An anonymous reader writes "After a long process of review and polishing, the win32 loader from goodbye-microsoft.com has finally made its way to official Debian CDs. Latest daily builds of lenny (the development version) are including it, making starting Debian Installer as simple as just a few clicks (OGG). The win32-loader version, now based on GRUB 2, includes new features such as detection and pre-seeding of Windows settings, and is translated to 20 languages."

StonyandCher writes "Here is an interview with Richard Stallman about a range of free software topics including GPLv3 and comment on the Microsoft patent issue. Stallman has a go at Linus Torvalds even suggesting that if people want to keep their freedom they better not follow Torvalds. From the interview 'Stallman: The fact that Torvalds says "open source" instead of "free software" shows where he is coming from. I wrote the GNU GPL to defend freedom for all users of all versions of a program. I developed version 3 to do that job better and protect against new threats. Torvalds says he rejects this goal; that's probably why he doesn't appreciate GPL version 3. I respect his right to express his views, even though I think they are foolish. However, if you don't want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow him.'"

Daniel Mantione writes "Free Pascal 2.2 has been released. Several new platforms are supported, like the Mac OS X on Intel platform, the Game Boy Advance, Windows CE and 64-Windows. Free Pascal is now the first and only free software compiler that targets 64-bit Windows. These advancements were made possible by Free Pascal's internal assembler and linker allowing support for platforms not supported by the GNU binutils. The advancement in internal assembling and linking also allow faster compilation times and smaller executables, increasing the programmer comfort. Other new features are stabs debug support, many new code optimizations, resourcestring smart-linking and more."

Several readers tipped us the followup of yesterday's AMD/ATI news, the new development hinted at by Phoronix: AMD has announced they are releasing the specs for all new Radeon chipsets, and will be working with the open source community to develop a fully functional 2D and 3D graphics driver. An anonymous reader opines: "AMD appears to be following in Intel's footsteps with upcoming releases. If AMD is successful NVidia will have real competition in the GNU/Linux gaming arena. While past support by ATI was unsatisfactory the new AMD buyout appears to be having some effect."

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has some fascinating coverage of the recent rift between the OpenBSD developers and the Linux kernel developers. Proponents of the GPL defend their license for enforcing that their code can always be shared. However in the current debate the GPL is being added to BSD-licensed code, thereby preventing it from being shared back with the original authors of the code. Thus, a share-and-share-alike license is effectively preventing two-way sharing." We discussed an instance of this one-way effect a few days back.

bsdphx writes "While Theo may have a reputation of being "difficult" in some circles, this response to the recent relicensing controversy is thoughtful and well penned. Through this whole process I've learned some new things about both GPL and BSD licensing, and especially about combining the two."

Scott_F writes "I recently reviewed several commercial, closed-source slideshow authoring packages for Windows and came across an alarming trend. Several of the packages I installed included GPL and LGPL software without any mention of the GPL, much less source code. For example, DVD Photo Slideshow (www.dvd-photo-slideshow.com) included mkisofs, cdrdao, dvdauthor, spumux, id3lib, lame, mpeg2enc, and mplex (all of which are GPL or LGPL). The company tried to hide this by wrapping them all in DLLs. There are other violations in other packages as well. Based on my testing of other software, it seems that use of GPL software in commercial Windows applications is on the rise. My question is how much are GPL violations in the Windows world being pursued? Does the FSF or EFF follow up on these if the platform is not GPL? How aware is the community of this trend?" This new method of detecting GPL violations could help here.

DeviceGuru writes "A hypervisor can be used to isolate from each other software works released under incompatible licenses, while allowing them to run simultaneously on the same hardware. For example, Linux and Windows CE can run on separate virtual machines on one device, without violating either OS's license. Due to the isolation between multiple VMs running atop a hypervisor, it seems like this architecture could allow companies to build Linux-based devices, such as mobile phones or set-top boxes (think TiVo), that can't be upgraded by their users without authorization, thereby circumventing the GPLv3's 'anti-tivoization' clauses." Here's a white paper with more details from a commercial hypervisor company.

mjasay writes "Groklaw notes that the Free Software Foundation has decried Microsoft's attempts to distance itself from its obligations to abide by GPL Version 3 (press release here). Citing Microsoft's earlier declaration that they are not bound by GPLv3, the Free Software Foundation declared, 'Microsoft cannot by any act of anticipatory repudiation divest itself of its obligation to respect others' copyrights.' The press release implies that the Free Software Foundation may sue Microsoft over the issue."

JosefAssad writes "In a decision centering around a question of a violation of the Artistic License, a San Francisco court has denied an injunction against Matthew Katzer in the favor of Robert Jacobsen of the JMRI project. Importantly, the decision makes the point that the Artistic License is a contract, an interpretation that the Free Software Foundation has been keen to avoid as a legal stance. The JMRI project has a page up with the legal background and developments."

qwerty writes "A paper to be presented at the upcoming academic conference Automated Software Engineering describes a new method to detect code theft and could be used to detect GPL violations in particular. While the co-called birthmarking method is demonstrated for Java, it is general enough to work for other languages as well. The API Benchmark observes the interaction between an application and (dynamic) libraries that are part of the runtime system. This captures the observable behavior of the program and cannot be easily foiled using code obfuscation techniques, as shown in the paper (PDF). Once such a birthmark is captured, it can be searched for in other programs. By capturing the birthmarks from popular open-source frameworks, GPL-violating applications could be identified."

twitter writes "The defeat of SCO's infamous copyright attack has Forbes wondering if a GNU/Linux boom is upon us. They discuss how this will benefit Novel, IBM, Chrysler, AutoZone and Red Hat. 'The SCO Group frightened potential business users away from Linux with lawsuits demanding billions in royalties. But the litigious company's claims were shot down in a ruling that will likely boost uptake of the operating system.'"

AlexGr writes to point out a really good point Matt Asay raises in his CNET News Blog: Why do we praise closed source companies who open up a little bit, but damn open source companies who close down a little bit? "Deja vu. Remember 2002? That's when Red Hat decided to split its code into Red Hat Advanced Server (now Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and Fedora. Howls of protest and endless hand-wringing ensued: How dare Red Hat not give everything away for free? Enter 2007. MySQL decides to comply with the GNU General Public License and only give its tested, certified Enterprise code to those who pay for the service underlying that code (gasp!). Immediately cries of protest are raised, How dare MySQL not give everything away for free?"

vboulytchev writes "The folks at MySQL has quietly announced that it will no longer be distributing the MySQL Enterprise Server source as a tarball. It's been about a year since the split between the paid and free versions of the database project. The Enterprise Server code is still under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and as a result MySQL appears to be making it harder for non-customers to access the source code. 'One of the things that many users worry about is whether they're getting an inferior version of MySQL by using the Community version. Urlocker says that MySQL "wants to make sure the Community version is rock solid," but admitted that the company has introduced features into the Community edition of the software that "[weren't] as robust as we thought, and created some instabilities." Because of that, the company is revising its policies about when features go into the Community releases.'" Update: 08/10 04:56 GMT by CN :While it is slightly harder to get, the source isn't closed by any means, so I updated the title to reflect that.

The British Gaming Blog is reporting that id Software has successfully resolved the minor issue it had with DOSBox, regarding older PC games being sold on Valve's Steam network. "The problem is all fixed up now with the proper licensing text in the game's readme. Developers working hand in hand with smaller application authors is not all that uncommon; SCUMM has worked closely with point and click masters Revolution and LucasArts to improve compatibility with their games, and hopefully this trend will continue so we can experience more old classics in the future."

lymeca writes "Groklaw reports that Google has become the Open Invention Network's first end-user licensee. The OIN was established by companies such as IBM, Red Hat, and somewhat ironically Novell to accumulate patents and license them royalty-free to any company promising not to leverage their own patent portfolio against key applications available on GNU/Linux, including many GNU projects as well as Linux itself. Google's support bolsters the OIN's effectiveness as a shield against patent attacks against GNU/Linux and many popular applications that run on it."

frooge writes "With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release."

eldavojohn writes "Microsoft is applying for OSI certification for its Shared Source Initiative. The move is described in a blog post by an MS OSS lab worker: 'Today, we reached another milestone with the decision to submit our open licenses to the OSI approval process, which, if the licenses are approved, should give the community additional confidence that the code we're sharing is truly Open Source. I believe that the same voices that have been calling for Microsoft products to better interoperate with open source products would voice their approval should the Open Source Initiative itself open up to more of the IT industry.' According to PC World, reaction from the community has been mostly positive."

An anonymous reader writes "Command-line processing is historically one of the most ignored areas in software development. Just about any relatively complicated software has dozens of available command-line options. The GNU tool gperf is a "perfect" hash function that, for a given set of user-provided strings, generates C/C++ code for a hash table, a hash function, and a lookup function. This article provides a reference for a good discussion on how to use gperf for effective command-line processing in your C/C++ code."

LinuxFan writes "KernelTrap has a fascinating article about the first Linux kernel, version 0.01, complete with source code and photos of Linus Torvalds as a young man attending the University of Helsinki. Torvalds originally planned to call the kernel "Freax," and in his first announcement noted, "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." He also stressed that the kernel was very much tied to the i386 processor, "simply, I'd say that porting is impossible." Humble beginnings."