Novell Open PR: ‘Last call’ draft of GPLv3

The Free Software Foundation today released the “last call” draft of GPLv3. Here’s Novell’s takeaway from the draft:

Nothing in the last call draft of GPLv3 suggests that the final version of GPLv3 will inhibit Novell’s ability to include GPLv3 technologies in SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, and other Novell offerings as these technologies become available. We note that the language which grandfathered the Novell–Microsoft agreement remains in the draft. We will continue to distribute Linux and other GPL’d technologies. All of this is good news for our customers.

The terms of the last call draft suggest that the final version of GPLv3 will not interrupt our partnership with Microsoft. We remain committed to that partnership, which we believe will help grow the Linux market and satisfy longstanding customer needs. We look forward to providing the fruits of our joint technical interoperability to our customers and our fellow community members in accord with our previously outlined roadmap.

Joost on Linux: it’s difficult, but possible

Joost, the compelling new on-demand P2P video service from the creators of Skype, has attracted considerable attention since the launch of its closed beta program. Last week, we offered 10,000 of our readers the opportunity to join in on the fun. I grabbed an invite myself so that I could put Joost to the test on the open-source Linux platform.

Unfortunately, the Joost client application is currently only natively supported on Windows and Mac OS X. This is a bit ironic, since the program itself heavily utilizes Mozilla’s open-source cross-platform XulRunner runtime and many other open-source components. As usual, the open-source community has found some creative ways to make it work in the absence of official support. Instructions are now available in various places describing how to make Joost run on Ubuntu Linux with Wine, a Windows binary runtime layer for Linux.

After experimenting with a few other suggestions listed in the Troubleshooting section of the instructions in the Ubuntu forum, I got to the point where Joost would run in Wine.

Complete Article

Linux Distro Timeline

As you can see, over 100 distributions are based on Debian alone! Take a look at this Linux distro timeline . This timeline gives you quite an accurate representation of when distros were launched, and when other distros were spawned from their parent distribution. (click to enlarge)

Podcast: OpenDocument and the Move to XML Formats

Customers are now implementing solutions based upon the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft’s OpenXML standard, endorsed by ECMA, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Billions of word processing and spreadsheet files are being converted to XML in one of these two formats. OpenDocument expert Gary Edwards believes that adopting OpenXML means lock-in to Microsoft products on an unprecedented scale. In this podcast, Edwards defends OpenDocument’s capabilities but also challenges the ODF community to out-innovate Microsoft to provide a competitive alternative to Microsoft’s lock-in. He also challenges the open standards community to focus on delivering alternatives to Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers. Edwards also describes Open Document Foundation’s da Vinci plug-ins for Microsoft Office.

Podcast from IT Conversations

Video: KDE Plasma in Action

Of course similar things have already been possible with SuperKaramba, but Plasma will provide much more functions than SuperKaramba did. According to latest KDE Digest, SuperKaramba themes can now live within the Plasma space and will help fill the initial void till real Plasmoids appear.

Hacking Firefox: The secrets of about:config

Ever since its debut, Firefox has garnered a reputation for being an enormously customizable program, both through its add-on architecture and its internal settings. In fact, many of Firefox’s settings aren’t exposed through the Tools > Options menu; the only way to change them is to edit them manually. In this article, we’ll explore some of the most useful Firefox settings that you can change on your own, and that aren’t normally available through the program’s graphical interface.

The closest analogy to how Firefox manages its internal settings is the Windows Registry. Each setting, or preference, is given a name and stored as a string (text), integer (number) or Boolean (true/false) value. However, Firefox doesn’t keep its settings in the registry, but in a file called prefs.js. You can edit prefs.js directly, but it’s often easier to change the settings through the browser window.

Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter, and you’ll see all the settings currently enumerated in prefs.js, listed in alphabetical order. To narrow down the hundreds of configuration preferences to just the few you need, type a search term into the Filter: bar.

Hacking Firefox

Quotes: EFF and Novell – Patent Reform Partnership

“EFF is partnering with Novell to try to get rid of software patents that are hurting innovation all over the world,” stated Shari Steele, Executive Director of the EFF in an interview prior to the panel session. In essence, Novell is committed to working with the EFF to improve patent quality, while at the same time work to lobby with government agencies to reform existing patent policies and litigation, according to Nat Friedman. Novell’s Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source. Specifically, Novell will assist the EFF in two ways. First, they will work with and support the EFF’s existing Patent Busting Project, which targets existing patents that cover technology concepts that are perhaps to fundamental or already have prior art. “They’re awarded for fundamental concepts in computer science on a too regular basis,” Friedman stated. “Things like XOR, the ISNOT operator.” “If you go on our Web site,” Steele added, “we asked Internet users to identify the ten most egregious patents out there. We have our ‘Ten Most Wanted.’ And we’ve been one by one hacking away away at them.” The second part of the partnership will have Novell working with the EFF and legislators to lobby for patent reform, initially in the US, but also branching out to Europe, where patent problems continue to arise. The EFF and Novell will also work with standards groups to assist in patent reform. The news is notable because it’s the first time, Steele confirmed, that a corporate entity has publicly thrown in this level of support for the EFF on the patent issue. Normally, Steele said, companies have been much more circumspect and allowed the EFF to solely take the lead on this issue.

DistroWatch Weekly #204

This week in DistroWatch Weekly:

• Reviews: First look at PCLinuxOS 2007
• News: Fedora 7 final testing, Dell PCs with Ubuntu
• Released last week: Pioneer Linux 2.1, BeleniX 0.6
• Upcoming releases: Fedora 7
• New additions: BeaFanatIX, Granular Linux, Openfiler, Parted Magic
• Reader comments

LinuxTag 2007 – openSUSE Day

Wednesday 30.05.2007 is openSUSE day @LinuxTag 2007:

Time	Topic	Description	Presenter
10:00	The openSUSE project	Why did Novell start the openSUSE project? What is different from other projects? Get a short overview of our motivations and plans for the future of the openSUSE project as well as tell us your opinions and discuss with us where openSUSE can go in the future.	Martin Lasarsch
10:30	Looking ahead to openSUSE 10.3	openSUSE 10.3 will be the next openSUSE distribution release.We like to discuss what major features will be in it and how to deliver a stable with lots of new software.	Andreas Jaeger
11:00	openSUSE Build Service Overview	Introduction into the openSUSE Build Service, why it was created, what are the goals it wants to achieve and a brief overview about its components.	Adrian Schroeter
12:00	Photomanagement with Linux		Marcus Meissner
15:00	Suspend to disk and to RAM		Stefan Seyfried
16:00	Linux on Laptops	Power management, wireless networks and fingerprint authentication	Timo Hoenig
17:00	openSUSE on the PS3	Hardware Setup of the PS3, installations of openSUSE, restrictions.	Patrick Kirsch

Complete Linuxtag 2007 schedule here

LinuxTag 2007 – openSUSE Day

Wednesday 30.05.2007 is openSUSE day @LinuxTag 2007:

Time	Topic	Description	Presenter
10:00	The openSUSE project	Why did Novell start the openSUSE project? What is different from other projects? Get a short overview of our motivations and plans for the future of the openSUSE project as well as tell us your opinions and discuss with us where openSUSE can go in the future.	Martin Lasarsch
10:30	Looking ahead to openSUSE 10.3	openSUSE 10.3 will be the next openSUSE distribution release.We like to discuss what major features will be in it and how to deliver a stable with lots of new software.	Andreas Jaeger
11:00	openSUSE Build Service Overview	Introduction into the openSUSE Build Service, why it was created, what are the goals it wants to achieve and a brief overview about its components.	Adrian Schroeter
12:00	Photomanagement with Linux		Marcus Meissner
15:00	Suspend to disk and to RAM		Stefan Seyfried
16:00	Linux on Laptops	Power management, wireless networks and fingerprint authentication	Timo Hoenig
17:00	openSUSE on the PS3	Hardware Setup of the PS3, installations of openSUSE, restrictions.	Patrick Kirsch

Complete Linuxtag 2007 schedule here