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Open Source NewsFedora Upates Almost Back After Security BreachFrom the Back on Track dept.:
As you well know, we have been working hard to get updates for 8 and 9 flowing again, complete with new package signing keys. Discussion has been somewhat quiet on this front as we've all had our heads down and have been working hard toward a solution, one that involves little to no manual effort on behalf of our users. Today we've reached a major milestone in this progress. We have done a successful compose of all the existing and as of yesterday pending updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, all signed with our new keys. These updates will soon hit mirrors in a new set of directory locations. What we don't have quite yet is the updated fedora-release package in the old updates location that will get you the new keys and the new repo locations. The last mile testing of this update requires that new updates be live on the mirrors.
Dell Selling "Mini" sub $400 notebook with UbuntuFrom the Believe it when I see it dept.:
...the Mini's specs match several of its competitors'. A glossy 8.9-inch display with 1,024x600 resolution shows most Web pages with no need for horizontal scrolling. Under the hood are Intel's Atom N270, a 1.6GHz one-core processor with 2MB of Level 2 cache, and GMA 950 integrated-graphics chipset. The $349 configuration will feature a custom Dell interface atop Ubuntu Linux 8.04, much as Asus and Acer offer customized versions of Xandros and Linpus Linux, respectively.
Django 1.0From the Django Fett dept.:
I really canât stress enough how amazing our community of users and developers are. About half of the code thatâs gone into Django over the past three years has been contributed by someone other than a core committer. Since our last stable release, weâve made over 4,000 code commits, fixed more than 2,000 bugs, and edited, added, or removed around 350,000 lines of code. Weâve also added 40,000 lines of new documentation, and greatly improved what was already there. Django 1.0 represents a the largest milestone in Djangoâs development to date: a web framework that a group of perfectionists can truly be proud of. Without this amazing community, though, it would have never happened.
Mozilla Shoots Across Chrome's BowFrom the B* Slap dept.:
We have been busy, mostly fixing bugs for stability, but also winning a bit more performance, since TraceMonkey landed on mozilla-central, from which Firefox 3.1 alpha-stage nightly builds are built. Tonight's builds include a fix for the bug that ilooped a SunSpider test (my apologies to those of you who suffered that bug's bite). But what I'm sure everyone wants to know is: how do we compare to V8? ...We win by 1.28x and 1.19x, respectively. Maybe we should rename TraceMonkey "V10" ;-)
Mozilla's Thoughts on Google's Chrome BrowserFrom the Side Swipe? dept.:
How does this affect Mozilla? As much as anything else, itâll mean thereâs another interesting browser that users can choose. With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc â thereâs been competition for a while now, and this increases that. So it means that more than ever, we need to build software that people care about and love. Firefox is good now, and will keep on getting better.
Google Announces 'Chrome' Browser (Windows Only For Now)From the WebOS dept.:
Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers. This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.
Community Distros On The Rise in EnterpriseFrom the A Pleasant Surprise dept.:
"Community distributions such as CentOS, Debian, and Gentoo are gaining enterprise respect for quality code, stability, response and, of course, for being 'free as in beer' and 'free as in freedom' (a common open source mantra referring to cost and freedom from vendor or standard lock-in). These community distributions are becoming a more significant market factor with growing enterprise acceptance and use of them," he writes. Not surprisingly, the opportunity to cut costs is an important driver of community Linux, but Lyman makes an interesting point, noting that a rise in internal expertise -- and a willingness to use it -- is a key enabler of the nascent trend.
Debian Lenny Live CDs ReleasedFrom the No Squiggy dept.:
The Debian Live team is pleased to announce the first beta of Debian Lenny's Live images. Although we missed releasing images for Etch along with the installer images, we are now prepared to release live images within the regular Lenny release process. This is the first official release of Debian Live and the whole team has been working hard during the past 2.5 years to make Debian's own live systems become a reality.
Fedora/Redhat Servers HackedFrom the "Illegally Accessed" dept.:
Last week we discovered that some Fedora servers were illegally accessed. The intrusion into the servers was quickly discovered, and the servers were taken offline. Security specialists and administrators have been working since then to analyze the intrusion and the extent of the compromise as well as reinstall Fedora systems. We are using the requisite outages as an opportunity to do other upgrades for the sake of functionality as well as security. Work is ongoing, so please be patient. Anyone with pertinent information relating to this event is asked to contact fedora-legal redhat com [fedora-announce-list]
Microsoft and Novell Expand RelationshipFrom the SAMBA dept.:
Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. are announcing an incremental investment in their relationship to meet accelerating customer demand for their business model solution, which is designed to build a bridge between open source and proprietary software to deliver interoperability and intellectual property (IP) peace of mind for organizations operating mixed-source IT environments. The investment focuses on enhanced programs from Novell to provide tools, support, training and resources for customers seeking an enterprise-class Linux* platform and specifically, the optimal interoperability solution between Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server from Novell(R). It also includes Microsoft's commitment to purchase up to $100 million in certificates that those customers can redeem for expanded support from Novell that includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server support and support for moving toward an enterprise-class Linux platform. The investments will take effect Nov. 1, 2008, and between now and then Microsoft and Novell will solicit customer input and identify aspects of the support programs that will be most useful to organizations running mixed-source environments.
ISO, IEC reject appeals, approve OOXML specFrom the The New Battleground dept.:
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have given the green light to publish the Microsoft-backed Office Open XML (OOXML) specification after organization leaders rejected appeals from four countries to protest the vote that approved OOXML as a standard. The ISO and IEC technical boards approved the publication of ISO/IEC DIS 29500, the official name for the OOXML specification, the ISO said Friday. The spec is expected to be published within the next few weeks after the standards bodies complete the final processing of the document, provided there are no further appeals against the decision.
Troubles in Fedora Land - Don't Update!From the Smells Like a Breach dept.:
The Fedora Infrastructure team is currently investigating an issue in the infrastructure systems. That process may result in service outages, for which we apologize in advance. We're still assessing the end-user impact of the situation, but as a precaution, we recommend you not download or update any additional packages on your Fedora systems. We'll share updates as we develop more information.
Federal Circuit Says Open Source License Conditions are Enforceable as Copyright ConditionFrom the With Teeth dept.:
There are so few judicial opinions dealing with open source licenses that any single one is of great interest, but the pro-open source ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Jacobsen v. Katzer, No. 2008-1001 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 13, 2008) easily goes to the top of the charts of this small category. This is a highly significant opinion that will greatly bolster the efforts of the open source community to control the use of open source software according to the terms set out in open source licenses.
PHP 4.4.9, EOL PHP4From the Good Night Sweet Prince dept.:
The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.4.9. It continues to improve the security and the stability of the 4.4 branch and all users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to it as soon as possible. This release wraps up all the outstanding patches for the PHP 4.4 series, and is therefore the last PHP 4.4 release.
Linux Foundation launches killer development toolFrom the Standards dept.:
Ask any independent software vendor what he hates most about developing for Linux and he'll tell you that it's having to develop for SUSE and for Red Hat and for Ubuntu and ... you get the idea. The Linux Foundation has just released a beta of a new program, Linux Application Checker (AppChecker), that's going to make ISVs and other programmers start to love developing for Linux. AppChecker, now in beta 3, is a downloadable open source Linux program. Once installed, the program shows you a Web page, the LSB Database Navigator. Here, you click on the Application Check link. This presents you with a Web form interface to fill out. In this form, you'll enter a name for your report and Name field, and in the Components field you'll enter the file path for your application. Next, enter the application's individual files, directories, installed RPM packages (prepended with pkg:),; RPM and .deb package files, and tar.gz and tar.bz2 archives. To make this manageable, click on the Select Application Components button so you can enter each item in a separate field. Next, select the LSB Version and LSB Profile you want to test against.
Mozilla launches Snowl messaging prototypeFrom the On Message dept.:
Mozilla has launched a prototype messaging Firefox extension that it says could eventually enable users to keep track of all of their electronic communications, including email, RSS, social networks and web discussions. 'Snowl' enables users to prioritise messages by importance and have a search-based interface for message retrieval, according to Mozilla developer Myk Melez.
Mozilla reveals the Firefox of the future?From the I'm Old & Hate It. dept.:
Mozilla has unveiled a spectacular new concept browser, dubbed Aurora. The bleeding-edge browser is part of a new Mozilla Labs initiative, in which the open-source foundation is encouraging people to contribute ideas and designs for the browser of the future.
Red Hat chief: 'The clouds will all run Linux'From the But, will they run RHEL? dept.:
The former Delta Air Lines chief operating officer, who took over the reins of the open-source software company from Matthew Szulik in January, sees cloud computing as a top priority. The term 'cloud computing' refers to computing services available to anyone online, rather than custom datacentres isolated within corporate confines, but it also dovetails with the general idea of computing services running at massive scale on a more flexible infrastructure.
Google Code blacklists Mozilla Public LicenseFrom the Choice is Bad? dept.:
The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is the latest casualty of Google's decision to remove open-source licenses from its popular code hosting service. The search giant has said Google Code is no longer accepting projects licensed under MPL, although existing MPL-licensed code is allowed to stay.
KDE 4.1 ReleasedFrom the New Candy! dept.:
The KDE Community today released KDE 4.1.0. This release is the second feature release of the KDE 4 series, sporting new applications and newly developed features on top of the Pillars of KDE4. KDE 4.1 is the first KDE4 release to contain the Personal Information Management suite KDE-PIM with its E-Mail client KMail, the planner KOrganizer, Akregator, the RSS feed reader, KNode, the newsgroup reader and many more components integrated into the Kontact shell. Furthermore, the new desktop shell Plasma, introduced in KDE 4.0, has matured to the point where it can replace the KDE 3 shell for most casual users. Like with our previous release much time has been devoted to improving the framework and underlying libraries on which KDE is built.
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