Orre noted an article running on internetnews about LMI's efforts to license the Linux trademark to companies that use it. Prices range from $200 to $5k for companies with over a million bucks in revenue.

turnitover writes "According to eWEEK.com, Microsoft has proposed to work with OSDL for a 'facts-based analysis of Linux and Windows.' Could this just be a case of the fox contracting security for the hen house?" Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy, declined to comment on the specifics of what was discussed when he met with OSDL's CEO Stuart Cohen, only to say that they met.

An anonymous reader writes "Clarence Ladson over at Flexbeta decided to kick Windows to the curb for 10 days in an experiment to find out just how hard it would be to 'quit cold turkey' and move entirely to Linux. It's amazing how many day-to-day operations require the inadvertent use of Windows in our daily lives."

An anonymous reader writes "Australian winemaker De Bortoli is a firm believer in Linux. CIO Bill Robertson says he's 'bemused by any notion that Linux is poorly supported in the enterprise since he has never had any trouble finding support for De Bortoli's open-source systems', and says that those IT managers having trouble simply 'aren't looking hard enough.' There are also some other good case studies here -- telecommuncations provider TransACT, online hotel booking service Wotif, engineering contractor Coates and investment and funds management group Aviva."

Seft writes "The Inquirer is running a story in response to the recent Linux trademark news in Australia which was previously covered on Slashdot. The story was dismissed as a hoax by many, but now it seems that Linus Torvalds is dead serious." John 'Maddog' Hall stated for the article that the move was not about getting a slice of anyone's action but purely to protect the quality of products that utilize the Linux name.

cozimek writes "The popular Mambo CMS developer team has severed its ties with Miro Corporation, the copyright owner on the GPL'd Mambo CMS. You can read more about the renegade dev team."

An anonymous reader writes "Laura DiDio, research fellow at the Yankee Group, published a column this morning in which she discusses key findings from a new survey on the total cost of ownership of Windows vs. Linux. DiDio often is written off by the Linux camp as being pro-Microsoft, but she offers excellent, neutral advice for any IT department considering a fundamental systems switch: 'If you do not know what is on your network, if you cannot at least estimate the hourly, monthly or yearly cost of downtime, if you do not know how long it takes to recover from a security outage, if you cannot answer questions about the extent of your company's license compliance, then you cannot truly evaluate whether Linux, Windows or Unix is right for your business. Chances are, if you cannot answer most or all of those questions, it does not matter what operating system you have because ignorance of the core TCO tenets means that your business is not getting the most out of its networks.' "

randomjohndoe writes "IBM has taken the next logical extension of booting Linux from a flash drive. Researchers were recently able to boot Knoppix from an iPod and run an x86 virtual machine in VMware, which provided an easy way to encrypt the whole operating environment. The tests were conducted on a 60GB iPod photo using Knoppix."

richi writes "eWEEK has a review of Linux-based alternatives to MS Exchange: Group Where? Almost Anywhere. Focusing on how well they integrate with Outlook, it looks at Bynari Insight 4.2, CommuniGate Pro 4.2, Gordano 11 and Scalix Server 9.2.1."

Jan Stafford writes "Bernard Golden over at SearchEnterpriseLinux was wowed by the many hardware and software products on display at LinuxWorld. Among the highlights include Blackdog, a complete Linux server the size of a deck of playing cards and Astaro a bundled security suite designed for corporations. He also outlines the good, bad and funny trends of the convention."

robyannetta writes "Australian companies providing Linux products and services may soon have to pay up to $A5000 a year to licence the operating system name (warning: Registration Required), if the patents agency IP Australia grants a trademark application it is reviewing. About 90 companies with products, services or websites containing the word "Linux" recently received letters of demand from Perth lawyer Jeremy Malcolm. Acting for user group Linux Australia Inc, he asks recipients to sign statements saying their use of the word is subject to the group's licence agreement, which has fees of $A200 to $A5000 under a successful trademark application."

StromPetroke writes "On August 9th, online Linuxzine Mad Penguin conducted an interview with veteran Open Source advocate Bruce Perens on the DCC (Debian Common Core) Alliance. According to Bruce, the DCC will provide a way to "be able to certify to a Linux distribution, and then there will be multiple support providers who can support that same platform and who differentiate themselves at a higher level up the stack.""

darkworm writes "Lloyds of London, the world's oldest insurance house, is to offer indemnification for IP litigation worldwide according to the Channel Register: 'Lloyd's of London is close to offering independent insurance protection worldwide against potential IP litigation involving Linux and open source software. The financial services giant has agreed to take on the risk associated with open source, and is finalizing arrangements to work through Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) who will become Lloyd's sole U.S. representative.'"

computernut writes "Supervillains seem to like Linux. Take a peek at a cool Shockwave Animation on why they use it." Cute little animation. I think we might have shown it here before, but hey it's Sunday, and August which means this is the closest thing to news we might have all day.

Uber-Review writes "If you have been looking for a Linux based car PC. One man has made this a reality and documented putting together a Linux based car PC. Some of the features of this on board car PC is it can automatically sniff and record locations of wireless access points and plot them with GPS. You can watch a movie, browse the internet, get weather forecasts and stream Direct TV from your house right to your car. For an added bonus, you can remote start the car, and connect to it from inside the house and use SSH in, and transfer files without even getting off the couch."

nerdyH points to this smile-inducing story at LinuxDevices which begins "An inexpensive house-brand 802.11b/g wireless router from Fry's (Outpost.com) has been adopted by a group of Linux hackers that aims to make Fry's 'AirLink' devices 'as capable as name-brand gadgets.' The AirLink101 AR315W is based on a Marvell board that can run Linux or eCos, and has a six-port 10/100 Ethernet switch built in. It's listed for $45 online, but is reportedly on sale for $20 in some Fry's stores."

McSpew writes "A small company from Utah (no, not that one) has announced the BlackDog USB-powered Linux server. It includes a fingerprint reader, a 400MHz PowerPC, 64MB of DRAM and 256MB or 512MB of flash and it runs Debian. The host PC sees it as a CD-ROM drive."

Mark Brunelli writes "When Edward Haletky's friend asked him for help setting up a Linux desktop in the year 2000, they found only half of the Web applications needed. Since then, while researching his new book, Deploying Linux on the Desktop, Haletky has seen desktop Linux application availability and usability increase to the point where it's nearly ready for widespread corporate use. Yet Haletky does not think that Linux desktops will be widespread by 2007. In this interview, he explains why." Read on for a snippet from the interview. I know my Linux desktop (several, actually) has served well enough for "corporate use" for the past several years.

Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that in order to help nudge Linux and open source software further into the enterprise, a vice president at Hewlett-Packard Co yesterday called on rivals IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc to invalidate their open-source software licenses in favor of a free licensing model. During his keynote at the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco yesterday, HP's vice president of open source and NonStop Enterprise Martin Fink commended the Open Source Initiative on setting up new rules to limit the growth of open-source licenses." From the article: "He asked IBM to deprecate its open-source license and instead put it under the General Public License, the most popular license for free software that gives users the freedom run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to modify and improve it and distribute copies. In contrast, an open-source license, like IBM's, is copyrighted. Fink also called on Sun Microsystems to deprecate its Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), which applies to OpenSolaris, GlassFish and JWSDP, and to re-license Solaris 10 under the General Public License, which drew the crowd's applause."

gentoo1337 writes "Eben Moglen of the FSF speaks out in this ZDNet article, noting that GPL v3 may be publicly drafted in early 2006, and in force one year later. The process is very sensitive (noting concerns of forking in the Linux world), but Eben Moglen is optimistic: 'When it's all over, people are going to say, "All that talking for just that much change?" [...] We will do no harm. If we think (some change) may have any unintended consequences, we will not recommend making it.' Controversies aside, there is some good news -- Richard Stallman aims to 'lower barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.' The earlier Slashdot discussion contains complementary info about the intentions of FSF."