Leading Linux distributor RedHat, Inc. announced today a policy on its much publicized patent registrations. According to the company, “we are forced to live in the world as it is, and that world currently permits software patents. A relatively small number of very large companies have amassed large numbers of software patents. We believe such massive software patent portfolios are ripe for misuse because of the questionable nature of many software patents generally and because of the high cost of patent litigation.”
Linux news site LinuxandMain.com broke the news today that Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and TurboLinux are planning a joint announcement on Thursday morning. The ground breaking communique from the distributions is quoted as saying “On May 30, join the CEOs of Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, Turbolinux and several major industry partners for an announcement that will shape Linux in the enterprise and around the globe. Please book 8 am Pacific time in your calendar for this global announcement … followed by media-only teleconference information.”.
LinuxToday has a copy of the press release
from popular Linux desktop developer Ximian noting that they will be
including StarOffice with their Ximian Desktop Professional product.
“Customers buying the boxed version of Ximian Desktop
Professional Edition or subscribing to the premium Red Carpet
Express software updating service will receive StarOffice 6.0 with
their purchases. Workgroups and organizations purchasing the Red
Carpet CorporateConnect service for centralized software management
can also install StarOffice 6.0 on each of their supported
systems.”
Linux journalist Joe Barr looks at Mandrake Linux 8.2 in a review over at LinuxWorld. In the review, he reports “
The second installation went just as smoothly as the first. The only difference being that I had the laptop connected to the cable modem. When I got to the same point the second time, I selected a site to download the updated apps from and clicked OK. After connecting to the site, I was presented a list of applications to choose from, with 20 or so “preselected” updates already checked. I accepted the default list and clicked OK again. About 20 minutes later (this could be much longer if you have a 56Kb dialup line instead of broadband Internet access) I had the latest security or bug enhanced versions of those applications.”
ComputerWorld has an interesting commentary from Nicholas Petreley. He looks at the development library that runs KDE, and also happens to be a dandy tool to develop software for nearly every popular platform. But with all this fuss being made about C# vs. Java and the competing frameworks, it's easy to forget that there are many other options for application development. My favorite is Qt, from Trolltech AS. The latest version of Qt, Version 3.0, is the foundation for the phenomenal K Desktop Environment (KDE). I'm crazy about KDE 3.0, so it should come as no surprise that I'm equally enamored with Qt.
What is Open Source? It is a simple enough question, yet the answer has become so obscure that it is anything but simple. The phrase is undisputedly at the core of what drives the Linux community even while it eludes nearly everyone as to what its exact definition is.
Gary Krakow of MSNBC gives a very nice, positive review of AbiWord, an open source word processor which recently hit version 1.0. “It works on most major OS platforms and supports many languages; it's able to read and write most documents in Microsoft Word's .doc format, as well as twenty others; its authors claim it can do most of what Word can; and best of all it's free. It's been in the works for years, but is AbiWord really that good?”
Those of you who regularly visit Open for Business, perhaps since its founding days at the LX-Talk mailing list last September, may have noticed some changes lately. While many of these changes are slight, we hope the end result will be to help you not only keep informed on the latest open source news, but to do so more efficiently.
RedHat, Inc., the leading Linux vendor, announced the
availability of RedHat Linux 7.3 earlier this week. The new
package looks very much like the latest Mandrake and SuSE Linux
releases in respect to the software included, save a few
surprises mentioned below. Interestingly enough, it seems that the most intriguing part
of the new release is not the distribution at all.
Dennis Powell of Linux and Main looks at one of the worst (and most popular) Linux advocacy methods and how it overlooks open source's true advantages. I know people who have embraced Linux chiefly because the alternative (if they are to use Intel-architecture hardware) is to use Windows, and for some reason they're not of a mood to go the *BSD route. For some of them, Linux might as well be named “Not Windows,” because that is the only feature they require. When they write or speak, their hatred of Microsoft (a not unreasonable position, by the way) is quickly evident. Their support of Linux, while rabid, is more a function of their dislike of Microsoft than of their affection for Linux or delight in its power and reliability.