OStatic

As KDE jumps boldly into the waters of its new brainstorming initiative, the Ubuntu Brainstorm team battles a strong current of incoming ideas.

Ubuntu's Brainstorm project has witnessed a steady increase in idea submissions since its inception, and given this upward trend and current workload, the team has decided to call for reinforcements. The Brainstorm team is seeking users familiar with Ubuntu's Brainstorm process to act as Idea Reviewers.

Remember the IBM Peace, Love, Linux campaign? Perhaps its impact was greater in some areas than others -- I remember seeing Tux's smiling face on taxi cab billboards (and spray painted on sidewalks) all over Boston. It was merely a month or two later I found myself nervously installing my first Linux distribution. Was this ubiquitous (and not terribly self-explanatory) ad campaign the reason I tried Linux? No, but I can't discount that the ad's approach and playfulness wasn't some sort of subliminal influence.

I'm not suggesting free software advocates hone Svengali-like powers and study hypnosis, but it seems that a lighter, not so tech heavy approach to promoting open source could be quite successful. It's not possible to completely divorce technology from open source software, of course, but for average users, what matters most when it comes to software is what they can do with it. An open source application is useful at face value, and has the potential to always be a little bit more.

And the average user doesn't care much about that. Many might like the idea, some might find they never fully understand the concept -- and a smaller number will find it so appealing, eventually, that they begin to modify their software. Having no desire to hack an existing open source application doesn't mean it isn't useful for its intended purpose right now.

The patent dispute between automotive GPS manufacturer TomTom and Microsoft has come to a close, with both sides settling the original suit and countersuit. CNet has a short but informative summary of at least some of the terms (certain financial specifics were not disclosed). The terms are written in order to preserve TomTom's compliance with its obligations under the GPL v.2 licenses on its code. TomTom must also remove functionality from its products that are related to the two file management systems that were under contention in the suit.

This is, at least for the upcoming agreed-upon five year period, how it will be between TomTom and Microsoft. It's been settled, and very little (at least from the Microsoft and TomTom camps), has been officially said about the three patents that dealt with TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel. It's over, but have the final notes been sung?

Shortly after firing up my laptop, located just a hair closer to the State House in Boston than the Route 128 Technology Corridor that winds around Waltham, I stumbled across an opinion piece by Black Duck Software's Peter Vescuso for Mass High Tech on the financial benefits of open source. While Vescuso's Massachusetts-centric angle is due to Black Duck's location and the recent rumblings that the state is losing its tech edge, his points are pertinent to any geographic region and take a holistic look at the financial benefits of open source.

It got me thinking. Industries and markets are inextricably linked, and when one experiences a significant downturn, it ripples through connected markets, and the markets connected to those markets. Vescuso touches on the financial benefits of open source software -- the infrastructure is already there, established, and strong, and the open, accessible code eliminates wheel re-invention, allowing developers to innovate and experiment.

Though much of the fanfare in the Ubuntu camp seems to center on the desktop version, its Server Edition has been steadily attracting interest -- and new users. Thanks to the requests of these users and Ubuntu partners, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has announced it is offering its first official training course dedicated solely to the Ubuntu Server Edition.

There's another new twist, however. While this course will be offered at various partner training centers in June, it will also be offered through a virtual classroom.

There are many reasons to love the open source approach. The events chronicled in an article on NetworkWorld surrounding an exploit affecting Firefox outlines, quite elegantly, how open code outwardly appears risky, and -- well, wide open -- and how that same quality generates faster fixes and stronger applications.

A security researcher discovered that Firefox is vulnerable to remote memory corruption, enabling attackers to execute malicious (or at least very much unauthorized) code within the context of the browser. While security researchers spend countless hours searching out bugs and vulnerabilities, it's not usually the case that the offending attack finds its way into the public eye. Yesterday, however, this little exploit was published on several security sites. The vulnerability affects Firefox versions 3.0 through 3.0.7, on all platforms. In less than 24 hours, developers issued a patch for the vulnerability, to be included in next week's 3.0.8 release.

Early this year, Terry Baume encountered something highly unusual -- a Netcomm NB5 DSL modem router infected by a botnet. The embedded device, powered by a MIPS processor running in little-endian mode (mipsel), was running a bit of malicious code known as PSYB0T 2.5L.

The botnet was originally thought to be a test, an experiment to see how this technology worked. It was shut down quickly by the botnet operator once its existence became public knowledge.

It now appears to have returned, and evolved into a new beast, PSYB0T 2.9L, and it affects more than Netcomm NB5 devices. Approximately 30 Linksys devices, 10 Netgear models, and 15 other models and brands of DSL modems and routers are at risk, including those running custom firmware, such as OpenWRT and DD-WRT.

That's the bad news. The good news is removing it, and ensuring it doesn't return, is fairly simple. In fact, DroneBL, the organization that scans for botnets and vulnerable machines, says that 90% of the routers involved are afflicted only because of user error.

As OSBC kicks in to high gear, speakers, attendees, and organizers have been relaying information and insights from the event with those that couldn't make the trip to San Francisco. Barry Crist, of Likewise Software, is no exception.

After attending a session led by Google's Chris DiBona and Intel's Dirk Hohndel on the risks associated with migrating businesses to open source software, Crist offered some further thoughts on how to approach open source licenses.

ZDNet's Chris Dawson has been thinking about Linux in the educational setting quite a bit lately, thanks to his school district's purchase of some new Intel Classmates, and the educational and financial benefits they bring.

Fueled by a piece he read in a recent openSUSE Education newsletter, he began pondering the ins and outs of open source software software adoption. Though he mentions Linux specifically, his thoughts transfer quite well to free software on closed platforms. Dawson asks if Linux is only for the poor -- if the economy wasn't in such a rough spot, would school districts (or businesses, or individuals) be moving to, or even seriously considering, open source platforms and alternatives?

It's a great question, and it's hard one for me to answer honestly. I know how I'd love to answer, and I know perfectly well that answer is unrealistic. Even if increased open source adoption in certain fields is primarily due to the dismal economy, it doesn't mean better financial times will lead to mass open source abandonment.

Yesterday, the GNOME Project released the latest version of its desktop, GNOME 2.26. The new release incorporates the usual bug fixes and numerous accessibility and application improvements -- including updates to the GNOME Developer Platform and support for 48 languages.

Some of the notable new desktop features include updates to Evolution. The mail and groupware suite is better able to communicate with Exchange servers, as it adds support for both MAPI and SOAP protocols. The Brasero media burner, the Epiphany browser, the Orca screenreader, Empathy, and the GNOME Media Player have all seen signficant feature enhancements. The utilities for managing multiple desktops, pulse-audio, and fingerprint readers have also been updated.