OStatic

Precipitate merges Mac OS, Google Cloud.....

With Android it's the software stupid.....

Open source software in U.K. schools gets the green light.....

Open source founders doubling up on startups.....

OSCON leaves Oregon, will be held in San Jose.....

The Linux Plumbers Conference may have ended last Friday, but the discussions -- and one discussion in particular -- will be analyzed, deconstructed, and argued for quite a bit longer.

Greg Kroah-Hartman's assertion is that Canonical doesn't contribute significantly to kernel development and the packages that make up the core of a Linux system. Canonical CTO Matt Zimmerman responded to this assertion. It seems at that point, much of the community, developers and users alike, took to examining their particular parts of the open source elephant.

Herein lies the problem.

The fateful day has arrived for the first Android-powered phone. This Google-backed open phone will likely be sufficient for a large number of users -- if not in its first incarnation, certainly within a few models and revisions.

But it certainly isn't the only open phone. It isn't the first by any means, and it has another competitor hot on its heels.

Some more pioneering souls might forego the tamer Android for the Neo FreeRunner or the upcoming NeoPwn.

Unlike NBC's coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games, DIRECTV customers who have the NFL Sunday Ticket SuperFan viewing package can now watch live football games on computers running Linux.

Using a combination of Adobe Air and the open source Flex framework, DIRECTV will stream the Sunday showdowns and also deliver game highlights, statistics, and real-time scores via a desktop app or Web browser.

Infobright announced last week that a version of its data warehouse product is now being released under an open-source license (the GNU General Public License, version 2). Infobright also announced that it had raised a $10 million round of venture capital funding, and that one of the investors is Sun Microsystems.

The openSUSE Project recently announced the availability of openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 for wide scale testing and bug squashing. This development release is available in x86, x86-64 and PPC architectures as a DVD disk image (liveCDs are not available for the current beta).

The 11.1 beta provides a decently solid look at where the final release is heading. As with any development release, there are known bugs that vary in severity and new or updated features that the development team is encouraging users try out, in order to find and resolve any bugs and suggest changes and improvements.

The Digital Divide -- there isn't a nation where it doesn't exist, yet it seems so relative. In one place, a child going online via dial up using a PII seems at a disadvantage. Elsewhere, that child has a tool that could change his life. The opportunity to learn not only facts, but how everything fits together is platform independent. The PII is just as valuable as a new laptop costing thousands. Both are meaningless if children can't access all they offer. Any technology costs money.

Open source has much to offer here. Lower costs, good support for old hardware, and software that can be modified to individual needs. OLPC champions low-cost laptops for every child. Userful takes a different approach.