OSNews posts Open Source Is a ‘Velvet’ Revolution. “There may not be fireworks. CIOs and IT directors may not be heaping their proprietary software on bonfires and dancing. Even so, the open source revolution is happening right now and will carry the day, said Bill Weinberg, open source architecture specialist and Linux evangelist for OSDL.”
Archive | OpenSource
Open Source means that users have the freedom to see how software works, adapt it for the own needs, fix bugs and limitations and contribute back to the community.
What’s in your kernel?
OSNews points in turn to a DevX article, Study: Linux Code Grows as Defects Decline. “Between December 2004 and July 2005, the “defect density” in the Linux kernel has fallen from 0.17 to 0.16 and all serious defects have been corrected, a new report out from code analysis firm Coverity asserts. Defect density declined by 2.2 percent.”
How many defects are in the OS kernel you’re using? Has the defect density gone up or down over time? Cars have satisfaction surveys. Consumer Reports lists pluses and minuses. Why don’t we have a similar test for operating systems.
Audience Participation Night at DLSLUG
Bill McGonigle, Chapter Coordinator for the Dartmouth – Lake Sunapee Linux User Group posts:
- Date: Thursday, August 4th, 7:00-9:00PM
- Place: Dartmouth College, Carson Hall Room L02
- Presenter: The Membership (that means you!)
- Topic: Nifties!
“It’s Audience Participation Night at DLSLUG – time for you to get up and do something. We’ll each take a turn at the projector showing something Neat or Nifty. It doesn’t matter if it takes 2 minutes or 20 minutes to explain, just get up there and show us something. We all know something Nifty that’s worth showing. We’ll have a linux laptop to use, or connect remotely to your own. The meeting will run until we run out of Nifties, or we run out of time.”
“It can be anything from a utility you just discovered to a neat piece of hardware we should know about to a worthwhile service on the ‘net or maybe something you wrote that saves you hours of time. If you’re new to Linux that doesn’t matter – there must be something Nifty about it that got your interested – what is that? Found a good Linux/Unix book lately? Linux is about sharing, and this month it’s your turn.”
Hope to see you there.
Novell: SCO owns no copyright, and we ought to get all their licensing money
OSNews points to a Groklaw article: Novell Files Countersuit Against SCO. “Today, Novell has answered SCO’s complaint alledging Novell slandered SCO’s ownership of the Unix copyrights. Novell claims that SCO approached Novell in 2003 to try and pursuade them to go along with the Linux Licensing Scheme. When Novell refused, SCO attempted to talk Novell into transfering the Unix Copyrights to SCO, which Novell also refused to do. Novell has also filed four counterclaims against SCO, one of them being Slander of Title (for SCO slandering Novell’s ownership of the Unix Copyrights).”
Delicious. If accepted, Novell should earn all the monies SCO got from “licensing” rights to software it didn’t own, plus penalties. Looking forward to the next step.
Kubuntu with KDE 3.4.2, Koffice 1.4.1 Released
Kubuntu with KDE 3.4.2, Koffice 1.4.1 Released. Following the release of KDE 3.4.2 yesterday, the Kubuntu team is proud to announce a new Kubuntu livecd with KDE 3.4.2 and the also recently released Koffice 1.4.1. [OSNews]
FireFox: 75 Million and Growing
Slashdot post: Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million. “Today Mozilla Firefox has reached its 75 millionth download. The Mozilla staff find this a morale booster since recent security vulnerabilities have slightly lowered the browser’s growth rate. ‘We’re beefing up the management on the project. The project is still very healthy. We’re seeing continued corporate interest and have a lot of large organizations that want to do deployments,’ said Chris Hoffman.”
Python SIG meeting last night
Laura and I attended the first meeting of the New Hampshire Python Special Interest Group (PySIG) at the Amoskeag Business Incubator last night. There was excellent attendance, enthusiasm and information. Looks like we’ve got a new meeting to attend the fourth Thursday of each month!
Insight into the Greasemonkey issue
Following up on my response to Alex Feldstein’s post on Greasemonkey security warning, Jon Udell posts his weekly column today, “Greasemonkey in crisis:
A hole in a Firefox plug-in proves that no one, not even open source partisans, have all the answers” with several insightful comments:
This time there was no Microsoft to blame. The open source underdogs had done this to themselves.
How can sandboxed environments sufficiently empower developers while preserving meaningful isolation of risk? … There are no perfect answers to these questions.
Dvorak: struggling to make sense of Creative Commons
Doc Searls’ IT Garage – notes Barning Creative Commons. “John C. Dvorak is one of the most interesting, informative and entertaining journalists in the history of the computer business. He is also something of a troll.”
To think at one time my career aspiration was to be the next Dvorak. Luckily, I got over it. Sadly, John never did.
P.S. If that one doesn’t hit your hot button, try “Windows Vista: Where’s the Buzz?” At least John’s an equal-opportunity troll.
Boot Fedora Faster
OSNews points to an article that tells you how to Boot Fedora Linux Faster. “Everyone wants a quick boot time, from the beginner user to the advanced user, this is a issue that bothers us all. As Linux has advanced it has increasingly become slower to boot. So I decided to look into reducing the time it takes to boot my current setup, which is Fedora 4. In doing so I was able to reduce the boot time of my Fedora 4 installation to less than 25 seconds.”
You can never have too much RAM, too slim a laptop or too fast a boot-up sequence!