computing power required to make the 3D film “Avatar”, and that the O/S on that system was of course Linux, I went to see it. Well, to be honest, I was going to see it anyway with my wife and granddaughter. On a previous blog someone asked whether GNU/Linux gets any mention in the credits.

    • Back in fashion

      In addition, IBM is trying to get customers to use mainframes for more functions. For some years it has offered specialised add-on processors at considerably lower prices, to run a greater variety of programs, mostly based on Linux, an open-source operating system. And last year IBM started bundling mainframes with applications at a discount.

    • Future Hosting Goes ‘Rebootless’ with Ksplice Uptrack Technology

      Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, today announced it has adopted Ksplice Uptrack™, a new technology enabling upgrades and maintenance on Linux servers without the need to reboot the system.

  • Google

    • Asus choosing between Chrome and Android

      Asus has prototype Android and Chrome OS smartbooks in its labs and is currently deciding whether to release an ARM-based device alongside its Intel-based Eee PC netbooks, the company’s chairman has told ZDNet UK.

    • Google Chrome “Goats Teleported” Easter Egg for Linux

      The folks at Google and in-fact lots of other major companies have a knack for hiding Easter eggs within their products. We have covered several such Easter Eggs in the past.

      However, we can across another Easter Egg in Google Chrome where users can teleport goats from the Task Manager. This is basically available on version 4.0.266.0 of the Linux version of Chrome.

  • Platform Support

  • Kernel Space

    • Tuning the Linux Kernel’s Completely Fair Scheduler

      With version 2.6, the Linux kernel became fully preemptible. The preemption configuration options determine how often the schedule() function performs a context switch. The CONFIG_PREEMPT_NONE option was the standard behavior of the kernel prior to version 2.6. Under this mode, kernel processes are not subject to preemption. The CONFIG_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY option allows a kernel process to be voluntarily preempted. While the CONFIG_PREEMPT forces preemption, except in those cases where a kernel process is holding a lock. Only one option is selected.

    • Graphics Stack

      • R600/700 Mesa Driver Picks Up Blit Support

        While a blitter module was introduced for Gallium3D that uses the 3D engine for blitting, this doesn’t help those without blit support that are still running the “classic” Mesa driver stack. Over the night, however, blit support has arrived for the ATI R600/700 Mesa driver. This support arrived in the form of three commits (1, 2, 3) that increase the driver’s code-base by around 2,000 lines of code.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Konqueror kicking ass again

      Recently I found a site with HTTP Content-Disposition header tests and their results. First that was only tested with Konqueror 3.5.8 from an ancient Knoppix CD, which the author quickly updated after I pointed him to the openSUSE 11.2 KDE Live CD.

    • KDE Italia Announces New Website

      The admins and editors behind the Italian KDE Portal and forum are proud to announce the availability of the new KDE Italia site.

      By announcing the availability of both the new site and the forum (which is on the official kde.org forums now), the KDE Italia team invites everyone to visit and have a look. There’s not much there for now, but content is growing every hour thanks to the dedicated team working on it!

  • Distributions

    • Pardus 2009.1 Released

      The Turkish GNU/Linux distribution Pardus 2009.1 has been released. Pardus is a Linux distribution developed as a product of the Pardus Project, by Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), which is under the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and by volunteered contributors. It is named after the Latin (and scientific) name for the Anatolian leopard, Panthera pardus tulliana.

    • My Pardus 2009.1 Experience

      Pardus 2009 really rubbed me the right way. Pardus 2009.1 was just an confirmation of what I thought the first time around. I use GNOME in my everyday work and it’s a real treat to explore such a great looking and behaving KDE distro. I’ve used many KDE distros but this is one of my favorites because everything flows so well, looks good, and is overall just easy to use. These are all big factors in getting newbies on board and keeping them there. Overall, definitely worth a look for basic Linux users and newbies.

    • Open Xange 2010, Released

      OpenXange 2010 is an “only open source softwares” version of Xange, a Fedora based Operating system. Its actually a combo of Fedora, KDE and only Open source softwares. This is the first release of Open Xange. Xange, previously known as Vixta is aimed to be similar to windows in look and feel but since its based on Linux, its far more awesome than windows . Open Xange can prove to be a good alternative for windows users, worth trying out.

    • Red Hat Family

      • fedora-release-rawhide coming to a rawhide near you soon

        Overall I think this is a good thing for our users and hopefully won’t inconvenience our rawhide folks too much.

      • Fedora 13 Gains Features, Progresses

        The current Fedora 13 feature list with detailed explanations and status information is available from the Fedora Project Wiki. Yesterday we also delivered the first Fedora 13 benchmarks from a nightly build. The final release of Fedora 13 is expected in May while the first Alpha release is expected to arrive in early March.

    • Debian Family

      • Canonical To Bring Closed Source Apps Like iTunes And Photoshop To Ubuntu?!?!

        Among these applications one can find: Spotify, Pandora, Hulu, Skype, WoW, Picasa, Adobe Photoshop, Apple iTunes and more.

      • Photoshop, iTunes and Evernote to appear on Ubuntu?
      • My open-source destiny: less hobbyist, more regular user, with stability the goal (and Debian Lenny the means of reaching it)

        I took that as a sign to return to the OS I’ve used on more machines and probably for more time than any other: Debian GNU/Linux (Debian uses the GNU, so I will too, for the moment anyway).

        I started running Debian Etch soon after it went stable in April 2007, and in December 2009, I again returned to the Stable branch of Debian, now Lenny (yes, every Debian release is named after a “Toy Story” character)

      • Ubuntu Women Project

        The Ubuntu-Women project “is a team functioning under Ubuntu to provide a platform and encouragement for women to contribute to Ubuntu-Linux” Women are generally under-represented in Free/Open Source software and this project seeks to get more women involved in free software in general and in Ubuntu in particular.

        The project was founded in 2006, according to the project wiki and it is currently quite active. There is a mailing list, an IRC channel (#ubuntu-women at irc.freenode.net), a forum and even its own planet.

      • Dell outs the beefy OptiPlex XE desktop

        The OptiPlex XE just went on sale today and starts off at $709 and can be equiped with either Windows 7, Vista, XP, Ubuntu Linux, or POSReady 1.

      • Dell Unveils OptiPlex XE For Retail, Healthcare

        The OptiPlex XE supports Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, and XP, along with POSReady and Ubuntu Linux. The latter is available only in China.

      • Grow Your Own Cloud Servers With Ubuntu

        You can install the default Ubuntu OS images or create your own to be virtualized. The node controllers are where you can run the virtual machine (VM) instances of the images.

      • Ubuntu 9.10 at 120Mhz, 80Mb

        Ordinarily Ubuntu and Debian won’t even install on 16Mb of memory — the installer program (yes, even the floppy-based installer program) crashes and burns without 32Mb of memory. In fact, neither OS will even boot without 20-30Mb of memory, regardless of how you get the system on there. (It’s always possible that different architectures have different memory demands; perhaps a different machine could boot on less.)

      • Back from Debian: Meeting up with old Ubuntu.

        What is weird is that, I can’t decide whether I want to use Debian or Ubuntu. Debian Squeeze is pretty awesome because the modifications are minimal, and it’s always updating but after a while I did get some major updates and it became really slow all of a sudden, and I wasn’t really into it anymore. So I reinstalled Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope, and it’s surprisingly the same slowness as an aging Debian Squeeze installation. I think these installations get slow because of the dependencies being install from the beginning of use. But, it’s hard to tell. It could also be due to upgraded packages which have different configurations. I’m not entirely sure.

    • Ubuntu Derivatives

      • Ylmf OS now available in English

        Remember the Ylmf that we mentioned few months back, the one that tries to bring XP interface to the Ubuntu? Well, English version of it is now ready for download. All the usual Microsoft Alternatives have been included – Openoffice (in place of Microsoft Office), Pidgin (in place of WLM) and so on.

      • Newly-Minted

        Linux Mint 8 x86_64 (with Mint’s improved GNOME desktop) recently came out. So my nephew and I got together for an installation fest. I didn’t have much data on this computer, because I had already been planning for this ever since the other one died in October. We did our backups, then I stuck the LiveCD into his Inspiron and tested out the desktop. It recognized that there was a proprietary driver available for his WiFi card. We didn’t try the driver out, but everything seemed good in LiveCD mode, except one thing. His one year-old laptop’s hard drive is bad. Not having any funds to replace it, we went ahead and installed on it, but everything we did was a struggle.

      • Upgrading: x64 edition, version 7 to version 8

        Comparison with Ubuntu:

        * Upgrading Ubuntu is not safer than upgrading Linux Mint. It’s equally risky.
        * Ubuntu doesn’t mention the risks involved in package and release upgrades. Their policy is to fix whatever gets broken and to assume that the regressions caused on your system will get solved by future upgrades.
        * Linux Mint insists on these risks and recommends a prudent approach to upgrades. Our policy is to avoid possible regressions by being selective on the updates we recommend to you.
        * Upgrading Ubuntu is easy, and easier than upgrading Linux Mint. It shouldn’t be though, and if there’s any risk involved in you braking your system, then the least we can do is to write a long boring post about it, to make you think twice about doing it, and to throw warning signs at you before you click on the shiny button :)

      • Trying Mint – I likes what I sees.

        While my initial plan for January was to stick with Windows 7 and perhaps try out Fedora 12, a bad DVD interrupted the Fedora install progress. Out of sheer convenience, I’d planned on running Linux Mint in a VM and had pulled the ISO earlier in the week. “Aha!” I thought. “I’ll install this instead of Fedora and see what’s what.”

      • Puredyne 9.10 released

        Puredyne is a GNU/Linux live distribution aimed at creative people,
        looking for tools outside the standard. It provides the best
        experimental creative applications alongside a solid set of graphic,
        audio and video tools in a fast, minimal package. For everything from
        sound art to innovative filmmaking.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Why embedded OS’s are like mammals

      But what OS is in the box? Unsurprising perhaps is the dominance of Linux in this space. I should perhaps say unsurprising to me, as it does appear to have achieved a level of “de facto” status among many of my old programming colleagues.

    • VIA puts out M’SERV 2100 home media server

      The VIA M’SERV S2100 supports Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 Foundation, along with Linux distributions that include Ubuntu, SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 Service Pack 2 and FreeBSD. Sales are so far reserved for OEMs and system integrators.

    • Favi debuts RIOLED-Q and RIOLED-V wireless pico projectors

      Based on Linux, users can run a number of programs including YouTube, Flickr, e-mail clients, web browsers and more. It’s being touted as a netbook/projector. There’s also a USB port, A/V output, a SM/MMC card reader and internal memory (though its not clear how much).

    • Looking ahead to the Consumerization of IT and virtualization in 2010

      If Android is in a washing machine, then I have Linux and everything that is available to Linux in that washing machine … just think of the Folding at Home scores you can rack up if we linked the neighborhood washing machines up!! Think about all the data that will need to be stored when they start tracking wash cycles of a particular garment via RFID!!!

    • Enea Enhances Optima Software Tools to Simplify Multicore Development

      Enea Optima 2.2 features new capabilities for rapidly developing complex embedded multicore applications including enhanced profiling, analysis and memory management.

    • Phones

      • Why aren’t Linux phones using SyncML?

        As you would correctly guess Exchange and the accompanying ActiveSync are proprietary software, and though you may not have heard of SyncML (unless you’ve read my previous blog) it is the exact opposite of Exchange — that is, a platform-independent and open standard for synchronizing data. To be crystal clear, SyncML has been partially realized on the N900 (Exchange is fully supported out of the box) but is lacking a key feature. From the Maemo Sync Wiki:

        The N900 provides SyncML over Bluetooth and USB but not IP.

      • Windows Stationary Usurped by Linux Android, Moblin

        LG announced that more than half its new smartphones will use Android, the common operating system among the Nexus One, Droid, G1, and so on.

        Windows Mobile seems like Windows Stationary, as Microsoft’s Version 7 of its operating system seems to be MIA. In the interim, the business ecosystems of the iPhone and Android and even Moblin continue to grow and perhaps flourish. Capturing huge marketshare is what Microsoft is all about, so I find it head-scratchingly strange that Windows Mobile is so far behind.

      • Android

        • King Yung showcases 7 inch Android netbook, 10 inch tablet

          Over the past 2 years, I’ve seen a lot of 7 inch mini-notebooks with ARM or MIPS based processors. Most run Windows CE or some flavor of Linux. This week I came across a model running Google Android, which is the first time I’ve seen that OS on one of these generic netbooks. I’m sure it won’t be the last.

        • ZTE announces Android push, will ship phones in Q1

          Chinese network equipment vendor ZTE has joined the growing number of phone manufacturers using Android. It plans to launch smartphones based on the operating system in the first quarter of this year, it said Thursday.

      • Nokia

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Jolicloud Pre-Beta Release

        Jolicloud is a respin of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR), with the addition of significant new functionality through a slick and shiny menu system which incorporates a point-and-click method for system updates and the adding/deleting new software. The system itself runs solidly and is fully functional, but the overall effort feels like it needs a further push to make it something truly new. The “MyJolicloud” feature will appeal to new users and recent Linux converts as it makes adding new programs incredibly easy, and concentrates an array of content in one easy to use place.

      • Simmbook – Another Light Netbook Launched

        Simmbook offers operating system to choose between Ubuntu 9.10 and Windows XP SP2.

      • Recycling Netbooks

        Another case that is still ongoing is a family who will be going to Africa for a couple of months in the coming summer. They wanted a sturdy portable system to take along which they could use to unload and view pictures from digital cameras, keep trip logs, and perhaps access the internet when and if possible. Once again the Mini-Note came out, but this time it will be “for keeps”. I reloaded Mint, so they would be making a clean start, made sure the packages they would need were on it, and gave them a brief introduction to it.

      • Intel Does Not Have Any Competitive Advantages – ARM.

        Mr. East is sure that going forward various versions of Linux will provide similar experience.

        [...]

        “If you look at what’s been accomplished in 18 months to two years and compare that to the 25 years of the Wintel monopoly, it’s clear that the consumer experience on Linux-based desktops … in a relatively short period of time is catching up quickly,” said chief executive officer of ARM.

      • Intel Not a Strong Presence on the Mobile Market, ARM CEO Claims

        The ARM CEO concedes to the fact that the PC market is rightfully aimed at x86 chips, but says that the mobile segment is still ARM’s territory. He also believes that versions of the Linux operating system will provide an experience similar to Windows, seeing how, according to him, consumers aren’t concerned with the OS as long as the device performs well and has a working, comprehensive interface.

      • MSI To Ship U135 Netbook With Moblin Linux 2.1

        MSI is planning to ship the MSI U135 netbook with Moblin, a version of Linux, according to a recent press release.

      • Closer look at the eMachines EM250 netbook

        if you’re looking for a more detailed overview, YouTube member a1mega has posted an 8 minute video showing the netbook running Windows 7 Starter Edition as well as Jolicloud, a custom Linux distribution designed for netbooks.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Boxee Beta – The Best Media Center App for Your TV

    The Boxee beta brings the best media the Internet has to offer and your personal media all under one roof. The interface to watch TV on Internet is clean and easy to browse with a remote, but works great with a mouse and keyboard if you don’t have one.

  • Gource: Open Source visualization of Open Source

    When I think about the challenges we face in America, which we are all coming to realize are a lot bigger, a lot more complex, and a lot more unavoidable and non-negotiable than we ever let ourselves believe in the past, and I look at the arguments against action that amount to “it’s too difficult and too costly,” I’m reminded of the truly democratic approach that Estonia demonstrated in 2008, and I wonder: what can we not do if we function as a community? The Gource visualization of the Cobbler project shows just how powerful a few visionaries and a strong community can be.

  • Open Source BI Makes a Beginning

    Globally, open source BI solutions are in huge demand, with interest picking up in a huge way during the recession. Open source BI products from vendors such as Pentaho and Jaspersoft have evolved from being community-driven tools to being backed up by support from professional service vendors. In India, awareness levels are low and the market is at a nascent stage. However, the potential for adoption is huge—especially among SMEs—a market that is made of over 6 million Indian enterprises, contributing to 42 percent of India’s total exports.

  • Prediction #8: Open Source CEP Won’t Impact the Market, But Open Source Will

    Although event processing platforms is robust and proven, there is still constant innovation in the space. Although the efforts of open source projects Esper and Cayuga are admirable they both miss the importance of simplicity through graphical event languages and powerful development tools. They also aren’t proven for mission critical usage, or optimized for the high performance, low latency demands.

  • 5 things I have learned from Free and open source software

    1. Centralized control isn’t worth it

    When one single governing body gains absolute control over something, it is only a matter of time before that governing body increases its power tremendously. Many times, it does this in order to avoid vice, but counterintuitively, only ends up creating more of it in the process. Take any modern established proprietary software company that started out in the 60’s or 70’s for example.

  • PTFS to Acquire LibLime

    Progressive Technology Federal Systems, Inc. (PTFS), an industry-leading library solutions provider and developer of the ArchivalWare digital library and content management software, has announced it will acquire LibLime, the global leader in open-source software solutions for libraries. The transaction is expected to close before the end of January 2010.

    “PTFS has supported ILS solutions for 15 years and is committed to resolving community differences and advancing Koha open source library technology. At a time when many libraries are experiencing budget cuts, PTFS’s LibLime division plans to significantly enhance this highly cost effective library automation alternative,” commented John Yokley, PTFS CEO.

  • GenISys, Juspertor Accelerate Design-Manufacturing Transition

    Juspertor originated from the Open-Source project LayoutEditor (www.LayoutEditor.net).

  • Businesses urged to embrace custom web hosting

    Small businesses can make significant savings by embracing open source software and web services, it has been claimed.

  • Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Portland

    Entrepreneur and Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton manages to keep a foot in both the open source community and the iPhone community. While Urban Airship focuses on building out iPhone infrastructure for developers, Kveton is also well known for working with Oregon State University to start the Open Source Lab – the first state-wide open source development curriculum. Coupled with the fact that O’Reilly’s OSCON and the Linux creator Linus Torvalds call the region home, Oregon’s developers understand the value of shared knowledge and community. When asked how the open source movement has shaped Oregon’s entrepreneurs, Kveton replies, “Portland has a live free or die attitude. We engage in community and unlike other groups we really share our knowledge.”

  • Systems on Chip LLC Announces the Wireless Open Source Developers Program

    Systems on Chip LLC, an Atlanta based wireless design firm, announced today the launch of Wireless Open Source, an online forum designed to allow developers to fast track wireless cellular hardware and software product development with minimal time and cost.

  • Gauging Your Open Source Appetite

    One issue that gives IT organizations cause for pause when it comes to open source is the whole issue of support. In particular, when it comes to open source applications, some IT organizations fret that the level of support they get from open source vendors in terms of help with the underlying operating system and middleware is not as deep as it is in comparison to providers of proprietary applications.

  • Bob Mann joins Openbravo as new Chairman of the Board

    A leader in operating global companies, Mr. Mann directed the expansion of Siebel Systems in Europe in 1995, building its sales and marketing operations across the region. Prior to his role at Siebel, he was Vice President at Legent, where he executed strategy to realize European revenues of $175 million.

  • Growing 100x through inbound marketing

    Open source was an incredible calling card that we could use to determine what customers were interested in. Now we just needed to figure out how to harvest that interest. It worked for MySQL as a startup, but how would these techniques apply in a bigger company like Sun? Pretty well, as the graph below illustrates.

    We achieved more than 100-fold growth during the year in terms of top-of-funnel raw leads as well as qualified BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe) and pre-BANT leads. And while there was sometimes skepticism that online marketing activities could generate real revenues, we finished calendar Q4 with a sales-accepted pipeline value that would be on par with what you might see in a 5- to 10-year-old startup company.

  • VoIP

  • Health

  • Java

    • Terracotta polishes Quartz job scheduler

      Having bolted the open source Ehcache Java caching software it bought to its Java application clustering environment, Terracotta has now added the Quartz job scheduler it acquired as 2009 was winding down.

    • Genuitec to introduce MyEclipse IDE for the Spring Framework

      Genuitec will introduce on Tuesday a version of its MyEclipse IDE for use with the popular open-source Spring Framework for Java development, sans the backing of the major developer of the framework itself, SpringSource.

    • SpringSource Offers dm Server to Eclipse

      SpringSource wants the Eclipse community to take over ongoing development of its dm Server.

      The chief commercial sponsor of the open source Spring Framework project announced on Tuesday that a proposal to make dm Server part of the Eclipse Runtime Project had already been submitted to Eclipse.org under the project name “Virgo.”

    • OLS Dialog: An open-source front end to the Ontology Lookup Service

      With the growing amount of biomedical data available in public databases it has become increasingly important to annotate data in a consistent way in order to allow easy access to this rich source of information. Annotating the data using controlled vocabulary terms and ontologies makes it much easier to compare and analyze data from different sources.

      [...]

      We have therefore created a Java front end to the Ontology Lookup Service, called the OLS Dialog, which can be plugged into any application requiring the annotation of data using controlled vocabulary terms, making it possible to find and use controlledvocabulary terms without requiring any additional knowledge about web services or ontology formats.

  • Internet

    • Eucalyptus Private Cloud Software Takes Off in 2009

      Eucalyptus Systems, Inc., creators of the leading open source private cloud platform, today announced that since its inception last April, uptake of the open source Eucalyptus cloud software is rapidly increasing, with downloads directly from the Eucalyptus website reaching more than 15,000 per month, across 120 countries on every continent except Antarctica. Eucalyptus is also shipping as the built-in open source cloud with every copy of the Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition Linux distribution, further extending Eucalyptus’ market reach and helping establish it as the standard for secure, on-premise, private cloud computing.

    • How Hadoop startup Cloudera is evolving

      The company started life as the Red Hat for Hadoop — a provider of paid support for the open-source data management platform.

    • Open Source Clouds On The Rise

      Cloud computing has the potential to transform how government agencies tap into IT services, and open source is an underlying technology in several of the early government clouds that have been developed.

      We have yet to see the federal government issue a position on open source clouds, but it’s clear that agencies have a green light to move ahead with open source and cloud computing. It’s only a matter of time before these two trends come together in the form of open source clouds.

    • Nat Geo Relaunches Site With Open-Source Spirit

      National Geographic rebuilt the site internally using an open-source framework called “Django.” This approach lets the developers plug new modules easily into the site, like upcoming community and social media features. It also allows other developers to work with the company to advance new features.

    • WCM Field Notes: Give Open Source A Chance

      There seems to be a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding open source content management these days. Last week, I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak at a British Computer Society Open Source event but was rather surprised by the lack of agreement about Open Source Software (OSS).

    • Lotus gets open source infusion from Alfresco

      Alfresco will ship software to integrate its content management software with IBM Lotus software, in particular team collaboration and content management tool Quickr. The 451 Group thinks users will prefer lighter-weight Alfresco over FileNet

    • Jahia, Datamatics Partnership Offers Open Source ECM Internationally

      However, lest anyone think that Jahia is looking only at large public sector organizations, they also signed a partnership agreement with Los Angeles based enterprise technology agency Oshyn, Inc. to enable both companies to deliver dynamic web content management to Fortune 1000 companies.

  • CMS

    • Kaltura Releases Open Source Video Extension for Joomla

      “The Kaltura open source stack empowers developers to augment any web platform and content management system to include tightly integrated video functionalities and work flows,” said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman and CEO.

    • Mzinga Partners With Kaltura for Open Source, Social Video

      Social media developer Mzinga announced a partnership with Kaltura, developer of an open source online video platform.

    • Happy ninth birthday Drupal

      Exactly nine years ago, I released Drupal 1.0.0. When I shared my hobby project with the world, I expected no more than a dozen people to actually use it. It took a large community of people to make Drupal successful, but today, Drupal has hundreds of thousands of friends. Thank you to everyone who has been and is contributing to Drupal. Rock!

    • ATutor Open Source CMS Supports Content Interoperability Standard

      Open source learning content management system ATutor has been updated to version 1.6.4. It now includes support for the IMS Common Cartridge Lite 1.0 content interoperability standard.

    • Symphony-CMS.com – A New CMS That Is Open Source

      In this particular case, Symphony is powered by XSLT and it is an open source release – those who are knowledgeable and kind enough can contribute to the project as much as they wish in order to make this content system even more approachable.

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox gets a visit from the future

      To get a peek at one potential future for Firefox, install the Strata40 theme and the experimental StrataBuddy add-on. Like one of those classic Superman comics that had Supermen from across time teaming up to defeat a dastardly villain, the add-on provides the interface tweaks while the theme gives Firefox the look you’re looking for. Several other add-ons are also recommended to complete the experience: AppTabs, which is similar to FaviconizeTab and lets you shrink a tab down to its favicon; Fission, which merges the progress meter into the address bar; and Tab Progress Bar, which sticks a progress meter in each tab. Users should note that the key feature in Tab Progress Bar is also available as one of many in Tab Mix Plus, and that the two add-ons are incompatible with each other.

    • 3 Ways to Quickly Find the Tab You Need (FireFox)

      Find In Tab is an awesome FireFox addon that adds a tiny option to CTRL+F command to search through all open tabs:

      * Clicking the “Find in Tabs” button on the find bar will search for text in all open tabs, and show a list of search results.
      * Clicking any of the results will jump to the tab on which it was found, and scroll directly to the highlighted text.

    • Mozilla to release Prism, an open-source Silverlight and Adobe AIR competitor

      Mozilla is now readying the release of their open-source project, Prism, which will make it even easier for you to turn most web pages into applications usable directly from your computer.

  • Databases

    • More on Copyright Assignment

      But now that MySQL looks destined to be owned by Oracle, people are worried that Oracle won’t put much energy into the project. MySQL was designed to be a replacement for Oracle’s bread and butter products, so it is obvious that as the new owner, Oracle won’t be working too hard to put itself out of business, thus the only real question is how much less effort will be put into MySQL. Since MySQL was published under the GPL, it would be very hard for another company to commercialize it, which will limit the chances that a well funded fork could be created. MySQL’s future growth looks pretty small, or at least much smaller than it could have been under a different owner.

    • MySQL founder turns to China, Russia to halt Oracle

      Michael Widenius, the creator of the MySQL database, said he is turning his vocal campaign against Oracle’s planned takeover of Sun Microsystems to China and Russia because the European Commission appears set to clear the deal.

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU

    • New KonaKart eCommerce Software Release

      KonaKart is a Java / JSP / XML based solution with easy to use java APIs and a SOAP Web Service interface that allow you to quickly integrate eCommerce functionality into your existing systems. The customizable parts of KonaKart are Open Source and available under the GNU LGPL.

    • Macraigor OCDemon Port To ARM Cortex-A8

      The Macraigor Eclipse Ganymede/Galileo + GNU Tools Suite is an implementation and packaging of the Eclipse Ganymede/Galileo platform, CDT (C/C++ Development Tooling) 5.0.x, and DSDP (Device Software Development Platform) 1.0 plug-ins, and a program called OcdRemote that provides an interface between Eclipse, the GDB debugger and a Macraigor On-Chip Debug device.

    • CES 2010: The Best of Times and the Worst of Times for Free Software

      Most of the eBook Readers at CES use free software in locked-down devices that restrict customers’ access to certain publications, prevent them from sharing, and violate their privacy. Telecommunications companies have harnessed Android in the battle for a larger share of the smartphone market and collaborated on applications with FOSS programmers while preventing customers the right to chose between carriers. These companies have a vested interest in limiting the functionality of the devices they sell so consumers buy the next model in a couple of years, rather than improve the one they already own.

    • Why We Chose the GPL for Nexus

      Normally we would have used a BSD/MIT/Apache license for software that we develop. This is what we’re used to, with most of our developers having been active in the Apache community for years, we’re all very familiar with the philosophy behind this license. When we announced that Nexus was going to be released under a GPL license, some of our colleagues wanted to know how a group of Apache participants decided to use the GNU Public License? When we started Nexus, the plan was to create a commercial product. We hadn’t thought about creating Nexus as a commercial product built atop an open core. Once we got into the effort, we soon realized that creating a commercial-only product with a team full of open source developers wouldn’t be very fun. When you develop a commercial product, you limit yourself to a small group of developers working in an isolated environment. It didn’t take us long to remember that close-source development isn’t as productive (or interesting) as developing a product out in the open, and as we like working with other developers, we very quickly decided to take the hybrid, open-core approach to Nexus.

    • Selecting OSS Software: 10 Questions Answered for Sonatype Nexus

      We thought for a long while before selecting the GNU Public License (GPL) for Nexus and we made it clear right from the start why we chose the GPL. We knew that we would invest heavily in Nexus. Even though the people involved with Sonatype are traditionally users of Apache style licenses, we didn’t know how our business would evolve and we wanted to choose a license that would offer adequate protection for that investment. We were honest and upfront about it. We chose a more restrictive license first this allows us to adapt and use a less restrictive license in the future if we think it is appropriate for the community.

  • Releases

  • Government

    • Open Source Promoted in New California Policy

      In the official letter issued Jan. 7 from the state CIO’s office, the policy establishes the use of OSS in California state government as an “acceptable practice.” Farley doesn’t know of any other states with similar OSS policies, but he said it’s consistent with policies done by the U.S. Department of Defense and the UK government.

    • Why Canada should open source the government

      Canada’s government is not only in a good position to “open source” the delivery of services through technology – it’s already doing it, according to a public policy entrepreneur.

    • Microsoft And Oracle Getting Montana Boot?

      Just two days after California approved open-source software for use in state offices and agencies, Montana’s governor has received a request to rip and replace existing statewide contracts with Oracle and Microsoft and instead go with open source.

    • Forge.mil’s ProjectForge Now Available

      DoD On-Demand Cloud Computing Service Leverages CollabNet TeamForge to Reduce the Time and Cost of Software Development

    • Jordan

    • Europe

      • EU: European Parliament restart workgroup on open source software

        A number of members of the European Parliament are about to start an informal cross party working group on ‘new media, free and open source software and open information society’. The intergroup is expected to begin in February, with the support of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (Alde) and the European Greens.

      • Towards an Interoperable Scientific Cloud for Europe

        Furthermore, a recent Expert Group Report on the Future of Cloud Computing produced with the support of the European Commission DG INFSO recommends that the European open source movement should work strongly with industry to support commercial cloud based service provisioning.

      • HU: Open standards made mandatory for public administrations

        Open standards have been made mandatory for the IT systems of Hungary’s public administrations. The Hungarian parliament voted in favour of amendments prescribing open standards, to a law on electronic government services, on 14 December. The changes received 197 votes in favour, one against and 146 abstentions, according to the Open Standard Alliance, a Hungarian advocacy group that lobbyed in favour of the amendments.

      • Not so open

        So, nearly a year later what has happened? One thing for sure is that UK government contracts haven’t been flooding to open source companies – in fact there’s no sign of any going to them.

        It’s easy to dismiss Powell’s musings as sour grapes from a company not benefiting from lucrative government contracts except I’ve also heard the same thing from an executive fromanother leading open source vendor, one who didn’t want to be identified, but who was equally scathing about the government’s procurement policy.

  • Licensing

  • Openness

    • Knowright 2010 CfP

      KnowRight 2010: Conference on the Interaction of Information Related Rights, Information Technology and Knowledge Management

    • The Web’s Next Layer of Innovation: Q&A With Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito

      For me, now that all the technical layers have become so easy and so low-cost and so interoperable, the next layer that really needs to be worked on is the legal layer. So at Creative Commons I think we are trying to solve a lot of those problems at the legal layer. I think that things like that friction are a part of that ecosystem. Once those problems are solved and a lot of that friction goes away, another explosion of innovation is going to happen on top of that, which I think will be good for society, good for business, and good for venture capitalists, and interesting too. So that’s what we are trying to do at Creative Commons.

    • Indiana U Leads Effort to Develop Next-Generation Library Management App

      Indiana University in Bloomington will be developing new library software to manage digital collections thanks to a $2.38 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The university will lead a partnership of libraries in the Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) project to develop “community source” software that will be made available to libraries worldwide. Other participants include a consortium of Florida institutions, the Triangle Research Libraries Network, the University of Chicago, and others.

    • NAMM: A Mad Professor of the Stompbox Goes Open Source

      Pedal enthusiasts are known tinkerers. They gather online at sites like DIYStompboxes and Build Your Own Clone to trade schematics and debate over the finer points of stompbox design.

    • English was the first open source language

      Well before the Internet was a gleam in Al Gore’s eye, even before Ada Lovelace programmed Charles Babbage’s imaginary Differential Engine, English had shown the way toward an open source future.

  • Programming

    • GTK+ made Qt

      To my surprise, that is all that it takes. The QGtkCallbackBridge is a trivial QObject that calls the given function pointer with the QObject::sender() and the given data pointer when signalled. The QGtkEventFilter is not much more complicated. It simply filters out the event in question and triggers the given function pointer in much the same way. I’ve created a factory for the event filters, as I want them to re-create something looking like the original GdkEvent structure. There is actually one event filter class for each type of event, just so that this code can be added.

    • Qt Programming Tips
    • Last of Python 2.x language line moves forward

      Python 2.7, expected to be the last major version of the 2.x series of the dynamic language, was released as a second alpha earlier month by the Python Software Foundation, with the final release set for June.

    • Sony Pictures Imageworks Releases Open Source Shading Language (OSL) to Development Community

      Sony Pictures Imageworks, the award-winning visual effects and digital character animation unit of Sony Pictures Digital Productions, released the Alpha version of its source code for OSL, its Open Shading Language, it was announced today by Rob Bredow, Chief Technology Officer of Sony Pictures Imageworks.

    • The Decade of Development

      Last decade, known by many as the Naughties or Noughties, set the stage for a number of key software development trends. Here is a list of some of the hottest trends that impacted software development.

      [...]

      2. The Rise of Open Source Software (OSS)

      Open Source Software reached critical mass in the decade of the Noughties. The open source model caught on like wild fire among developers and quickly became adopted by entrepreneurs looking to build companies by providing services for these OSS technologies. And it worked. Marc Fleury founded JBoss around the JBoss application server and later sold the company to Red Hat for more than $350 million. Rod Johnson founded SpringSource around the open-source Spring Framework and last year sold it to VMware for $420 million. VCs saw an opportunity and began to get behind the best and the brightest. And organizations such as the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and the Eclipse Foundation sprang up to, among other things, foster community involvement in various open-source projects. Although the ASF was founded in 1999, it saw some of its best days in the Noughties.

Leftovers

  • AP Exclusive: Network flaw causes scary Web error

    A Georgia mother and her two daughters logged onto Facebook from mobile phones last weekend and wound up in a startling place: strangers’ accounts with full access to troves of private information.

  • Sacked drugs adviser David Nutt launches rival committee

    David Nutt, the scientist sacked as a government adviser by the home secretary, today defiantly launched his own independent committee which he says will provide the definitive scientific verdict on the risks of drugs.

  • The Value Of Free As Analyzed By The Pizza Industry

    Of course, the economics with food is quite a bit different than with content. With food, each “free sample” has a direct cost in that the same items cannot be sold. With content, the argument in favor of using “free” is even stronger, because you are just giving away copies — and each copy is free to make and distribute, even if the original copy cost money.

  • Sergey Brin: Engine driver

    Google’s bold stand against China owes much to the ideals of the internet giant’s co-founder

  • Security

    • Update your Adobe software Now

      Some things are the same no matter what operating system you run. Mac, Windows, or Linux user chances are you use Adobe Reader to read PDF (Portable Document Files) and Adobe Acrobat to create them. So it is that, no matter what you’re running on your PC, you need to update your copies of Reader and Acrobat.

    • Security breach at NYC’s JFK airport causes evacuation

      Terminal 8 was cleared for several hours and thousands of passengers had to be rescreened after the breach, which happened shortly after 3 p.m. (2000 GMT), American spokesman Charley Wilson said.

      The Transportation Safety Administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which has jurisdiction over the three major metropolitan area airports, ordered the evacuation. Passengers who had boarded also had to get off their planes.

    • Stop and search for children who were ‘sledging downhill’

      …they were beckoned by two police community support officers (and) asked why they were not in school and then quizzed about damage to a nearby fence.

      They politely told the officers they knew nothing about the fence, but instead of simply being allowed to carry on playing they were given an official ‘stop and search’ form which they had to sign themselves.

      Their parents have now been told the youngsters’ details will now go on a police database.

    • Power2010 – Help make freedom and privacy a top issue

      At present, scrapping ID cards and rolling back the database state stands at an impressive number 2 in the voting, which is very encouraging. It would be good to see reduce the use of statutory instruments (a tool by which some of the most intrusive and repressive legislation has been introduced to Britain in the past decade) and expanding the scope of the Freedom of Information Act (a suggestion from our friends at the TaxPayers’ Alliance) also make the top 5.

  • Environment

    • Editorial: Don’t stifle global warming debate

      If anything was settled by Tuesday’s Detroit News-WJR panel on climate change and fuel economy standards, it was that the opinions on global warming aren’t settled.

      Some smart people on both sides of the issue exchanged opinions during the discussion at the Detroit Athletic Club. They weren’t crackpots or fanatics. And yet they have looked at the climate change evidence and come to different conclusions.

  • Finance

    • SEC Subpoenas Goldman Sachs, Citigroup over CDOs

      I searched high and low for more inforation to no avail. This is very significant that the SEC is looking into those very derivatives which we have written about, that are impossible to evaluate and also based on bad math.

    • Paulson Asked to Testify at Hearing on AIG Payments to Partners

      Lawmakers are probing the circumstances around AIG’s payments of $62 billion to major financial institutions who were counterparties of AIG, including Goldman Sachs, to settle the full value of credit default swaps.

    • House panel asks Paulson to testify in AIG probe

      A House panel slated to look into the collapse and bailout of insurer American International Group has widened its probe, adding former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to its list of invited witnesses.

    • Financial Meltdown: Act of God, or Just the Ungodly Acts of Bankers?

      Regardless of how one chooses to characterize the bankers’ behavior — arson or extreme road rage — the commission is rightly trying to determine exactly what role the bankers played in causing the financial meltdown. (Three other bankers testified at the hearing: Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase, John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley and Brian T. Moynihan of Bank of America.) The ten-member commission expects to issue its report in December.

    • Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Says Goldman Sachs to Shareholders, Part I
    • Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Says Goldman Sachs to Shareholders, Part II

      With Goldman expected to announce record bonuses the financial institution has attempted to blunt the anticipated criticism by shifting bonuses from cash to stock and by considering requiring certain employees to make mandatory charitable contributions. But whatever the steps, providing a straightforward explanation of the compensation practices will not be one of them.

    • Want to Protest Wall Street’s Bonus Bonanza? Good Luck

      The Associated Press reports that the six biggest banks will reap a $150 billion 2009 bonus bonanza, a mere 8.5% less than what they received in the record year of 2007.

    • They still don’t get it

      During yesterday’s opening hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington, a panel of Wall Street CEOs continued to defend their bonus practices. They are just fortunate they don’t live in Great Britain, where the government has already imposed a new windfall tax on bank bonuses. Scratch London from the list of places where unhappy U.S. bankers might flee.

    • Take the ‘Crony’ Out of ‘Crony Capitalism’

      When Judge Richard Posner, the prolific conservative intellectual, released his book “A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent Into Depression” last year, you might have thought the final verdict was in: Capitalism caused the economic downturn and high unemployment.

    • Goldman Sachs admits ‘improper’ actions in sales of securities

      The chairman and CEO of investment giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Wednesday that his company engaged in “improper” behavior when it made financial bets against $40 billion of securities backed by risky U.S. home loans it was selling to investors as safe products.

  • Censorship/Civil Rights

    • Proposed Web video restrictions cause outrage in Italy

      New rules to be introduced by government decree will require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web, opposition lawmakers have warned.

  • Internet/Web Abuse/DRM

    • Why the Kankakee County Farm Bureau hates net neutrality

      The Kankakee County Farm Bureau wants to stop net neutrality. So does the Erie Neighborhood House, along with Downtown Springfield Inc, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Will and Grundy Counties, and the mayor of North Chicago.

      The organizations all share several things: they are located in Illinois, they want the FCC to focus on broadband adoption rather than net neutrality, and… they all have connections to AT&T.

  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

    • Breach of Copyright – The Independent

      On the 5 – 6 January 2010 they used the Flickr API to search for and display images of snow scenes in the UK – amongst those images displayed was one of mine which is clearly marked on Flickr as “all rights reserved”. They did not seek my permission for the use of my image. I am assuming they used the API without applying a filter on the licence type, this also means that other UK photographers may have had their copyrighted work used without permission; might be worth checking if you had any refers from the Independent on those days.

    • As Developing Countries Gain More Power In Diplomatic Discussions, Will They Push Back On IP?

      In recent years, we’ve definitely pushed increasingly draconian IP laws on those countries. So until we see more serious pushback (and Brazil is really the only major country I can remember that has been proactive on that front — India and China have appeared more willing to claim that they’ll move toward US-style IP rules) it’s difficult to believe this is really happening just yet.

    • U.S. To Costa Rica: No Sugar Access Without Copyright Reform

      Reports from Costa Rica indicate that final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States is languishing in the Legislative Assembly due to concerns over the copyright provisions. The CAFTA copyright provisions are similar to those found in the other major U.S. trade agreements concluded in recent years: DMCA-style protections, ISP liability, and copyright term extension are all part of the package.

    • Pirate Party: Digital web Bill makes UK 3rd world country
    • Sarcasm punctuation mark aims to put an end to email confusion

      Now a US firm has come up with an ingenious solution to this very real problem – a new item of punctuation.

Week of Monsanto: Video

The World According to Monsanto – Part 1 of 8

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A Single Comment

  1. uberVU - social comments said,

    January 18, 2010 at 6:28 am

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by onstrategy: OnlineNetworking.biz Links 17/1/2010: New Pardus, Puredyne GNU/Linux: Contents GNU/Linux Di.. http://bit.ly/7fwbXY…

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