Home Blog Page 8516

Mr. and Ms. Geek go to Washington

Wired.com follows up on reports of the American Open Technology Consortium being launched.

“A group of high-profile software developers and technologists have announced plans to form their own political action committee, in response to what they see as the ill effects of corporate lobbyists on their ability to develop new technologies.”

Running Embedded Linux on SuperH

Anonymous Reader writes, “Red Hat senior engineer Bhavana Nagendra explains how to use ‘RedBoot’
firmware to get Linux up and running on Hitachi’s SuperH system-on-chip processor in this technical article at ELJonline.”

Category:

  • C/C++

Tune-up: How to show the Tux logo at boot time using LILO.

Rani Ahmad writes “[T]his is only in LILO the LInux LOader. it is very simple””1- edit the file /etc/lilo.conf

2- add the following line after the 3rd line:

vga=771

3- then exit and save the file.

4- open ur shell

5- type ” lilo ” (without the quotes ).

6- reboot to enjoy it.”

You can check out Rani Ahmad’s home page at http://ranix.cjb.net

GNU-Darwin and TDC merge, AMD supported

proclus writes, “GNU-Darwin now supports AMD-based computers in addition to Apple and Intel boxen,
and Darwin installer CD images are

available for free

. This is in addition to
our support of Intel and Apple boxen.

For Apple users,
The Darwin Collection packages
(TDC)
have been merged with

GNU-Darwin
on-line. This
includes all of the packages from TDC Issue 1, plus
updates. Notable examples include openldap, cyrus-sasl, and a full ruby
implementation. Based on current trends, we will soon have

3000 packages on-line
for Apple computers. The

x86 collection

is also growing fast, with nearly 2000 packages available.
Our packaging software has been enhanced
with auto-dependency checking, and auto-remote access, so that users can
conveniently install software from our expanded package collection with a single command (ie, pkg_add -r ruby).”

Microsoft’s shaky ‘shared source’ license

From osOpinion: “GPL software represents some of Microsoft’s strongest competition, so a ‘punishment’ that does not help GPL developers is no punishment at all.”

Category:

  • Migration

Meet SuSE 8.0, the beta

From LinuxPlanet: “I’m a minimalist when it comes to my Linux boxes. They all run Slackware and XFCE, with nary a single bit of KDE or GNOME to be seen. Why? Because I want to save my RAM, CPU, and disk for real computing, not eye candy. So, as I began my review of SuSE 8.0, I was skeptical that it would have much that really wowed me. And, to be clear, I finished my review as firmly entrenched in my minimalism as when I started. Naytheless, SuSE impressed me, especially the painless, perfect installation — an element difficult to get right during a beta.”

Category:

  • Linux

Gates to take stand in antitrust trial

Reports C|Net:
“Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is scheduled to make his first appearance on the witness stand next week as part of the continuing antitrust trial, the company said Friday.”

Linux Mark Institute: Protecting the Linux trademark

By Jon “maddog” Hall of Linux International

Trademarks and Linux make a funny combination. Normally, a trademark is meant
to be kept private, and the company who owns the trademark is expected to
“defend” the trademark’s every use to maintain ownership. Linus Torvalds is
the owner of the trademark “Linux” in several countries around the world, but
instead of keeping the usage for himself, he would like to see everyone using
the term “Linux” for any legitimate need.
If the world was perfect, all you would have to do is put the term “Linux”
into the public domain just like the word “brick.” However, if the word “Linux”
was in the public domain, then Linus could not prevent someone from using
the term “Linux” in what he feels are negative ways.

For example, there was a site started called linuxchix.org. This was great,
as it met a real need and made people happy. Unfortunately, there was soon
a site called linuxchix.com, which advertised pornography. While some people
might not complain about this, Linus and I (and more importantly Tove, Linus’
wife) felt that applying the term “Linux” to pornography was not the
proper thing to do. So an appropriate letter from our attorney, Mr. Gerry
Davis of Davis and Schroeder, to the offending party quickly got the reference
to pornography removed from the URL.

People also repeatedly try to license the name “Linux University.” Linus and
I both agree that we would like to see MANY Linux universities around the
world, so we refuse to let anyone claim to be THE Linux University. If you
want to trademark “Linux University of New South Wales,” we will probably
license that, but not just “Linux University.”

Are these rules arbitrary? Probably, but we do the best we can to allow as
much of the openness and freedom as possible.

There are other reasons for protecting the term “Linux,” and to do so, the law
states that we have to “vigorously defend” the trademark. In legal terms, the
easiest way of doing this is to license the term “Linux” out to people who
wish to use it.

For a long time this process was “hit or miss.” Linus did not want to be
involved, and so he delegated the decision-making to me. I was often
traveling, or missed the request in the large volumes of email I get, and so
I (seemingly) was reluctant to answer. In addition, from time to time, there
were issues that came up that required funding of legal activity, either
inside the United States or outside of it. Even though Mr. Davis has been most generous
with his time, there are still clerical fees to be paid, documents to be
filed, and court costs that (unfortunately) have to be paid from time to time.
These funds have run over $100,000 over the past five years, and have been
paid for by Linux International. As a safety net for this type of funding,
and to make the licensing process run smoother, Mr. Davis suggested we set up
a non-profit association called The Linux Mark Institute, which charged a small amount of money to those people wishing to create
a trademark utilizing the word “Linux.” We felt that by making the amount
reasonable, and by making the procedure fairly painless, we could both
satisfy the Linux marketplace and create a “war chest” of money to help
finance those few cases that actually go to more stringent legal battles.

We also hope to use some of this money to obtain the trademark of “Linux” in
other countries, so we can protect the Linux trademark there, too.

As of now, the Web site works more or less “automatically.” People who submit
a request for a name are reviewed by a staff member of Mr. Davis’ office. If
there is any question about the name, or any issue or dissension, then the
request is forwarded to me. If I have any questions, or any indecision on the
name, I forward that along to Linus. But those kinds of issues have not occurred for
over six months.

We structured the site to allow “fair use” of the word “Linux,” so those
people or LUGs trying to create a few T-shirts or mugs to hand out could
do that without paying the licensing fee. But if someone was going to make
a real trademark, and particularly one that was going to be used to keep other
people from using that same trademark, then they have to license the name.

In this world there are laws, and there are people who would use those laws
to their own selfish gain. The Linux Mark Institute is just another way of
making sure that the Linux community is protected into the future from those
people.

Jon “maddog” Hall is executive director of Linux International.

Why Open Source Software/Free Software? Look at the numbers

dwheeler writes, “The paper Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! gives quantitative data that, in
many cases, open source software / free software is equal to or superior to their proprietary competition. The paper examines market share, reliability, performance, scaleability, security, and total cost of ownership; it also comments on non-quantitative issues and unnecessary fears. If you’ve been looking for numbers to justify using OSS/FS, here’s where to go.”

Category:

  • Migration

Tux visits the dutch MS Office

capedro writes: “Armijn Hemel and I (Joor Loohuis), being frequent writers for Linux Magazine, (the Dutch one, no, we don’t translate, we write our own copy), were asked to man the Linux question desk at The InterNetworking Event (TINE) in Amsterdam, on April 3-5. In that we saw an opportunity to save a few souls, and above all to have a lot of fun. The final afternoon we were busy giving away one meter high (three feet for the metrically challenged) inflatable Tuxes to anyone who would get a highscore in tuxracer. I was actively looking for new contestants when two Microsoft employees happened by our stand. Forget the highscore, I’d give these people a Tux anyway if they wanted it! One of them, Raul Pesch, immediately took me up on my offer, and promised to take some photographs of Tux at Microsoft Netherlands headquarters. One thing’s for sure, they definitely have a sense of humor over at Microsoft.

Read more at:
http://www.linuxmag.nl/Tux2MS/

Category:

  • Migration