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Linux.com : News
Ubuntu Open Week unites community and developers
What's the next best thing for Linux users who can't attend an open source community conference in person? Online workshops like last week's Ubuntu Open Week, where upwards of 300 participants per session showed up to learn more about the popular Linux distribution, the community, and its teams.
Interview with Bluewhite64 creator Attila Craciun
Slackware Linux has stood strong for more than a decade by refusing to compromise. There was a time when people used to say, "If you want to learn Linux and learn it well, give Slackware a try." Attila Craciun, a Romanian software developer and Linux enthusiast, has ported the Slackware tree to the AMD64 architecture to create the Bluewhite64 distro. We spoke with him to find out about Bluewhite64, where it came from, and where it's going.
Creative Commons promotes standard license expression
If Creative Commons (CC) has any say in the matter, the Web will soon have a standard machine-readable notation for licenses. Named the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (ccREL), the notation has been under development for the last few years, partly with the cooperation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3). It is described in a paper by four Creative Commons employees and published by Communia, a European site that explores the relationship between technology and the public domain. Creative Commons plans future presentations of ccREL, and is also actively explaining the need for it -- which is what CC's Chief Technology Officer, Nathan Yergler, was doing when Linux.com caught up with him at the recent Open Web Conference in Vancouver.
As the SCO rolls
Reality, as good writers know, is sometimes stranger than fiction. SCO's recent performance in the U.S. District Court in Utah is a perfect example. With years to prepare, SCO executives made some remarkable statements in their attempt to show that SCO, not Novell, owns Unix's copyright.
Computer makers push device builders for Linux-compatible hardware
For years, device and peripheral builders could get away with ignoring the Linux desktop market. It was too small to matter, they would say. Things have changed. At the Linux Foundation meeting in Austin, Texas, last month, major PC vendors ASUS, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo said they would be telling their chipset, component, and peripheral OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that they were going to demand Linux-compatible hardware from them.
Commercial KVM-based virtual desktop program arrives
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), Linux's own baked-in virtualization program, has been gaining popularity. Now, Qumranet, the company behind KVM, is releasing a commercial virtual desktop called Solid ICE based on KVM technology.
Black Duck acquires Koders.com
Black Duck Software, a company best known for its services and software for the procurement and re-use of open source software, has acquired Koders, and with it the popular Koders.com search engine for free and open source software code (FOSS). Black Duck plans to integrate Koders' search technology into its own product line, while promising to enhance the Koders search engine while leaving its basic nature unchanged.
Kuali develops open source financial and ERP applications for universities
Financial and ERP applications are arguably the last bastion of proprietary software giants, but the Kuali Foundation wants to eliminate those remaining barriers to open source enterprise systems, at least in the educational realm. Kuali is a nonprofit collection of colleges, universities, commercial companies, and consultants who hope to "bring the proven functionality of legacy applications to the ease and universality of online services." Kuali's first project, Kuali Financial Systems, is already working on its 3.0 release, scheduled for the end of this year.
Social networking gets a Ringside seat
Bob Bickel, co-founder of Ringside Networks, says companies need to harness the power of social networking and entice customers to visit corporate Web sites with the same eagerness they show for sites like Facebook. He believes the Ringside Social Application Server -- an open source platform that puts social networking tools on any existing Web site -- is the answer CEOs are looking for.
Baker College wins National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
Baker College of Flint, Mich., defeated defending champion Texas A&M University and four other regional winners from across the country to capture the third annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, which concluded in San Antonio, Texas, over the weekend. Texas A&M finished a close second, and the University of Louisville took third. Also competing for the championship were the Community College of Baltimore County, Mount San Antonio College of Los Angeles County, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Open Web Vancouver shows how to run a big little conference
Building on the success of last year's Vancouver PHP Conference, the Vancouver PHP Users Association on April 14-15 drew more than 350 to the Vancouver Trade and Convention Center to learn about the trends in free and open source software on the Web. With speakers from major corporations such as Creative Commons, Facebook, Google, the Mozilla Foundation, and Sun Microsystems, and a healthy dose of the self-organization popularized by Bar Camp, the conference was in many ways a template for how a local conference can manage to offer informative and current information despite a relatively small size.
Shuttleworth starts countdown to Ubuntu 8.04 release
The next red-letter day for Ubuntu fans will be April 24, when Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support) arrives. Mark Shuttleworth, the CEO of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, guarantees that the next version of the popular Linux distribution will make it on time, with something for enterprise, desktop, and Internet users.
The iPhone SDK and free software: not a match
Apple's recently released a software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone, but if you were hoping to port or develop original open source software with it, the news isn't good. Code signing and nondisclosure conditions make free software a no-go.
Comic strip aims for a fun way to educate new Linux users
Jeremiah Gray wants to provide an interesting way to learn about Linux, so he's created a new comic strip, called Hackett and Bankwell, about the open source operating system. The strip will be published as a series of comic books that Gray hopes will appeal to new Linux users, but he says it is "more than just a comic book version of a Linux training guide."
Libre Graphics Meeting raising funds for developer travel
The annual conclave of free graphics software developers, users, and artists known as the Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is set for May 8-11 in Wroclaw, Poland, this year. LGM organizers are holding a fund-raising campaign this week to help volunteer developers travel to the event.
What the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is for
The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, currently in progress in Austin, Texas, is a small event, with only about 300 invited attendees. Because it is small, you can find yourself face-to-face or in conversation with some of the biggest names in and around the Linux kernel, business, and open source scenes, including Ted Ts'o, Jon "maddog" Hall, Bruce Perens, Dan Frye, and Larry Augustin. The venue for the event -- the J.J. Pickle Research Center Campus at the University of Texas -- is the same place where IBM held its first "secret" Linux summit in 1999 to announce and refine its Linux strategy internally.
A hint of what's happening at Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit (video)
AUSTIN, TEXAS -- Guest commentator Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Ziff Davis Enterprise tells what, in his opinion, is important about the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit going on right now in Austin, Texas.
Weekly Wire meets Mark Shuttleworth at OSBC (video)
Last week Weekly Wire sent Roblimo to San Francisco for the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). While there, he had a chance to talk briefly with Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth even though Mark was getting full "rock star" treatment from an adoring crowd and was totally mobbed by press and fans whenever he showed his face.
Open Media Now launched to boost digital freedom
Already known for its development of a free Flash player, the Gnash project is now the nucleus of a much larger effort. Called the Open Media Now Foundation (OMNF), the group's goal is to encourage the development "of an open media infrastructure," according its home page. Registered as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization in the United States, the new organization is actively seeking corporate members, although it accepts donations from individuals as well.
In memoriam: free software projects of 2007
Recently I looked in on the project Web site for a small application I use, only to find the wiki completely filled with spam. The project itself was clearly in disrepair, and the code abandoned for six months or more. I wondered: how many other apps that I use have halted development without my realizing it? I decided to look back at the projects I've written about over the past year to see which ones are no longer with us.
