Free Republic

Reaction to the Free Software Foundation's upcoming revision of the GNU Public License (GPLv3) has been mixed so far, with many participants taking a wait-and-see attitude while others (such as Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds) actively opposing certain provisions. Now Sun has apparently decided to put its weight squarely behind the FSF and GPLv3. The reasons may not be as pure as you think.

Apparently, lot of people are thrilled with the whole idea of Canonical and Linspire's technology partnership announced yesterday, citing source code consolidation, non-redundant development efforts, and just good karma about the whole deal. I, for one, am not one of those people. Initially, my big problem was worry for the Debian Project. Under the terms of the new partnership (which, for the purposes of this article I will deem "Linbutu" because I am getting lazy in my middle age), the Linspire and Freespire distributions will be based on Ubuntu, not Debian GNU/Linux. Ubuntu, in turn, gets supported access to Linspire's...

JBoss founder to pursue personal interests, says he’s ‘done what I can’ to promote open source.JBoss founder Marc Fleury will leave Red Hat, the company said Friday, a month before the launch of the latest version of Red Hat’s commercial-use Linux operating system. Mr. Fleury became part of Red Hat after the latter bought JBoss, the open source support startup based in Atlanta, last year for $420 million. Red Hat now bundles its Linux for the enterprise with JBoss’ open-source application server. The news is bittersweet for fanatics who believe strongly in open software for all and idolize those who...

This is a new feature in Beryl 0.2.0 and it simply looks wayyyy wicked! This is the stuff that makes OS X and Vista look dated.

The penguin’s come of age. What began as a battle between proprietary and open source Linux software, started by geeks around the world, isn’t plain tech rhetoric anymore. It’s now a mainstream commercial platform — a technology that enterprises are taking very seriously and looking at as a major cost-effective solution that has scalability and a great future roadmap. A free software that can be downloaded from the Web, Linux has a source code that’s open and therefore available for anyone to use, modify, and redistribute freely. Proprietary Unix and Windows operating systems aren’t available for such tweaking. With the...

According to an e-mail message, dated November 1, 2002, that has been entered as evidence in the Iowa consumer antitrust case against Microsoft, some Microsoft executives favored hiding the fact that Microsoft paid International Data Corp. (IDC) for one of the total-cost-of-ownership studies comparing Windows and Linux that the firm conducted at Microsoft's request. (It looks like fear of being outed triumphed, and Microsoft ultimately decided to admit its role in commissioning the IDC TCO and subsequent anti-Linux studies.)

Hello my fellow freepers, I'm thinking of migrating from Windows XP (don't like the new Windows Vista), to a Linux OS, however, before that I make that move, I would like to know what is the best Linux that I can run on a CD.. Thanks!

Barely a week after a U.S. judge approved a landmark antitrust agreement with Microsoft, company executives were swapping e-mails suggesting Dell deserved a beating for its growing interest in Linux, according to documents filed with a state court. But Redmond representatives said Friday that the 2002 exchange, made public this week as part of an antitrust suit unfolding in Iowa state court, only tells part of the story. They said it omits evidence that Microsoft executives were simultaneously seeking legal advice on how to ensure they were responding to such competitive threats without shirking their antitrust responsibilities. The e-mail thread...

IBM did not destroy crucial evidence in its long-running dispute with The SCO Group, a judge has ruled. SCO claimed IBM had destroyed materials last year, but the US judge has ruled that the evidence was actually provided to SCO some time ago. The decision is the latest in a long line of setbacks for SCO, which is claiming that IBM put some material from the Unix operating system into the open source Linux system. SCO owns some intellectual property rights in Unix and is suing for copyright infringement. SCO is claiming damages that it has said could reach $5bn...

San Francisco (dpa) - A week before the launch of Microsoft's new Vista operating system, its open-source competitor Linux received a giant boost Monday as prominent high-tech companies announced they were forming a consortium to promote the free challenger. The Linux Foundation, formed from two separate support groups, will have the backing of companies like IBM, HP, Intel, Oracle and Novell who aim to boost the free programme by providing promotion, standardisation and legal protection, according to James Zemlin, executive director of the foundation. "It's really a two-horse race now, with computing dominated by two operating-system platforms, Linux and Windows,"...

FreeNAS is a small, powerful, full-featured implementation of FreeBSD as a network-attached storage device. (It also happens to be January's Project of the Month at SourceForge.net.) If you're a Linux user like me, the BSD-speak used for devices and such might give you pause, but other than that small caveat, installation and usage shouldn't be a problem. It's powerful enough to be used in the enterprise, but it's friendly enough so that even a typical home office user can take advantage of it. Here's how I created an easy-to-use NAS device for rsync backups and FTP server on my LAN.

The Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group will merge to form the Linux Foundation in an effort to build strength and increase their influence. Formed in 2000, the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) employs Linux founder Linus Torvalds. The move to combine forces could strengthen the hand of the open-source operating system against Windows. Red Hat and Novell distribute Linux for free but charge for tech support. Oracle and SAP have championed Linux as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Both groups already have a large list of members. Combined, the Linux Foundation will have 70 sponsors, such...

The Linux Foundation is Born - Updated Monday, January 22 2007 @ 05:35 AM EST OSDL and the Free Standards Group have merged to form The Linux Foundation. If you go to osdl.org now, you arrive at The Linux Foundation. Here's the operative paragraph from the press release:For Linux to remain open and attain the greatest ubiquity possible, important services must be provided, including legal protection, standardization, promotion and collaboration. Successful proprietary software companies, for instance, do several important things well: backwards compatibility, promotion, interoperability, developer support, and more. In the voluntary and distributed world of Linux development, the...

SCO CEO Darl McBride adamantly stated on the company's fourth quarter conference call that the company is not going bankrupt. He did admit, however, that SCO's recent earnings are not very impressive, though he is encouraged by his company's prospects for 2007. SCO (Quote) reported results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended October 31, 2006 on Wednesday, and the numbers are none too pretty. SCO reported a net loss for the fourth quarter of 2006 of $3.7 million, or $0.18 per diluted common share. The quarterly loss is nine percent greater that the comparable quarter for the prior year...

Around 25% of enterprises will be running mission-critical business application on Linux platforms by 2009. The prediction comes from analyst Saugatuck Technology, as a result of joint research with BusinessWeek Research Services. The researchers questioned over 130 firms and also found that 45% of enterprises will... Article Continues Below ... be using Linux to run critical applications by 2011. At the end of this year, 18% will be relying on Linux for critical applications. The analyst said Linux and other open source software take-up had now reached critical mass in the market place. It said recent open source announcements by...

Hi, I'm running into a problem I can't figure a way around, trying to create a "shortcut" (as it were) in Suse Linux, to open a Windows program via Wine. There's an option in the program itself to not run maximized, which I set. Originally when I installed the program in XP, that program setting was enough to save the size of the window. Windows has a similar parameter when you set up the properties on an icon - Wine seems to default to the equivalent of the Windows "run maximized" icon setting, and opens the window full-screen despite having...

Hello for those who was in the irc yesterday the promised video, for those don't this is my first attempt of video using xvidcap, it demonstrates some aspects of Sabayon Linux v3.2 64Bits and Beryl 0.1.3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T67kricXYRE Enjoy it Antares

I barely know how to tell you this, but SCO has filed a motion for reconsideration of Judge Dale Kimball's November 29th Order in SCO v. IBM, the one affirming Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells' June 28th Order. I guess they figure things are so bad now, they have nothing to lose by trying. Here's the Notice of Conventional Filing [PDF]. Yes. Of course. It's under seal. So is the memorandum in support. Perhaps SCO will grace us with a redacted version in a bit. But in the meanwhile, we are left with our mouths open. Whatever are they thinking? Delay?...

Give people 12 months warning (time to work out what they're going to do, talk with the legal dept, etc) then make the kernel load only GPL-tagged modules. I think I'd favour that. It would aid those people who are trying to obtain device specs, and who are persuading organisations to GPL their drivers.

The greatest differentiator between OS vendors is no longer a question of features, function, performance, customer support, security, reliability or any feature of the product itself. The future of computing may depend on the lawyers.The last month has seen both Oracle and Microsoft take their gloves off in their competition with open source software. Where Oracle has taken a seemingly straightforward approach of copying the competition and undercutting their prices, Microsoft's move to invoke intellectual property and the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL) to counter open source competition is much more potentially damaging. What's more, while Oracle's success...