EE Times writes “The law of supply and demand will face a curious test over the next few years, as embedded Linux vendors search for a way to make engineers pay for an operating system that appeals to users largely because it’s free.”

News.com: “Microsoft has released a new programming tool aimed at attracting Java developers to its .Net software strategy… Microsoft executives predict that 12 percent to 15 percent of all Java developers will use Visual J#.Net within a year.” Check out the rest of the story here.

News.com reports: “Security experts are rushing to decode a worm program that exploits a 2-week-old flaw to infect computers running vulnerable versions of the popular open-source Apache Web server application.
The worm is thought to be capable of spreading only to Web servers running the FreeBSD operating system, an open-source variant of Unix, that haven’t had a patch applied for the recent flaw. Although few people have reported the worm, it is thought to be infecting vulnerable Web servers worldwide.”

According to ZDNet, it looks like Corel is trying to lift itself from its recent troubles. “We created a desktop version of Linux because we thought that Linux was very powerful but difficult to use. It was a technological success, but the market wasn’t interested at that time… Now Linux is an operating system just like Mac or Windows, so if there is a business case to justify creating an application, then we will do it.”

O’Reilly Network: “Back in 1998 when the term ‘open source’ was coined, the story was simple: ‘Just because there’s no vendor behind software, it doesn’t mean it isn’t important…’ An industry whose measurements were focused on vendor market share had no way to come to grips with a market segment in which software could be adopted by end users without money changing hands.”

LinuxPR: “A mere six months after the initial release of the Linux Standard Base 1.1 (LSB 1.1), the Free Standards Group announced the launch of the LSB Certification program. LSB Certification will utilize an independent authority to verify whether a Linux distribution or Linux-based application is adhering to the community and industry developed standard.” Read more in this press release.

eCommerce Times is reporting that IBM “will launch a service that lets businesses buy ‘large-scale computing infrastructure’ on demand and over the Internet, much as one might buy water or electricity from a local utility company.
The technology lets users with Linux-based applications connect to IBM’s zSeries mainframes running Linux, the open-source operating system. Instead of buying separate servers, companies can plug into IBM’s ‘virtual servers,’ paying only for the power and storage they need.”

Linux and Main: “Opera Software has entered into an agreement with China’s RedFlag to provide an embedded browser for use in the Chinese market.” It looks like RedFlag is expanding their sphere of influence, after having dominated the Chinese desktop market. You can read the details here.

Matthew A. Nicholson writes: “Blender lives– not only that, but Blender Creator may be going open source. Head over to blender3d.com for more information.”

Michael Crawford writes: “The latest submission to
The Linux Quality Database is the
Free Hosting Service HTML Validation Test Page. This aims to combat the problem of free website hosting services inserting advertising markup that causes otherwise W3C-compliant web pages to become invalid.

Valid HTML is important not just to ensure interoperability with all web browsers such as those used on Linux, but to allow accessibility of websites to the blind.

What anyone can do is copy the page, a valid XHTML 1.0 strict document which is published under the GNU Free Documentation License, to a free web hosting service. You then click a link in it to see if the markup added by the free hosting service still allows the page to validate. You can compare this to validating the original document by clicking another link.

The page is more than just a markup test: it explains to the hosting services why it was placed on their server, why it is important for everyone to write valid markup, where to find several validators and how to get started writing valid HTML. Finally, it gives instructions anyone may use to copy the original document to a new hosting service for testing.

You can find an example of the test page at a free hosting service whose advertising markup makes it invalid by
clicking here.

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