# Focused on the Open Source Community http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/49650 Washington State University Vancouver professor Scott Wallace and University of Puget Sound computer science professor Andrew Nierman were recently awarded a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build a gaming engine designed to make learning computer science more absorbing for students. Paul McCloskey Mon, 13 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://etech.eweek.com/content/linux_open_source/governments_arent_open_to_new_technologies.html?kc=EWKNLBOE081707STR5 Today, I come to give praise and honor to a group that is fearless in its abilities to choose and deploy cutting-edge technologies. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, state governments! ...... The latest standards group to put on a full-court press to win the love of state governments is the ODF Alliance, which is pushing governments and states such as Massachusetts to adopt the OpenDocument Format as a standard for public documents. Jim Rapoza Mon, 13 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,2173414,00.asp?kc=EWKNLLIN082107STR1 Yahoo has emerged as one of a major sponsor of Hadoop, an open source project that aims to replicate Google\'s techniques for storing and processing large amounts of data distributed across hundreds or thousands of commodity PCs (see Baseline\'s report: How Google Works). Last year, Hadoop project founder Doug Cutting became a Yahoo employee, and at July\'s Oscon open source conference he and Yahoo\'s director of grid computing Eric Baldeschwieler detailed how they are applying the technology. David F. Carr Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.eweek.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=&s=25947&a=213883&po=7,00.asp?p=y A slideshow with an image of the software and a very brief description of the application. Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39288308-1,00.htm?r=1 After years of speculation, Microsoft said last week it will submit its \"shared-source\" software licences to the Open Source Initiative, for approval as fully \"open-source\" licences. Matthew Broersma ZDNet UK Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.crn.com/government/201200504 In a major about-face, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts released a draft of a new policy that, if approved, would support the use of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) as a document format for government agencies. This is in stark contrast to the Commonwealth's prior decision to embrace only OpenDocument Format (ODF), the open standard developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). Jill R. Aitoro, CMP Channel Mon, 6 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/93963 The trend towards the commercial use of open-source programs has been in evidence for some time. Business customers have now begun to apply the same quality and price criteria to both open-source and proprietary products of major vendors. The acquisition and maintenance costs as well as the reliability and the functionality are now being compared with those of traditional products, Matt Lawton, an analyst at the market-research company IDC, declared during a telephone conference in the run-up to the Linuxworld event. Erich Bonnert Robert W. Smith Sun, 8 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=8950 Entrigue Systems will release Script Start, a Windows logon scripting tool, free of charge to open source developers in September. The aim is to spur custom development of Script Start -- something for which its users have been clamoring, according to Entrigue President Jon McDonald. David Kopf Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2007/sep/20/busybox/ The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, against Monsoon Multimedia, Inc. BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source software licensed under GPL version 2. Software Freedom Law Center Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.sdtimes.com/article/LatestNews-20070715 Sometimes, opportunities are simply obvious. Intel, seeing a crying need for libraries that take full advantage of multicore processors, has created its first major open source project by releasing on July 24 Threading Building Blocks, its C++ runtime library for the 21st Century. Alex Handy Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2162820,00.asp The Open Source Initiative approved on July 25 its first new license in quite some time: the Common Public Attribution License, which is essentially the Mozilla Public License with a new attribution clause. Peter Galli Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9033701 Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard. Eric Lai and Elizabeth Montalbano Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/95589 AMD says it will be providing developers with information on the programming of open-source graphics drivers for the company\'s two new graphics chip families in addition to actively supporting the development of such a driver. Back in May, AMD indicated at the Red Hat Summit that it wanted to improve driver support for ATI graphics and find a solution that would be satisfactory to the open-source community. Now, the company has provided some additional information at the Kernel Developers Summit currently taking place in Cambridge, Great Britain; information was also made available online at LWN.net and in Christopher Blizzard\'s blog. Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.sdtimes.com/fullcolumn/opinion-20070901-03.html Despite rosy spin by its PR department, Microsoft has suffered a setback in its attempt to ram OOXML through the standards process. We should all celebrate that there\'s still some amount of credibility in organizations such as the ISO. Alan Zeichick Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2168928,00.asp?kc=EWKNLSTE081407FEA1 IBM\'s expanded partnership with Zend aims to enable users to more easily create enterprise-ready PHP applications. Darryl K. Taft Thu, 9 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/rob/?p=138 This kind of question is often a problem with a technology challenging a dominant vendor that doesn't have any desire to go quietly into the night. The easy path is to simply duplicate what works and try to do it better. Being a better Microsoft, given decades of infrastructure, partnership, VAR, and application development is simply not a reasonable goal, even for a company like IBM (which tried this almost two decades ago). Rob Enderle Thu, 9 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2196362/firm-struggle-open-source Only 41 per cent of firms currently have some level of an open source licensing policy, according to a survey by the company that offers software that tracks the use of open source applications within a firm. Tom Sanders at Linuxworld Thu, 9 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2145536,00.as OpenOffice.org, the open-source productivity project sponsored by Sun Microsystems, has moved forward on its long-awaited Mac OS X-native port by releasing "Aqua," the alpha version of the suite. Tiffany Maleshefski Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2170718,00.asp?kc=EWKNLEDP081507D Oracle made three versions of Oracle Database 11g available for Linux x86: Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Standard Edition One. Pricing for Oracle Database 11g editions and existing options remains unchanged from the cost of 10g. Prices are available online. A free evaluation version of Oracle Database 11g on Linux x86 is available for download on Oracle Technology Network. Brian Prince Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid44_gci1267992,00.html?track=NL-48&ad=600181&asrc=EM_NLN_1994984&uid=5831372 Ignore the myths. Open source security technology is an affordable and robust option for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). While some buyers might think security is best left to vendors of proprietary software like Symantec Corp. or SonicWall Inc., experts says open source software can give SMBs the protection they seek. Shamus McGillicuddy Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2170958,00.asp In a surprise move, Google quietly released StarOffice in its Google Pack of free downloadable programs. StarOffice is Sun Microsystems\' commercial office suite. A version of it, OpenOffice, is the most popular open-source desktop suite. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,2164623, 00.asp Ruby on Rails, released in 2004, is an increasingly popular open-source framework for Web applications. It aims to be a "full-stack" framework, meaning that it tries to address all aspects of the Web development process. In contrast, open-source developers working in Java often find themselves piecing together several technologies to address different layers of their Web architecture, such as Struts for the user interface and Hibernate to automate the storage and retrieval of database content. David F. Carr Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.sdtimes.com/article/LatestNews-20070901-01.html Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) specification has been detoured off the fast track onto the slow road. On September 2, the ballots closed and the software giant failed to attain support from a sufficient number of Organization for Standardization (ISO) members to fast-track approve OOXML as an ISO standard. The proposal must be reworked to try again next year. David Worthington Tue, 4 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/rob/?p=137 The opportunity for Linux has never been greater. Windows XP is aging and Windows Vista demand appears to be declining, largely in the face of a lack of demand generation marketing from Microsoft. Whatever the cause, the combination is creating an opportunity for displacement that is unprecedented in my time covering Windows. Rob Enderle Tue, 7 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/njl/?p=148 The world's third largest PC maker will be preloading Linux (of the SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 variety) on its Thinkpad T series notebooks, according to information from both companies. On its face the move looks like a challenge to Dell's Ubuntu offering - and maybe it is, in part. Lora Bentley Tue, 7 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/tech/3CA53767B17F2736CC257338001C62AD Lotus ships Notes/Domino 8 Standards NZ to canvass local views on Open XML US panel set to say no to Open XML - for now UK National Archives seeks to unlock file formats Ecma to create standard out of Microsoft PDF rival Microsoft backs ODF Service hasn't crashed, Skype says MIT's '$100 laptops' to go to Pacific islands Skype users don't buy outage explanation Open Source Society warns of Open XML patent threat Warehouse's Tindall grabs 35% stake in thedeal.co.nz website The New Zealand Open Source Society is warning government and business users that the Microsoft-sponsored Open XML file format is "peppered" with potential patent liabilities. Rob O'Neill Auckland Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8454912761.html?kc=EWKNLLIN082807FEA1 According to DesktopLinux.com\'s just completed survey, the number of Desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the past year, and Ubuntu remains their Linux distribution of choice. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2174161,00.asp?kc=EWKNLLIN082807STR2 As the only major OEM now offering pre-installed Linux, Dell is eyeing new markets and working with virtualization to increase the market for its Ubuntu clients. Scott Ferguson Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://campustechnology.com/articles/49986/ LectureShare has debuted its free online course management system (CMS) at lectureshare.com, which lets instructors upload class announcements, documents, and audio and video files. ......... The development team is looking for user feedback to bring improvements to the services over the next few months. David Kopf Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.crn.com/storage/201804226 Calling Sun Microsystems \"reckless\" for aggressively pursuing Network Appliance over patent disputes related to file system technology, NetApp on Wednesday said it filed a lawsuit seeking damages and an injunction related to Sun\'s ZFS file system. Joseph F. Kovar Wed, 5 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7900847200.html Dell and Ubuntu broke the barrier for major vendors to preload consumer desktop Linux, and now Lenovo and Novell have shattered the wall for Linux-powered business desktops. On Aug. 6 at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, the companies announced an agreement to provide preloaded SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 SP 1 on Lenovo ThinkPad laptops with Lenovo also providing Linux support. Steven J. Vaughan Nichols Wed, 8 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2167193,00.asp Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with the patent indemnity agreements it has entered into with several prominent vendors, Ubuntu leader and Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth told eWEEK. Peter Galli Wed, 8 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://searchcio.techtarget.com/loginMembersOnly/1,289498,sid19_gci1267342,00.html While wikis are popping up everywhere in the consumer space, they're struggling to win acceptance in the enterprise due to concerns over management, security and compliance. A mere 37% of enterprises are using wikis, according to a recent study by The Nemertes Research Group Inc. in Mokena, Ill. Herman Mehling, Contributor Wed, 8 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/28/opensource-lawsuit_1.html A recent federal court ruling pertaining to open-source software in model railroads could derail enforcement of open-source licenses altogether, according to Mark Radcliffe, general counsel for the Open Source Initiative. ---------------- If allowed to stand, the decision could withhold an important and expected remedy from open-source licensors, that being the ability to get an injunction against license violations, Radcliffe said. Paul Krill Wed, 8 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://news.com.com/Sun+hopes+for+Linux-like+Solaris/2100-1016_3-6182526.html In an effort to spur adoption of Solaris, Sun Microsystems has begun a project code-named Indiana to try to give its operating system some of the trappings of Linux. Stephen Shankland Wed, 9 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT