Open Washing, Kali Story, and Fedora RC4

In the Linuxphere today Adam Williamson announced Fedora 21 Final Release Candidate 4. Lifehacker is running an interview with Kali developer Mati Aharoni and the Linux Foundation released a study on Linux usage trends. Patrick Masson discusses "openwashing" and Linux gaming reaches new milestones. In software news Opera 26 was released, Eric Geier presents firewall options, and The Register features 10 "freeware apps" for Linux.

The top story today is the release of Fedora 21 RC4. Adam Williamson announced it on the Test-Announce mailing list today saying RC4 is basically RC2 with "correct fontconfig caches." RC3 was never released because it didn't finish composing and when that issue was fixed they just decided to call the new spin RC4. Williamson then said, "At present we're hopeful RC4 will be good enough for Final release," so with some good luck Fedora 21 just might hit its December 9 deadline.

Lifehacker's Andy Orin today posted an interview with Kali Linux lead developer Mati Aharoni. Kali's predecessor BackTrack was conceived out of the need for the right tool for a particular job. BackTrack was rebuilt using Debian as the base and renamed Kali. He and his worried about changing the well-known name but decided the "rebranding would be tough, but not impossible." Aharoni's advice is "don't be afraid to leverage existing infrastructure where possible."

Patrick Masson said today that "openwashing" is a big problem in the software industry and folks should be careful. Masson said openwashing is claiming your software is Open Source yet doesn't really comply with all the letters of Open Source Definition. He added non-compliance and marketing claims are getting more and more "egregious. The goal of these unscrupulous organizations is to capitalize on open source's success and the growing interest (and investment) it is enjoying, by duping a naive audience." He reiterated there's a lot of trickery afoot taking advantage of "the gap in knowledge" of those looking to employ Open Source software. He offers up specific examples but ultimately concludes, "Adopter beware."

In other news:

* Ten Linux freeware apps to feed your penguin

* Little Known GUI Firewall Options for Linux

* Opera 26 Stable for Linux now available

* GOG & Steam Both Hit Milestones For Linux Games

* More Linux Malware Targeting in the Future

* 2014 Enterprise Linux End User Adoption Report