David Martinjak writes "Running Xen: A Hands-On Guide to the Art of Virtualization was published by Prentice Hall, and authored by Jeanna N. Matthews, Eli M. Dow, Todd Deshane, Wenjin Hu, Jeremy Bongio, Patrick F. Wilbur, and Brendan Johnson. The book, which will be referred to as simply Running Xen, was a great resource on Xen and virtualization from the administration side. A wide range of topics was covered from installing Xen all the way up to managing virtual resources, including migrating guest environments. Overall, the explanations were concise and understandable; while the information was presented in a straightforward manner. Running Xen was definitely a useful resource for administering systems with Xen." Keep reading for the rest of David's review.

Last week we took nominations for a Slashdot category at the SourceForge Community Choice awards. Our category was 'Most Likely to be Shut Down By Government Agency'. Your nominations were tallied, and we arbitrarily selected a few that we think are the best. Today is the day where you can at long last determine the winner, using the incredibly scientifically accurate Slashdot Poll. Our nominees are Truecrypt, EFF Patent Busting, GNU Software Radio, WikiLeaks, Cryptome.org, Tor, Freenet, and CowboyNeal.

Specter writes "The GPL version 3 is getting some attention in legal circles, especially as it relates to its interaction with proprietary software and patents. Edmund J. Walsh penned an article for Law.com discussing the GPLv3 and the risks it poses for hardware and software companies."

Linux.com (who shares corporate overlords with Slashdot) is reporting that gNewSense has gone 2.0. For the uninitiated gNewSense is a stripped down version of Ubuntu's Hardy Heron for the free software purist. Removing over 100 pieces of proprietary code and firmware, gNewSense offers a user the ability to run an OS where everything is able to be studied, changed, and redistributed. "gNewSense is a great alternative to Gobuntu, the Canonical-sponsored free derivative of Ubuntu. According to its wiki page, the 8.04 version of Gobuntu hasn't been released due to a less-than-optimal reaction from the community. Gobuntu used the same repositories as Ubuntu, and the Ubuntu live CD can achieve the same installation as Gobuntu by merely selecting the free-software-only option in the installer (press F6 twice at the boot menu). Also, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, has indicated that he would rather focus on gNewSense because the work on that distribution can help the Ubuntu community as a whole. "

An anonymous reader brings us IBM Developerworks' recent analysis of how the NSA built SELinux to withstand attacks. The article shows us some of the relevant kernel architecture and compares SELinux to a few other approaches. We've discussed SELinux in the past. Quoting: "If you have a program that responds to socket requests but doesn't need to access the file system, then that program should be able to listen on a given socket but not have access to the file system. That way, if the program is exploited in some way, its access is explicitly minimized. This type of control is called mandatory access control (MAC). Another approach to controlling access is role-based access control (RBAC). In RBAC, permissions are provided based on roles that are granted by the security system. The concept of a role differs from that of a traditional group in that a group represents one or more users. A role can represent multiple users, but it also represents the permissions that a set of users can perform. SELinux adds both MAC and RBAC to the GNU/Linux operating system."

l2718 writes "Yesterday we discussed Skype's appeal of a German court's ruling against them regarding a violation of the GPL. Harald Welte (the plaintiff) now reports in his blog that following oral argument, Skype decided to drop the appeal and accept the lower court ruling in Weite's favor. More details and analysis at Groklaw. Congratulations to Mr. Welte and GPL-violations.org!"

mollyhackit writes "Hackaday reports that the GPL vs Skype case is going back to court today. This as an appeal to the court's decision Slashdot reported last July. The original case was brought against Skype for the Linux based SMC Skype WiFi phone. The court upheld the GPLv2 and decided that Skype had not gone far enough in meeting section 3 which details how to provide the original source. This time around Skype is apparently trying to argue that the GPL violates anti-trust regulations."

An anonymous reader writes "gNewSense DeltaH (2.0), a second major release of a GNU/Linux distribution with focus on freedom, has just been released. It is based on Ubuntu 8.04 which was released less than week ago. gNewSense is one of the few GNU/Linux distributions listed as free by the GNU Project."

Dionysius, God of Wine, writes with a link to an Ars Technica story, quoting Bill Gates: "'There's free software and then there's open source' he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, 'there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with.' Open source, he said, creates a license 'so that nobody can ever improve the software,' he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. (Yes, Linux fans, we're aware of how distorted this definition is.) He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: 'I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them,' he said, adding with a shrug: 'That may seem radical."

Smantha writes "I recently began teaching a Unix System Administration course at a community college. The previous instructor was using a very outdated textbook, and I'm trying to find one that is a bit more advanced and useful for my students. They are required to take a 100-level Unix class before this one and are familiar with the basics of using the command line. I'm looking for something that covers topics such as OS installation, software/package installation, user management, system administration tools, troubleshooting techniques and tools, service configuration (network services, for example) and some miscellaneous topics such as compression/archive tools, grep, make, and the like. What books have you found to be good references on your desk? What books have been good for learning these sorts of topics?"

kookjr writes "Are you planning to develop software for the iPhone? If you want to develop Free Software, Linux.com (Shares corp overlord w/ Slashdot) has a good review of the conflicts between Apple's Registered iPhone Developer Agreement and licenses like the GPL. This is important for people who may not read all the agreements they click Agree to."

Rob O'Neill writes "A Kiwi open source developer is working on a self-replicating 3D printer, RepRap, to be made available under the GNU license. 'The 3D printer works by building components up in layers of plastic, mainly polylactic acid (PLA), which is a bio-degradable polymer made from lactic acid. The technology already exists, but commercial machines are very expensive. They also can't copy themselves, and they can't be manipulated by users, says Vik Olliver. RepRap has a different idea. The team, which is spread over New Zealand, the UK and the US, develops and gives away the designs for its much cheaper machine, which also has self-copying capabilities. It wants to make the machine available to anybody — including small communities in the developing world, as well as people in the developed world, says Olliver. Accordingly, the RepRap machine is distributed, at no cost, under the GNU (General Public License).'"

Da Massive writes "The number of open-source projects that use the GNU General Public License Version 3 has grown to more than 2,000, according to Palamida, which sells software and services for tracking open-source code within a customer's code base. 'Our database now contains over 2,000 projects that are using the GPL v3. "At this rate the GPL v3 is being adopted by 1,000 projects every 4-5 months, and if the trend continues, the license will be used by 5,000 projects by the end of the year," states a recent posting on Palamida's blog.'"

2muchcoffeeman writes "Adobe announced Monday that it is joining the Linux Foundation and alpha-released a Linux version of its new Adobe Internet Runtime environment, which allows Internet-enabled applications to run on Windows and Mac OS desktops, for Linux. According to Adobe, the alpha version lacks some key features that will be available in the final product and only runs with Sun Java, not GNU Java. Adobe also released an alpha of Flex Builder for Linux Monday."

ohxten sends news from earlier this month that GCC 4.3.0's new behavior of not clearing the direction flag before a string operation on x86 systems poses problems with kernels — such as Linux and BSD — that do not clear the direction flag before a signal handler is called, despite the ABI specification.

mutube writes "Open Source advocate Bruce Perens began petitioning for support in election to the OSI Executive Board. Because it's a self-electing board, demonstrable community support is needed to attain a seat. Perens is standing on a platform of reducing over-representation of vendors in OSI leadership in favor of developers. In his petition notice, Perens suggests that recent Open Source involvement by Microsoft could lead to their being offered a place on the board. With his background fighting SCO and the Novell-Microsoft patent agreements, Perens would be a good counter-balance."

eldavojohn writes "A settlement has been reached in the Verizon GPLv2 violation suit. The now famous BusyBox developers, Erick Andersen and Rob Landley, will receive an undisclosed sum from subcontractor Actiontec Electronics. 'Actiontec supplied Verizon with wireless routers for its FiOS broadband service that use an open source program called BusyBox. BusyBox developers Andersen and Landley in December sued Verizon -- claiming that the usage violated terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License.'"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Sun has moved OpenOffice.org to the LGPLv3 license. In his blog Sun's Simon Phipps cites worry over software patents as being one of their main reasons for this move: 'Upgrading to the LGPLv3 brings important new protections to the OpenOffice.org community, most notably through the new language concerning software patents. You may know that I am personally an opponent of software patents, and that Sun has already taken steps in this area with a patent non-assert covenant for ODF. But the most important protection for developers comes from creating mutual patent grants between developers. LGPLv3 does this.'"

Glyn Moody writes "Until now, the received wisdom has been that GNU/Linux will never take off with general users because it's too complicated. One of the achievements of the popular new Asus Eee PC is that it has come up with a tab-based front end that hides the complexity. But maybe its real significance is that it has pushed down the price to the point where the extra cost of using Microsoft Windows over free software is so significant that ordinary users notice. As Moore's Law drives flash memory prices even lower, can ultraportables running Microsoft Windows compete?"

Sortova writes "For many years now I've been maintaining OpenNMS, a free and open source network management framework published under the GPL. A couple of years ago it came to our attention that a company called Cittio was using OpenNMS as part of their proprietary and commercial network management application. I talked with Jamie Lerner, the Cittio founder, and he assured me that Cittio was abiding by the GPL. However, we were recently contacted by a potential client who was also considering Cittio's Watchtower, and it appears that they are not disclosing that they are using GPL'd code or at least not in the clear and concise fashion required by the GPL, including the offer of source code for all of the code they are including and any changes being made to that code. Since the copyright for OpenNMS is held by a number of commercial companies, the Software Freedom Law Center is not able to help us defend or even investigate a potential violation. I was curious if anyone here on Slashdot had experienced anything similar or has any advice?"