christian.einfeldt writes "James Burgett of the Alameda County Computer Resource Center calls himself a 'tattooed freak' and a recovering drug addict, but CNN is calling him a hero (video) for diverting tons of computers from landfills, installing Ubuntu Linux on them, and giving them out to schools, non-profits, and poor people. Burgett's filmed interview is currently leading a CNN contest among videos of 'ordinary people' whom CNN considers everyday heroes, narrowly edging out the video of a man who is saving gorillas from extinction. In his interview, Burgett points out that the people working for him are also recovering drug addicts or recovering mental illness patients." Update: 10/02 23:46 GMT by KD : Reader stefanlasiewski posted a journal article describing how, bewilderingly, the state of California is threatening to shut down Burgett's ACCRC.

eldavojohn writes "The KernelTrap highlights an interesting discussion on pluggable security models including some commentary by Linus Torvalds. While Torvalds argued against pluggable schedulers, he's all for pluggable security. Other members were voicing concerns with the pluggable nature of the Linux Security Model, but Torvalds put his foot down and said it stays. When asked why his stance was different between schedulers and security, he replied, 'Schedulers can be objectively tested. There's this thing called 'performance,' that can generally be quantified on a load basis. Yes, you can have crazy ideas in both schedulers and security. Yes, you can simplify both for a particular load. Yes, you can make mistakes in both. But the *discussion* on security seems to never get down to real numbers. So the difference between them is simple: one is hard science. The other one is people wanking around with their opinions.'"

walterbyrd writes "Pamala Jones, at groklaw, totally rips apart the Novell/Deal patent protection deal. From the article: 'Justin Steinman reveals that to market their SUSE Linux Enterprise Server against Red Hat they ask, "Do you want the Linux that works with Windows? Or the one that doesn't?" It's just appalling. Let me ask you developers who are kernel guys a question: When you contributed code to the kernel, was it your intent that it be used against Red Hat? How about the rest of you developers? Is that all right with you, that your code is being marketed by Novell like that? I also have questions about antitrust issues, with Microsoft being Novell's partner in such deals and sales pitches. Nothing speaks louder about Microsoft's true determination never to be actually interoperable than this conference.'"

Jasper Bryant-Greene writes "Although a tzdata release that includes New Zealand's recent DST changes (2007f) has been out for some time, Debian are refusing to push the update from testing into the current stable distribution, codenamed Etch, on the basis that 'it's not a security bug.' This means that unless New Zealand sysadmins install the package manually, pull the package from testing, or alter the timezone to 'GMT-13' manually, all systems running Debian Etch in New Zealand currently have the incorrect time, as DST went into effect this morning. As one of the last comments in the bug report says, 'even Microsoft are not this silly.' The final comment (at this writing), from madcoder, says 'The package sits in volatile for months. Please take your troll elsewhere.'"

biscuitfever11 writes "ZDNet has up a great interview with Michael Meeks, the distinguished Novell engineer, who's currently deeply involved in open document format and OpenOffice.org. In the interview, Meeks takes Microsoft to task on its alternative format OOXML and argues that Microsoft should adopt ODF — but says that realistically they never will. He also mentions his favorite example to explain the benefits of open source software to a nontechnical person: the flexibility of open source would have allowed us to free ourselves from Clippy, the world's most despised paperclip, by changing a single line of code."

An anonymous reader sends us to a blog posting arguing that, as hardware prices fall below $250 for laptops and desktops, Linux should gain as the Microsoft tax stands out in sharper relief. "In previous years, if you were spending US$1500 and up on a laptop, the Microsoft tax you were paying didn't seem like such a big deal. XP or Vista was pre-installed, fairly convenient... But as the price of hardware for small basic machines comes down, (think under US$250 by the end of next year), then software price starts to become a big issue. Why would you pay the price of your new laptop again just for the software, when all you want to do is really basic things?"

apokryphos writes "Novell have relaunched the Linux Driver Project by dedicating well-known kernel developer Greg KH to work on the project full-time. Greg KH writes: 'My employer, Novell, has modified my position to now allow me to work full time on this project. Namely getting more new Linux kernel drivers written, for free, for any company that so desires. And to help manage all of the developers and project managers who want to help out...They really care about helping make Linux support as many devices as possible, with fully open-source drivers.'"

Hyena writes "Linux guru Alan Cox is quoted as saying 'chroot is not and never has been a security tool' in a KernelTrap article summarizing a lengthy thread on the Linux Kernel mailing list. The discussion began with a patch attempting to 'fix a security hole' in the Unix chroot command, trying to improve the ability of chroot to contain a process. When it was pointed out that people have been using chroot as a security tool for years, another kernel hacker retorted, 'incompetent people implementing security solutions are a real problem.' A quick search on the terms 'chroot+security' quickly reveals that many people have long thought (wrongly) that chroot's purpose was for improving security."

Michele Alessandrini writes "Having bought several TomTom One navigation systems at work, I was browsing their web site to find information about maps. There are several pages of documentation about their devices. In one of them, they proudly inform you that their devices use Linux, as a warranty of power and stability. They even prominently display their GPL compatibility. But, when you come to the software (the one used to manage updates, set locations, etc), they only support Windows and Mac OS. Not that surprising, and not a real necessity. Just the same, they probably saved millions of dollars using a free kernel and didn't think to support Linux users. As Linux gains ground in commercial applications like this, how often are we going to see actual users of the OS left out in the cold? Why don't more Linux-using shops reach out to the Linux-using community?"

willdavid writes in to note a survey of open source developers conducted by Evans Data that indicates a real rift in the community over GPLv3. The survey was based on in-depth interviews with 380 open source developers and no estimated margin of error was given. "Just 6 percent of developers working with open-source software have adopted the new GNU General Public License version 3... Also, two-thirds say they will not adopt GPLv3 anytime in the next year, and 43 percent say they will never implement the new license. Almost twice as many would be less likely to join a project that uses GPLv3 than would be likely to join... [Evans Data's CEO said] 'Developers are confused and divided about [the restrictions GPLv3 imposes], with fairly equal numbers agreeing with the restrictions, disagreeing with them, or thinking they will be unenforceable.'"

DeviceGuru writes to tell us that the first lawsuit centered around the GPL seems to have been quickly resolved outside of the courtroom. Monsoon Multimedia was quick to admit that they had violated the GPLv2 in their modified BusyBox code and will soon be releasing the source to come into full compliance with the license.

Jayze Calrtini writes "From an article from ZDNet:"If you've been following the current rift in the Linux community between Linus Torvalds and his minions squaring off against Con Kolivas and the mainstream Linux fanatics, you probably know that it's getting quite heated. You also probably know that these two entirely different ideas could create three possible paths Linux can take for the future: stay geeky and appeal to the advanced tech guru in all of us; go mainstream and leave the advanced functionality and reliable kernel behind to compete with Microsoft and Apple; or face a "civil war" that could lead to total Linux annihilation."

J_Omega writes "According to an article from last week at the Russian IT site CNews, Linux is slated to be installed in every Russian school by 2009. The article makes it appear that it will be going by the (unimaginative) name 'Russian OS.' As stated in the article: 'The main aim of the given work is to reduce dependence on foreign commercial software and provide education institutions with the possibility to choose whether to pay for commercial items or to use the software, provided by the government.' Initial testing installations are supposed to begin next year in select districts. Is 2008/09 the year of Linux on the (Russian) desktop?"

An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in the U.S., a company is being taken to court for a GPL violation. The Software Freedom Law Center has sued Monsoon Multimedia over alleged GPL violations in the Hava, a place- and time-shifting TV recorder similar to the SlingBox. Interestingly, Monsoon Multimedia is run by a highly experienced international lawyer named Graham Radstone. According to his corporate biography, Radstone has an MA in Law from the University of Cambridge, England, and held the top legal spot at an unnamed "$1 billion private multinational company." He also reportedly held top management positions with Philip Morris, Pfizer, and DHL. Sounds like the makings of a good old legal Donnybrook ahead."

alphadogg writes in with a Network World article that covers a Gartner open source conference, in which VP Mark Driver seems to be going out of his way to be provocative. "You can try to avoid open source, but it's probably easier to get out of the IT business altogether. By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code..." After this lead-in, in which open source seems to be regarded as some kind of communicable disease, the rest of the article outlines a perfectly rational plan for developing an open source strategy.

jammag writes "Linux pundit Bruce Byfield looked inside the pre-release of Gutsy Gibbon and found what he calls 'Windows thinking.' His article, Divining from the Entrails of Ubuntu's Gutsy Gibbon, notes that Ubuntu is the dominant distro, having achieved a level of success that might be leading to complacency. He opines: 'Only once or twice did I find a balance between accessibility to newcomers and a feature set for advanced users. At times, I wondered whether the popularity might be preventing Ubuntu from finishing some rough edges.'"

symbolset writes "The Nasdaq Staff has decided to delist SCO at open of business on September 27, 2007 under their discretionary authority and as a result of SCO filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. SCO can get a hearing but "There can be no assurance that the panel will grant the Company's request for continued listing.""

Gimli writes "GNOME 2.20 has been officially released. There are a number of enhancements and improvements to things such as power management, Evince (the GNOME document view), Totem (the video player), and note-taking application Tomboy. There are also some changes to GNOME's configuration utilities with an eye towards streamlining them. The timing is impeccable, too: 'This release coincides with the tenth anniversary of GNOME's existence. The project has evolved considerably since its earliest incarnation and has become a global phenomenon. Used as the default environment in popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, GNOME is widely used by Linux desktop users and is supported by a growing community of companies and independent developers. GNOME 2.20 will be included in the next major releases of many mainstream Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 7.10, which is scheduled for release next month. Users who wish to try it now can use the latest Ubuntu 7.10 live CD images, or the latest build of Foresight Linux. You can also check out the release notes."

qubodup writes "Free Gamer, an open source gaming blog, has recently become the center of open source artists, developers and gamers. In its forums, the GPU-hungry Classical Java RPG and the Neverball-killer irrlamb have found their second home. So did sub-communities like extremist free gamers, who insist on games not only be free software but also to contain free content and want to build a knowledge base of existing free games. There are also free content artists, which address an old problem of open source games and want to supply graphics and sound for projects in need of game media."

ClickOnThis writes "Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.3! From the website: 'Available for download now, OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities. It is a major release and all users should download it. Plus: It is only with 2.3 that users can make full use of our growing extensions library.' You can download it but be kind and use a P2P client instead, such as bittorrent."