FSM Newsletter 5 November 2007

FSM Newsletter 5 November 2007


Mon, 2007-11-05 22:40 -- admin

Hello readers, and welcome once again to Free Software Magazine's fortnightly newsletter, keeping you up to date with all things free software... AND the top 10 FSDaily announcements for this week! Enjoy!

Top ten Free Software Daily stories this week

  1. Linux kernel drivers - This is a list of hardware that does not have support on Linux and needs Linux kernel drivers written for them. Read more...

  2. U.S.-Microsoft antitrust deal to get temporary extension - Microsoft, state prosecutors, and the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday said a federal judge needs more time to weigh whether Redmond should be subjected to a lengthier period of antitrust policing. Read more...

  3. Itty-bitty, teeny-weeny Linux PCs - Analysis -- [at] LinuxDevices, we're always looking at small, embedded-Linux systems. While reviewing Freespire recently on a Mini koobox, an Apple Mini-sized system, I began to wonder, Just how small do full-featured, Linux-powered PCs come? Read more...

  4. Nigerian education selects Intel-powered Classmate PC with Mandriva Linux - Mandriva today announced that the Nigerian government has selected Intel-powered classmate PCs running on Mandriva Linux for educational use in nationwide pilot in Nigeria. Mandriva is working with Intel Corporation and Technology Support Center Ltd. to provide 17,000 Intel-powered classmate PCs. Read more...

  5. ODF format group retreats from ODF - The group set up to push the Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) is abandoning its support of that file format. Read more...

  6. German Foreign Office comes out in favor of Open Document Format - "At the first international workshop of users of the Open Document Format (ODF) in Berlin to which the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic had invited about 150 users and political observers..." Read more...

  7. Free Software as a Social Innovation - "...Free Software Foundation Europe and M6-IT would like to invite you to a one day event at The Hub in London on the 2nd of November..." Read more...

  8. Uruguay buys first '$100 laptops' - The first official order for the so-called "$100 laptop" has been placed by the government of Uruguay. Read more...

  9. Giant firewall runs Linux - Crossbeam Systems has started shipping a massive chassis-style, "unified threat management" (UTM) system based on an open Linux OS. The X-Series UTM server runs the company's Linux-based "XOS" OS, and targets highly scalable firewalls and other security applications for large data centers and service providers. Read more...

  10. Free Culture House - "Last month, Jimmy Wales and I announced a new project for iCommons called the ‘Free Culture House’ project." Read more...

Thanks to mads, peacemaker, extra, AdamW, C733tus, can.axis and leo for these stories!

Latest content

Beginners guide to database administration tools - MySQL, Ubuntu and a drop of PHP and Perl. By Alan Berg. Read more...

GPLv3, bug fixes, and complexity - I got thinking about licence complexity. At the conference, people had two types of questions (a) Why didn't GPLv3 additionally solve X problem? and (b) Why is it so long? By Ciaran O’Riordan. Read more...

Creating a book template with Writer - A nifty Writer template for your next book. By Dmitri Popov. Read more...

How to fix broken Firefox extensions - Sooner or later, upgrading Firefox is going to break one or more of your killer extensions. By Gary Richmond. Read more...

Latest content continued

Create a simple application with Hecl - Introducing Hecl, a mobile phone scripting language. By David Welton. Read more...

Virtualization in OpenSolaris - Virtualization techniques in OpenSolaris. By Rami Rosen. Read more...

How to spring-clean an Apt-based distro - For Apt-based versions of GNU/Linux, users have at their disposable a number of tools and utilities to give a system a brisk spring clean. By Gary Richmond. Read more...

Kopete: the KDE instant messenger - How to connect to virtually any instant messenger network using Kopete. By Andrew Min. Read more...

Latest book reviews released

**Virtual Honeypots: From Botnet Tracking to Intrusion Detection by Niels Provos and Thorsten Holz** Learning the latest types of honeypots, reviewed by Alan Berg. Read more...

**Practical Ruby for System Administration by André Ben Hamou** Let's get the job done! Reviewed by Alan Berg. Read more...

Reminders

Comments

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Thanks

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Most forwarded

Interview with Dave Mohyla, of DTIDATA

Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.

TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.

Anybody up to writing good directory software?

Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.

Is better education the key to finding better software?

I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.

Most emailed

Free Open Document label templates

If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels

Creating a user-centric site in Drupal

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.

Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!

So, why, why do people and companies develop free software?

More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.

When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.

Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?

Fun articles

Santa Claus - the most successful open source project

It dawned on me the other day, as I was shopping for the dozens of gifts it seems I have to buy every December, that Santa Claus is the most successful open source project in history. (Bridget @ Illiterarty would agree with that). Santa Claus is essentially a marketing development that is embodied by everyone who stuffs a sock, gives a gift, hosts a dinner or wishes Merry Christmas over the holiday season.

Most emailed

Editorial

When I first started thinking about Free Software Magazine, I was feeling enthusiastic about the dream. I had Dave, Gianluca, and Alan willing to help me, I had established members of the free software community willing to help me out, I had writers volunteering their time and energy for free, and I had a generous offer from OpenHosting for servers, all before I'd proved myself. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could make this work.

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