● 06.24.10

● Links 24/6/2010: Cisco-Red Hat Tag Team, Nokia Elevates Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 4:20 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Africa

• MOODLE is the acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It is an Open Source Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). MOODLE is provided freely as an Open Source Software under the GPL (GNU Public License).

• The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world’s premier Linux certification organization (http://www.lpi.org), announced with the Ministry of Communication Technologies of Tunisia (http://www.mincom.tn) a program to train and certify young graduates in Linux and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The program was announced during the signing of a partnership agreement in Tunis, Tunisia with Ministry officials and LPI’s affiliate in the region: LPI-Maghreb (http://www.lpi-maghreb.net).

Dell

• What is interesting however is that Dell did not kill off the fatal phrase.

• It seems that Dell remains committed to Ubuntu Linux on its laptops and netbooks and will not allow itself to be bullied too much.

• Perhaps Dell sees life in Android, Chrome and Linux after all.

• Amit Midha, Dell’s president for Greater China and South Asia, told Reuters Monday that Dell wants to be a leader in the “unique innovations” that are coming to market in the next two to three years. Dell is working with Google to see where Chrome and Android fit with the “new form of computing,” he said.

• At this point, though, that’s a big if. “I think Dell is using this mostly as leverage against Microsoft to gain a more favorable OEM contract rather than gearing up to sell a small number of systems to the Microsoft haters of the world,” said Piland.

• Dell wants to be a leader in the “unique innovations” that are coming to market and it’s working with Google to see where Chrome OS and Android fit with the “new form of computing,” Amit Midha, president of Dell’s Greater China and South Asia business, told Reuters Monday.

Server

• Cloud Linux announces today that CH-Center Hosting, a Romania based full service hosting company, will offer CloudLinux across its hosted offerings.

Graphics Stack

• After many months of hard work, Nvidia finally announced on June 22nd the final and stable version of the 256.x proprietary driver for Nvidia graphics cards. Nvidia 256.35 incorporates lots of fixes and improvements, over previous releases. Unofficial GLX support was also added for a few OpenGL extensions, as well as Thermal Settings reporting improvements, Compiz fixes, many VDPAU improvements, and many more.

Instructionals

Games

Distributions

Reviews

• The fun doesn’t stop there, though. Go back to the login screen, click the list button at the bottom left of the login window, and you begin to see the advantage of having accepted the defaults on installation, and thus installed almost everything… You can now choose your session type from KDE, Xfce, Fluxbox, Blackbox, FVWM, TWM and more. As I said, if you want to learn about Linux, this is an excellent distribution to use.

Red Hat Family

Fog Computing

• LEADING LINUX VENDOR Red Hat has announced the release of several cloud computing tools in what it calls Cloud Foundation: Edition One.

• [...]

• Red Hat claims Edition One is the first of several cloud offerings that will give its customers everything they’ll need to build and manage a private cloud software infrastructure.

Results

• Red Hat’s JBoss middleware is landing big greenfield deals as well successes with established outfits like the NYSE Euronext. Red Hat has said its Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 will be its most ambitious release and designed for virtual, cloud and physical IT environments.

• As the graph below demonstrates, Red Hat has grown significantly faster than the industry average (as measured by the Information Age index, which collates the revenue growth rates of the sector’s largest suppliers), but like most businesses it saw a severe deceleration in growth during the past two years – from a height of 52% at the start of 2007 down to a low of 11% at the start of last year.

Cisco

• Networking giant Cisco Systems and open source software leader Red Hat are expanding their joint efforts in the field of virtualization.

Virtualisation

• Red Hat has released a new version of its Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation that integrates desktop and server virtualisation into a single platform, simplifying the management of virtual infrastructures in a single end-to-end solution, according to the firm.

• Cloud infrastructure wannabe and Linux juggernaut Red Hat has announced the next rev of its Enterprise Virtualization commercial-grade KVM hypervisor, saying it has qualified it to scale further and also adding the ability to support desktop images as well as server images.

Other

• Like many other IT professionals, Gunnar Hellekson’s interest in computers was born at an early age, but it was not until college he received formal training in the field. While taking engineering classes, Hellekson put his skills and his entrepreneurial side to use and worked as a systems administrator to make some money. Not long after, he took the step to start up a number of Internet companies, doing business-to-business work and web development, eventually leading to the founding of a consulting company focused on helping small and medium-size arts and nonprofits in New York City. About four or five years ago, he traded the Big Apple for the nation’s capital and ended up working at Red Hat U.S. Public Sector as a chief technology strategist.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Now, for many FOSS aficionados, the post serves as a bright spot of comic relief in a world otherwise dominated by all-too-real, anti-Linux FUD.

• ” Hahha,” wrote one anonymous reader in the comments on Hoogland’s blog, for example. “One of the most hilarious article on Ubuntu ever.”

• Some were even inspired to continue in the same sarcastic vein: “Ubuntu; why would anyone want to use that?” wrote another anonymous commenter. “Any fool could see that Windows is the best choice. Expensive, proprietary and restrictive is always better than free as in freedom.”

Devices/Embedded

• Highlights of this June 2010 release are the virtual platform simulator OVPsim, which has improved its industry leading performance by 50 percent; fast models of PowerPC processors, and a MIPS-based reference platform under SystemC/TLM-2.0 which boots both Linux and Mentor Graphic’s Nucleus RTOS.

• MontaVista(R) Software, LLC, a leader in embedded Linux(R) commercialization, announced the availability of the first commercial Linux distribution and toolchain optimized for the ARM Cortex(TM)-A9 processor. Based on the revolutionary MontaVista Linux 6 (MVL6) approach, it provides a market specific distribution (MSD) and toolchain designed specifically for the Cortex-A9 architecture and provides the perfect starting point for new product designs using the low power, high performance characteristics of the ARM Cortex-A9 processor.

• Virage Logic Corporation, the semiconductor industry’s trusted IP partner, today announced it is investing in its ARC processor product portfolio by releasing the ARC GNU 2.3 Toolchain for its complete range of ARC processor cores and the ARC Linux 1.3 Operating System for its ARC® 750D processor. The suite contains the ARC Linux 2.6.30 kernel for the ARC 750D processor, and a GCC 4.2.1 based ARC GNU Toolchain for Virage Logic’s complete range of ARC processor cores. Virage Logic is committed to release regular updates of the ARC Open Source Tool Suites to keep the ARC GNU and Linux tools up to date with the current standards. All of the ARC Open Source tools are available for free download at www.SourceForge.com.

Nokia/MeeGo

• To get down and dirty in mobile phone competition, Nokia decides to take on Apple and Google by adopting the Linux MeeGo platform for its new N-Series phones. Back in February of this year, Intel and Nokia teamed up to create the MeeGo mobile phone platform.

• This bold move allows Nokia to compete more effectively with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-based phones. The MeeGo platform features rich applications via the blending of the Moblin Linux distribution and Linux-based Maemo.

• Nokia has confirmed that it now plans to release a preliminary version of its MeeGo platform for handsets on the 30th of June. The Linux-based distribution for mobile devices is the result of the February decision to merge Intel’s Moblin platform and Nokia’s Maemo platform under the aegis of the Linux Foundation.

• We’ve been thinking a lot about the next Nokia N900 – or Nokia N9, as it will likely be called – and the features we’d like to see from this range-topping handset. We also asked for our readers’ feedback, however, so join us after the cut to find out what the public wants from the Nokia N9…

• Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE) will use Linux MeeGo software in its flagship N-series smartphones, hoping the new platform will give it a better chance to battle rivals such as Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Google Inc (GOOG.O).

• Nokia on Thursday confirmed that it will drop Symbian from its Nseries phones. A spokesperson said that all of the high-end devices after the N8 will use MeeGo, the OS co-designed with Intel. It’s not known if the work-oriented Eseries or other models would use MeeGo, but most are still expected to use Symbian^3 or S40.

• The software, too, is changing. The mobile giant is set to release an overhaul of the popular open-source Symbian Series 60 platform with Symbian 3 and soon Symbian 4, and is in the process of bringing the first devices with its Linux-based MeeGo operating system to market. Once completed, Nokia will only have three smartphone platforms for its entire fleet – Series 40, Symbian 4 and MeeGo – which are open for development from third parties through its Qt framework which can be deployed on all of the company’s devices.

Android

• Numerous Nexus One users started receiving Google’s Android 2.2 upgrade over-the-air on their devices Wednesday night. Gauging by users’ reports, the updates appear to be hitting phones all throughout America, on both T-Mobile and AT&T, and on carriers in other countries as well. Users who were not part of the original Nexus One Froyo test group have received the software.

• The Verizon/Motorola event has kicked off, and the Droid X has been announced. We already knew the Droid X had a 4.3″ display, recorded video at 720p, and had HDMI out capabilities.

• In a brief blog post, Google has announced that it has released the entirety of the source code for Froyo, better known as Android 2.2, under an open-source license. The open-source aspect of the release isn’t new — all previous platform iterations have been open-sourced too — but there are a few extra modules in Froyo that have been opened up that had previously been closed-source.

• Every now and then, we remove applications from Android Market due to violations of our Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement or Content Policy. In cases where users may have installed a malicious application that poses a threat, we’ve also developed technologies and processes to remotely remove an installed application from devices. If an application is removed in this way, users will receive a notification on their phone.

• Apple and Google are now playing chess while everyone else plays catch up. The surge in popularity for developing tablet applications on the two leading OSes, coupled with second tier platforms seeing flat to declining interest, suggests that Google and Apple are moving the battle from phones to a broader, more long-term platform shootout for “anywhere computing.”

• [...]

• Why this is significant: Developers see Apple dominating in every category related to its devices and app store. Yet Android takes top honors for OS capabilities, openness, and, long-term outlook. Despite all of Apple‟s success, developers see that the winner long-term will be the mobile operating system that has the most capabilities and flexibility in scenarios beyond phones.

Tablets

• As a matter of fact, word is that some Linux tablets are headed our way in the near future but they ain’t here yet. And while I think that Linux tablets will do well, it also drives me to expect a lot from them.

• According to Jim Zemlin, the head of the Linux Foundation, it is necessary for mobile Linux vendors to increase their technical investments in order users could benefit Linux devices.

Free Software/Open Source

• Online, open source is a movement, and has resulted in wholesale changes to the way in which software is developed.

• Dr Koray Atalag, the inaugural holder of a fellowship also endowed by the Bedogni family, says while it’s likely the winner will be working in free or open-source software, the term “open systems” was used to take in people who may be working on components of open standards.

• “The spirit of this thing is open source, but it leaves the door open for people in the non-open source world,” Atalag says.

• Open Computing is already being widely used and saving money. The French Gendarmarie’s migration to an open source desktop has saved millions of Euros. In Italy, children’s hospitals in Tuscany are saving an estimated 1,000 Euros per PC by moving to open source. And the Spanish autonomous region of Extremadura has moved entirely to open standards and open source resulting in claimed savings of 18 million Euros.

• MB: What is your view on the open source movement (free software and web services). Is it anti-business as Microsoft’s Bill Gates has suggested?

• RB: No, it’s not anti-business – it’s actually very pro-business. It’s enabling. It allows more people direct access to the tools and resources they need to succeed, and also gives everyone a sense of ownership as a whole community. As opposed to one corporate body retaining strict ownership and distribution rights which is more crippling to people at the coal face, particularly in times when we all face budget and resource restrictions.

Events

• The event will highlight, discuss and explain advantages and issues in open innovation and using Open Source software.

• Many organisations are beginning to embrace more open and collaborative approaches to innovation. Inspired by the success of open source products such as the Apache web server and the Firefox browser, many multinational companies such as Procter and Gamble, Orange and IBM have made ‘open innovation’ – the sharing of the risks and rewards of the product development process with partners – a top strategic priority.

Web Browsers

• A bit of welcome news for Linux users who browse with Google Chrome: a change has landed in the Chromium source code which adds support for the built-in, secure password stores for both GNOME and KDE.

Fog Computing

• In November 2008, Evan Prodromou — founder of identi.ca and CEO and lead developer of StatusNet — published a blog post on autonomo.us in which he argued that we need a distributed model for social networking sites.

Eucalyptus (and Fake ‘Open Source’)

• So let me try to make one thing clear: Open core may be a good business model, but open core is not open source!

• I can remember the morning of the first keynotes for the MySQL Conference after Sun had acquired MySQL. You have Jonathan Swartz and Rich Green delivering keynotes where the underlying message was “we continue to allow MySQL to run its own business”.

• Why was this?

• Because Marten was going to announce the close sourcing of part of the MySQL Server. For years there were conversations around “if we did XYZ could we take out a critical…”. These conversations were always met with a dead silence. The codebase was neither modular, nor did any of the developers resonate with the message. The backup code had never been designed to be a standalone component so the entire message of “we are close sourcing it” was a delusion. We had no ability to do it.

Databases

• Membase is a simple, fast and elastic data store that is optimized for demanding web applications. The software is based on Memcached, a very popular in-memory caching system. NorthScale was started by the leaders of the Memcached open source project. NorthScale also today announced the availability of the beta version of its NorthScale Membase Server.

Education

• While it wouldn’t be the first open-sourced textbook, it may well be the first not to focus on open source and the first spearheaded by a major university.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Furthermore, I try to have faith in our community’s intelligence. Regardless of how people get drawn into FLOSS: be it from the moral software freedom arguments or the technical-advantage-only open source ones, I don’t think people stop listening immediately upon their arrival in our community. I know this even from my own adoption of software freedom: I came for the Free as in Price, but I stayed for the Free as in Freedom. It’s only because I couldn’t afford a SCO Unix license in 1992 that I installed GNU/Linux. But, I learned within just a year why the software freedom was what mattered most.

• Surely, others have a similar introduction to the community: either drawn in by zero-cost availability or the technical benefits first, but still very interested to learn about software freedom. My goal is to reach those who have arrived in the community. I therefore try to speak almost constantly about software freedom, why it’s a moral issue, and why I work every day to help either reduce the amount of proprietary software, or increase the amount of Free Software in the world. My hope is that newer community members will hear my arguments, see my actions, and be convinced that a moral and ethical commitment to software freedom is the long lasting principle worth undertaking. In essence, I seek to lead by example as much as possible.

Project Releases

• Today the TYPO3 Association released the newest version of their Open Source project TYPO3. TYPO3 has been downloaded over 4.6 million times – making it one of the world’s leading Enterprise Open Source projects.

Government

EU

• The European Commission will ensure that devices with always-on connectivity, like Apple’s iPhone, don’t lock consumers in to proprietary technology, Neelie Kroes, EU commissioner for the ‘Digital Agenda’, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview. A yearly scorecard will measure the industry’s progress.

• “I intend to publish a yearly progress report on the Digital Agenda with a scoreboard on how we are doing in terms of implementation. This scoreboard will chart progress towards the key targets outlined in the Digital Agenda,” Kroes told EurActiv.

US

• In Washington, the project is being called “Digital Vote by Mail” and will be open source, which means that the public will be able to examine how the software works. That’s important because it ensures transparency, officials said. District officials are working with the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation, a California group, to develop the process and ensure it is secure.

Openness/Sharing

• It is sometimes suggested that there isn’t a real difference in terms of “openness” between share-alike (SA) and non-commercial (NC) clauses — both being some restriction on what the user of that material can do, and, as such, a step away from openness.

• This is not true. A meaningful distinction can be drawn between share-alike and non-commercial clauses (or any other clause that discriminates against a particular type of person or field of endeavour), with the former being “open” and the latter being not “open”.

• We at Shareable.net harbor the belief that the growth of the Internet and mobile technology has made sharing more practical–and that this trend has the potential to minimize consumption, by redefining wealth as access to stuff instead of the accumulation of stuff. We’re working on testing this hypothesis, by launching a series of studies with the research consultancy Latitude.

Open Data

• The OpenStreetMap (OSM) Project has announced that this year’s State of the Map conference will take place from the 9th to the 11th of July in Girona, Spain. OpenStreetMap is an open source project that is building free online maps, not based on any copyright or licensed map data. Founded by Steve Coast in August of 2004 and run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, to date the project has nearly 270,000 users worldwide that make more than 7,000 edits every hour.

Open Hardware

• And the open source community has lapped it up. Currently, there are 164 projects registered with the BeagleBoard website.

Eclipse

• The Eclipse project has announced the Helios release train, a major update of the open source Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) and many of its key components.

• The Eclipse Foundation’s annual release train, this year dubbed Helios, as planned, includes version 3.6 of Eclipse, the free development environment. Helios includes 39 projects with more than 33 million lines of code – the work of approximately 490 committers. Discussing the release, Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich said, “The Helios release is another fantastic effort by the Eclipse committer community”, noting that,”Besides the feat of coordinating such a large development effort, Helios introduces important innovations”.

Leftovers

• Unique browsers to the five national newspaper websites and groups which file monthly ABCe figures hit a record 131.8 million in May.

Science

• Astronomers have for the first time observed a massive storm on a planet outside our solar system.

Environment

• The way the ocean is fished is less predictable than we thought, according to a paper published in PNAS this week. Researchers thought that commercial interests usually fished “down the food web,” targeting species high in the food chain and moving downwards. But the new study shows that price indexes of fish play a large role and don’t always correlate with food chain position, which will make the ecosystem impact of fishing difficult to predict.

• On the morning of Saturday 18 March 1967, the Torrey Canyon ran aground on Pollard’s Rock between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly. Over the following days, every drop of the 119,328 tonnes of crude oil borne by this 300m-long supertanker seeped into the Atlantic. Thousands of tonnes despoiled the beaches of Cornwall – and thousands more were propelled by winds and currents across the channel towards France.

• A rare and endangered species of sea turtle is being burned alive in BP’s controlled burns of the oil swirling around the Gulf of Mexico, and a boat captain tasked with saving them says the company has blocked rescue efforts.

• Mike Ellis, a boat captain involved in a three-week effort to rescue as many sea turtles from unfolding disaster as possible, says BP effectively shut down the operation by preventing boats from coming out to rescue the turtles.

• I was interviewed on British radio today and was asked about this idea. Seemed hard to believe: Blair has become a climate activist (see “Tony Blair, Climate Group, and CAP call for strong technology deployment policy driven by a carbon price, innovative financing, and serious technology standards“) — and this is a no-win, resume-destroying job.

• But some British pundits are actually proposing this radical solution to BP’s PR woes (see “Tony Blair is the right man to be BP chairman” and “Tony Blair’s Hiring Is Step One in a BP Comeback: Matthew Lynn.”

• The Obama administration’s six-month moratorium has put a freeze on new offshore drilling permits, but three miles off the coast of Alaska, there’s one unprecedented drilling project by BP that’s still moving forward regardless.

• That’s according to two investigations this week—one in today’s New York Times and the other published online by Rolling Stone on Tuesday.

• A jailed Tibetan environmentalist used the opening of his trial today to accuse Chinese captors of beatings, sleep deprivation and other maltreatment, his wife told reporters.

• Karma Samdrup – a prominent businessman and award-winning conservationist – issued a statement in court detailing the brutal interrogation methods, including drugs that made his ears bleed, used on him since his detention on 3 January.

• “If not for his voice, I would not have recognised him,” his wife Zhenga Cuomao told the Associated Press.

• She said Samdrup appeared gaunt when he appeared at the Yangqi county courthouse in Xinjiang, the mountainous province neighbouring Tibet.

Finance

• Financial reform enters a crucial phase on Thursday as House and Senate negotiators begin public debate on the regulation of derivatives, the complex instruments at the heart of the financial crisis.

• The House weakens the Senate legislation in a variety of ways that would lead to fewer trades being cleared and lower capital requirements. In many ways, said Greenberger, the House offer is even weaker than the version passed in December by the lower chamber.

• When he bought a home last week with a 40 percent down payment, lawyer Kevin Fritz didn’t see the transaction as particularly relevant to the debate over global financial stability.

• The Obama administration has approved five state-designed plans to help homeowners as part of a $1.5 billion effort to assist areas slammed by the housing bust.

• A Republican filibuster appears increasingly likely to kill long-sought legislation extending jobless benefits and a host of other spending and tax measures, despite a new round of cuts to the measure Wednesday that reduced its deficit impact even further.

• Big banks are objecting strongly to a last-minute House proposal to add ailing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the type of firms that would be subject to liquidation at financial industry expense.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Ofcom today published a discussion paper on the practice of internet traffic management – a technique used by network operators and internet service providers (ISPs) to stem or accelerate the flow of traffic over the web.

• This practice may allow network operators and ISPs to handle traffic more efficiently, to prioritise traffic by type, to guarantee bandwidth or to block or degrade the quality of certain content.

Copyrights

• Fred says:

• We’ve been following the rather bizarre and dangerous lawsuit filed by Facebook against Power.com, an online service that tries to let users aggregate various social networking activity into a single service. All Power.com does is let a willing user have Power.com’s tools log into Facebook and reuse/reformat the data within its own framework. From a user’s perspective, this could be quite useful. From Facebook’s perspective this is both a violation of copyright law and a violation of computer hacking laws. Why? Because Facebook says so.

• Today a UN body is trying to reach an agreement on work on copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is aggressively trying to block adoption of a work program that would include the possibility of a treaty. Officially, the USPTO is proposing an alternative approach that could be a step toward a treaty. Privately, the USPTO and other federal agencies are putting enormous pressure on countries to abandon a binding treaty in favor of a very weak and even harmful resolution.

ACTA

• Doctoral research into media education and media literacy at the University of Leicester has highlighted how increased legislative control on use of digital content could stifle future creativity.

• The Digital Economy Act 2010 alongside further domestic and global legislation, not least the ongoing ‘Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)’, combines to constitute a very hard line against any form of perceived copyright infringement.

• There is certainly no lack of debate about copyright, and whether it promotes or hinders creativity. But in one important respect, that debate has been badly skewed, since it has largely discussed creativity in terms of pre-digital technologies. And even when digital methods are mentioned, there is precious little independent research to draw upon.

• A document leaked from the Presidency of the EU reveals that Member States are pushing for new criminal sanctions into the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a few days ahead of the next negotiation round. The proposal stated in this document reveals how illegitimate and dangerous the whole ACTA process is, while exposing the scary position of the EU calling for more repression of non-for-profit usages… and their incitation.

• …content owners have to specify precisely which files they claim are infringing. They can’t just say: “everyone can see there’s infringement on your site, find it and deal with it.” If upheld, that’s very good news, because it means that anyone that sets up a mechanism for carrying out DMCA requests doesn’t need to go through their entire holdings looking for possibly infringing materials (obviously impossible for a site like YouTube.)

Digital Economy Bill

• The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) will support legal challenges to the recently passed Digital Economy Act, according to a new national policy.

• The new policy, which was signed off by the NUJ’s National Executive Council in May, raises concern from other industry groups that the Act’s measures could be used against sites that publish material of public interest without permission, such as the whistleblowing site Wikileaks.

• The union policy calls for the Act to be implemented in a way that “fully protects freedom of information and expression”.

• Originally, NUJ members focused their campaigning on the controversial clause 43 on orphan works. This was later dropped before the Bill was passed into law in the “wash-up” at the end of the last government.

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