K-12 Open Source News, 17 October 2007

In the News

InternetNews.com reports, "After weighing (Microsoft's) license terms against 10 criteria defined by the Open Source Definition, the (Open Source Initiative) said it approved the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) and the Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL)." Is Microsoft the newest open source company?

InternetNews.com also states, "Long criticized as a company that benefited from many open source projects without giving back in kind, and hounded to make its Java language open source, Sun has abruptly shifted course in the last year under new CEO Jonathan Schwartz."

PC Mag's John Dvorak writes, "...Over the weekend, Uncle Dave posted a rant on my blog by longtime network admin Marc Perkel. He went off on MySQL, Linux, and much (more)...I wasn't surprised that the number of comments immediately rose to over 100. But I was a little surprised at the sheer number of comments that featured that same peculiar whining you'd hear a decade or more ago, when you said something critical about the Amiga."

CNet Blog's Matt Asay reports, "Palamida has received a fair amount of press related to its tracking of the rise of GPLv3, most of it positive, but this doesn't do the company justice. Palamida's innovative inclusion of security with code/legal analysis - helping customers discover potential vulnerabilities in their code before they ship - is a welcome addition to the open-source world."

EWeek.com states, "Craig Cumberland, director of technology and applications marketing for software platforms at Nokia, said the company offers solutions for traditional C++ developers, Java developers, dynamic language developers, an emerging market of open-source developers, as well as the burgeoning superclass of Web developers." Expect more mobile apps.

On the Blogosphere

Tina Gasperson ponders, "An open source "Second Life" for Linden Labs?"

Solid Office reports that the National Archives of Australia "developed a custom tool to help manage the archival process, named it Xena, and released it as open source using Sourceforge."

"Claims made by Microsoft that Linux violates its software patent have not affected sales of Linux-based hardware, according to Dell's CEO Michael Dell," according to Silicon.com.

Tectonic quotes Google software engineer Jim Zhuang as saying, "Because many people wanted to search and launch applications, we added that functionality to Desktop for Linux. (This product) now supports many more image formats and will show better thumbnails for them in your search results."

Steve Hargadon writes, "Last week, 300+ educators (maybe 350?) gathered in international hot-spot Indianapolis for the first K-12 Open Minds Conference, focused on the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS or OSS) in K-12 schools."

Hargadon also reports, "Booting up Ubuntu takes just about exactly 60 seconds, from start to productivity. " He's running his laptop on Linux full time.

After running 28 Linux computer stations as his small town library, PShapiro writes, "What's most fascinating to me is that members of the public have no clue that they're not using Windows."

News Blog states, "(University of California) Berkeley officials claimed in a statement that the university is the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. The school said that over 300 hours of videotaped courses will be available at youtube.com/ucberkeley.

Pramnos.com provides suggestions for using old PCs.