OStatic

It's been a week since Ubuntu 9.10, aka the Karmix Koala, was unleashed on the world. I wanted to post a general review after having used the special K since it went RC in late September and early October. In general, I've been very impressed, especially in comparison to another, recently released, operating system.

JavaScript programmers, rejoice! It's been a good week for open source from big companies. Earlier this week Yahoo! released its Traffic Server it acquired from Inktomi, and now Google has unleashed Closure Tools. These are part of the toolset that Google uses to create JavaScript-heavy applications like Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Maps.

Why Google released Closure tools. The release of Closure Tools by Google under an open source license is about putting muscle behind Javascript.

Microsoft Linux: Why one free software advocate wants it. An ex-Microsoft employee says Windows is doomed, and FOSS will rule.

Vint Cerf plugs Android into the Interplanetary Net. He has added a software stack to the open source Android code.

Q&A: Ubuntu 9.10 security. What are the most notable security features introduced with Ubuntu 9.10, and how can you work with them?

Barnes & Noble, aided by Android, aims to disrupt the Kindle. The Nook has two capabilities that could expand the market for e-book readers beyond Amazon's.

The U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments on Bilski vs. Kappos on Monday, November 9th. Not surprisingly, many open source advocates are on the edge of their seats because it's an opportunity for the Supreme Court to decide that software is not patentable. Confused about the details? As part of its mission to advance Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) through law-related services, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has provided a backgrounder with information on briefs filed by parties of interest to the FLOSS community.

Remember the scene in the movie Minority Report where Tom Cruise uses hand gestures instead of a mouse to interact with a computer screen displayed on the wall? The idea isn't really that far-fetched and software developer Pranav Mistry has been working on making it a reality.

Mistry is the creator of SixthSense, a wearable gesture interface that uses a camera and tiny projector to display data and information onto surfaces, walls, and even your hand. Special fingertip sensors let users manipulate the data and use their hands to interact with it. During a presentation at the TEDIndia conference this week, the PhD student announced plans to release SixthSense under an open source license in the coming months.

Has the terminology finally evolved in the debate over who's open source? It would seem so. After years of haggling over the essence of open source, free software or any other moniker, Simon Phipps gets right to the point in A Remarkable Reversal - his critique of Richard Stallman's joint letter to the EC regarding Oracle and MySQL.

For the first time, there seems to be a growing concensus that an OSI-compliant license alone is not enough to define one's position on the openness spectrum. As Phipps notes, community governance, trademark and copyright ownership and administration, the percentage of core function in the commons... need to be taken together to get the full view.

In a case reminiscent of the DVD hacking cases from the early 2000's, Oregon cable modem hacker and author of Hacking the Cable Modem has been charged with conspiracy and aiding and abetting wire fraud. This is another sad commentary on a criminal justice system that prosecutes the toolmaker without noting the legitimate uses of hardware hacking and modding.?

The art of taking an existing product and modifying it in ways never intended by the original manufacturer has been a core tenet of the open source and free culture movements from the beginning. It is long past time for more sanity when considering these issues and crafting public policy.

Just ahead of next week's launch of openSUSE 11.2, the open source community has posted three variations on a really green theme and invited openSUSE users and FOSS community members to choose the one they like best.

The choices are:

Open source content management software vendor eZ Systems put former IBM executive Christoph Rau at the helm today as the company's new CEO. He's replacing co-founder Aleksander Farstad, who will become chief business development officer.

Farstad says the move is the next logical step following 10 years of sustained growth in the open source industry. For the first 10 years of eZ, we grew successfully by focusing on our unique commercial open source business model, says Farstad. Our value came from our focus on how we did things better. Now, as the commercial open source business model has matured and is well established, we will focus on what we do better than any other competitor: help businesses manage and publish any type of information, created and managed by anyone and published through any digital channel.?