Weekly news wrap-up: UnitedLinux vs. the GPL; another think tank vs. Linux

Is UnitedLinux violating the GNU General Public License with its closed beta? The Free Software Foundation seems to have questions.

This weekend, UnitedLinux member company Conectiva responded to the questions about the closed beta. Basically, Conectiva argues that an open beta is coming soon and there’s a way to publish code from the beta if it’s shown to be part of the public domain. We’ll keep an eye on where this goes from here.

Here we go again

For the second time since early summer, a conservative-leaning Washington think tank is questioning the use of Linux and other Open Source software in government. This time, free-market advocate CEI took issue with a New York Times editorial championing Linux as a good competitor to Microsoft. CEI’s objections to Linux seem to be that a bunch of volunteer programmers can’t possibly challenge the great and wonderful Microsoft (a past contributor to CEI) and that the GNU GPL “infects” every program it gets close to — both of which are serious misconceptions, of course.

Related to Barney?

Sun’s CEO Scott McNealy was talking up Sun’s future “purple boxes,” which will be Sun desktop machines loaded with Linux. That’s purple boxes — for Sun’s favorite corporate color — instead of white boxes. Wouldn’t it be cool if they were really purple?

Sun’s touting the purple boxes as a low-price alternative to Windows machine, but they’re still tentatively priced at $1,100, which isn’t exactly a bargain by today’s standards.

Red Hat vs. desktop projects

Red Hat announced it would release its 8.0 version this month, and that version would be aimed at the desktop. Some controversy erupted when Red Hat’s new beta junked Gnome and KDE for Red Hat’s own desktop.

Odds ‘n’ ends