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Education

How Open Source Is Changing Education 70

Posted by kdawson from the apple-for-the-penguin dept.
ftblguy writes "MIT's Open CourseWare program provides a great example of how the open source movement is impacting education. The Online Education Database also lists Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia, Linux, Firefox, and Google (?) as some of the other open source in education success stories. Open source and open access resources have changed how colleges, organizations, instructors, and prospective students use software, operating systems, and online documents for educational purposes. Each success story has served as a springboard to create more open source successes."

Top Ten Open Source Innovators 152

Posted by CowboyNeal from the leading-the-pack dept.
42istheanswer writes "Open source is so much more than Linux these days. A lot is happening beyond the popular operating system. Open source models are thriving in CRM (SugarCRM), messaging (Scalix), and systems management (Zenoss). Datamation has identified ten leading commercial open-source innovators and the projects they are working on in their article, Ten Leading Open Source Innovators."
Programming

Visual Basic on GNU/Linux 383

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-why-you-might-ask dept.
jeevesbond writes "The Mono Project announced that it has developed a Visual Basic compiler that will enable software developers who use Microsoft Visual Basic to run their applications on any platform that supports Mono, such as Linux, without any code modifications."
Software

The Future of Packaging Software in Linux 595

Posted by Zonk from the come-together-right-now dept.
michuk writes "There are currently at least five popular ways of installing software in GNU/Linux. None of them are widely accepted throughout the popular distributions. This situation is not a problem for experienced users — they can make decisions for themselves. However, for a newcomer in the GNU/Linux world, installing new software is always pretty confusing. The article tries to sum up some of the recent efforts to fix this problem and examine the possible future of packaging software in GNU/Linux."

Stallman Convinces Cuba to Switch to Open Source 582

Posted by CowboyNeal from the digital-emissaries dept.
prostoalex writes "It's a big victory for Richard Stallman in North America, as Cuba decided to adopt open source software on the national level. Both Cuba and Venezuela are currently working on switching the entire government infrastructure to GNU/Linux operating system and applications, the Associated Press reports from Havana: 'Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft's proprietary Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, which is developed by a global community of programmers who freely share their code.' The AP article doesn't mention the distro used for government workers, but says that the students are working on a Gentoo-based distro."
Networking

Cisco to Open Source CTA 48

Posted by CowboyNeal from the all-skate-everyone-skate dept.
VE3OGG writes "Cisco, the networking Goliath, has decided to release the source code of its NAC (network admission control) client, Cisco Trust Agent (CTA) to the open source community within 'a few months.' This comes hot on the heels of Cisco announcing its plans to redevelop a new breed of network security infrastructure. 'CTA will be something that's open source. That's just logically where it should end up,' Gleichauf told InfoWorld. 'We don't want to be in the CTA business, so we're going to just open it up.'"
Programming

How To Tell Open-Source Winners From Losers 218

Posted by Hemos from the sifting-chaff-&-wheat dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There are 139,834 open-source projects under way on SourceForge. IWeek wonders which projects will make lasting contributions, and which will fizzle. Sure, Linux, Apache, and MySQL are winners, but what about OpenVista, FLOSSmole, and Hyperic HQ? What's your list of open-source winners and losers?"
Media

Fight DRM While There's Still Time 424

Posted by kdawson from the call-to-action dept.
ageor writes "It seems (not only) to me that DRM is about far more than intellectual property. It's also about monopoly and freedom of choice. It's one of those cases where we, the consumers, must decide against accepting the new industry's rules, which care only about control and making money. The whole matter is very well put in DRM, Vista and your rights, where you can follow the subject as deeply as you like through the numerous relevant links."
Sun Microsystems

Sun to Add GPLv3 to OpenSolaris? 118

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sun-is-shining-in-gpl-land dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention that sources inside Sun Microsystems claim that OpenSolaris may see the GPLv3 added to its list of licenses soon. From the article: "While Sun officials would not confirm the plan to dual-license OpenSolaris under the CDDL and GPLv3, Tom Goguen, vice president of Solaris software at Sun, told eWEEK that other open-source technologies will play a big role in Solaris going forward. 'Take the GNU Userland, which is an interesting piece of technology that Sun is looking at closely, and we may do something similar with, say, a container flavor,' he said. 'You can also expect to see a renewed focus on the needs of developers and system administrators with Solaris going forward, while individual pieces of the next version will also likely be increasingly delivered first as components or technologies targeted at vertical markets,' he said."
GNU is Not Unix

Large FLOSS Study Gets the Real Facts 210

Posted by kdawson from the putting-it-all-together dept.
Hans Kwint writes "The European Commission's enterprise and industry department has just released the final draft of what could be the biggest academic interdisciplinary study on the economic / innovative impacts of free/libre/open source software (1.8-MB PDF). The study was done by an international consortium led by the United Nations University / University of Maastricht. The lead researcher, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, has overseen a large volume of FLOSS studies in the last few years, including ones on FLOSS policies and worldwide FLOSS adoption. This academic-grade study has a very broad scope and has collected real-world information that is valuable for both companies and government bodies thinking about migration. The study is about the economic impact of FLOSS, not excluding the hidden indirect impact. It compares scenarios of open and proprietary software futures of Europe. The study looks at the FLOSS's competitiveness compared to proprietary software and also provides a few TCO comparison case-studies.
Operating Systems

Why are Free-Desktop Developers Wedded to Linux? 528

Posted by Cliff from the it's-not-the-OS-it's-the-tool-chain dept.
An anonymous reader wonders: "We have been hearing promising predictions like 'This year will be the year of Linux on the desktop' for the last decade. However, the Linux of today seems to be as far away as ever from realizing the expectations of mass adoption we once had for it, without significant growth in home usage since the late 90s. Clearly, if Linux is unable to reproduce a third of Firefox's end user uptake over a much longer time-frame, there are deficiencies with the direction the GNU/Linux/X/Gnome/KDE system has taken. Of course, almost all free software and desktop efforts and development remain unquestioningly oriented around Linux. Other free-desktop operating system projects which take different and innovative approaches like ReactOS, AROS, Mona and Syllable remain comparatively starved of developers and interest. An often cited reason for using a non-Microsoft OS is to avoid a monoculture, but free-desktop efforts have created a total monoculture around developing and promoting Linux, despite a decade of failure in supplanting Microsoft's proprietorial OSes with it. Why are free-desktop developers neglecting to consider an alternative to the penguin?"
GNU is Not Unix

Stallman — 20 Years of Explaining Free Software 218

Posted by kdawson from the evolution-of-an-idea dept.
H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "The first recorded talk by Richard Stallman on free software was in 1986, so I've picked from the 2006 recordings and have made a transcript of a recent talk: The Free Software Movement and the Future of Freedom. Those two are the only transcripts of his general free software talk. Others that exist are on specific topics such as patents, GPLv3, copyright, etc. For those who've been reading Slashdot during the gradual evolution of Stallman's pronouncements, it's interesting to see what has changed over 20 years."
GNU is Not Unix

2006 - The Year the FSF Reached Out 114

Posted by Zonk from the hugs-from-a-penguin dept.
nanday writes "Linux.com is running a story about how the Free Software Foundation has transformed itself into an activist organization in the past year. From the story: 'At the start of 2006, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was largely inward-looking, focused on the GNU Project and high-level strategic concerns such as licensing. Now, without abandoning these issues, the FSF had transformed into an openly activist organization, reaching out to its supporters and encouraging their participation in civic campaigns often designed to enlist non-hackers in their causes. Yet what happened seems to bemuse even FSF employees.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Debian

Debian Delayed by Disenchanted Developers 329

Posted by CmdrTaco from the look-at-all-that-alliteration dept.
Torus Kas writes "Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 was supposed to be due by December 4 and development is currently frozen. Apparently the saga was triggered by disenchantment towards funding of $6,000 for each of the 2 release managers to work full-time in order to speed up the development. Many unpaid developers simply put off Debian work to work on something else."

Fedora Linux 176

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Ravi writes "Fedora — the Linux that is developed as a community effort, is the sand box of Red Hat. They incorporate all the new features after they have been exhaustively tested into its commercial product, namely Red Hat Enterprise Linux . Fedora has a 6 month release schedule and the most recent release is core 6. In all respects Fedora is the same Red Hat Linux but with cutting edge packages. What I really like about Fedora apart from the vibrant community participating in its development is the mark of quality it has from its association with Red Hat." Read the rest of Ravi's review.

Gaming Post-Vista — Myths and Realities 57

Posted by Zonk from the gonna-be-shiny dept.
Ant writes "An article at Ten Ton Hammer answers personal computer/PC gamers' question on what's coming their way with Microsoft's newest operating system/OS, Windows Vista. With the PC primed to be the primary distribution platform for certain gaming categories (MMOGs in particular) for many years to come, it's important to know exactly what we're getting into when Vista rolls out worldwide on January 30, 2007. Jeff 'Ethec' Woleslagle offers a quick, non-technical rebuttal to several of the more ambitious PC gaming rumors cropping up around the internet." From the article: "Games which seek to take advantage of DirectX 10 high-end features like Shader Model 4.0 (which the graphically revamped version of EVE Online will aspire to use) will require a computer fully compatible with DirectX 10. This in turn requires a GPU fully optimized to work with DX 10 (such as the first-to-market NVidia 8800). The Microsoft requirements for a DX10 'optimized' GNU and system are fairly strict, so jaded gamers take note: this phrase is more than a marketing maneuver. For those among you that can't afford a major hardware upgrade anytime soon, don't fret (yet). Microsoft's XNA framework enables developers to easily develop parallel versions of a game for DX 9 and DX 10. Here's hoping that developers and publishers will be equally accommodating in releasing XP / Vista compatible games in the same box."

Eben Moglen To Scrutinize Novell-Microsoft Deal 102

Posted by CowboyNeal from the hard-looks dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Novell is providing Eben Moglen's Software Freedom Law Center with confidential access to the legal terms of the Novell-Microsoft partnership, allowing to organization to verify if the deal is compatible with the GPL2 and GPL3 licenses. Moglen in the past has alleged that the patent license between the two companies could be in violation with section 7 of the GPL. Novell on Tuesday published a document on its website, explaining that they circumvented the GPL provisions by providing a patent license to the end user rather than between the two companies."

Managing Money With Linux Apps 142

Posted by kdawson from the accounting-for-it dept.
lisah writes, "As part of a series of special reports this week, Linux.com is reviewing several ways to manage your money using Linux apps. First up is a review of GnuCash 2.0, a personal and small business accounting package. Though it has a bit of a learning curve, the reviewer says the application is 'stable and robust' and an upgrade from previous versions is well worth it for the program's new features and improved online banking support." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

The Hacker Profiling Project 122

Posted by Zonk from the they-know-who-you-be-lads dept.
NewsForge writes "NewsForge is running a story about a project aiming to profile hackers like the police do with common criminals. Not based out of the U.S. per se, this project falls under the auspices of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI). The project was co-founded by Stefania Ducci, in 2004, along with Raoul Chiesa." From the article: "NewsForge: What would the project concretely produce as final output? Stefania Ducci: The final goal is a real and complete methodology for hacker profiling, released under GNU/FDL. This means that, at the end of our research project, if a company will send us its (as detailed as possible) logs related to an intrusion, we — exactly like in the TV show C.S.I. when evidence is found on the crime scene — will be able to provide a profile of the attacker. By 'profile' we mean, for example, his technical skills, his probable geographic location, an analysis of his modus operandi, and of a lot of other, small and big, traces left on the crime scene. This will also permit us to observe and, wherever possible, preview new attack trends, show rapid and drastic behavior changes, and, finally, provide a real picture of the world of hacking and its international scene."

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