Ubuntu Weekly News #12
The Ubuntu Weekly News for September 2, 2006 is out. "<span>In this
edition, read about the release of a milestone image and call for testing,
a roundup of news from the Google Summer of Code student projects and a
sneak preview news of another project, 'upstart', by Ubuntu Developer Scott
James Remnant, designed to change the way that a Unix/Linux boots for the
first time in 30 years.</span>"
Planning For 10 Years of Free Desktop (KDE.News)
KDE.News <a href="http://dot.kde.org/1157238946/">looks at</a> 10 years of
KDE. "<span>10 years ago, on October 14th 1996, Matthias Ettrich announced
a project to create a complete and consistent GUI for the prospering Linux
operating system. The project grew and matured and now it is 2006 and KDE
is one of the largest Free Software projects.</span>"
Linux Gazette #130 is out
The September 2006 <a href="http://linuxgazette.net/130/index.html">edition
of Linux Gazette</a> is out. Articles include EclipseCon Conference 2006:
The Way of Eclipse, DNS techniques, The Geekword Puzzle, Vancouver Python
Workshop 2006, Custom OpenLDAP Schemas, Interview: Timothy Miller, Open
Graphics Project and more.
cdrkit: Debian's fork of cdrtools
The Debian cdrtools maintainers have posted the first version of "cdrkit,"
the project's fork of the cdrtools package. The reasons behind this fork
were <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/195167/">covered in LWN</a> last
month. It was nearly bound to happen; the real question is the
extent to which distributors will cooperate in the maintenance of the new
version. The Debian folks have <a href="/Articles/198174/">reached out to other
distributors</a>, so the initial signs are good. Meanwhile, cdrkit needs
testing.
Kernel prepatch 2.6.18-rc6
Linus has <a href="/Articles/198161/">announced</a> the availability of
2.6.18-rc6, possibly the final prepatch before the 2.6.18 final release.
It contains a lot of fixes; one of those is the removal of much of the <a
href="http://lwn.net/Articles/164121/">SMP alternatives</a> work, which was
causing build problems with some compilers. See <a
href="/Articles/198163/">the long-format changelog</a> for the details.
Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)
Inside Higher Ed has <a
href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/01/commission">a detailed
story</a> on the politics behind the creation of the American Council on
Education's report on the future of higher education. "<span>That
agreement was nearly imperiled last weekend, though. Gerri Elliott,
corporate vice president at Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector division,
sent an e-mail message to fellow commissioners Friday evening saying that
she 'vigorously' objected to a paragraph in which the panel embraced and
encouraged the development of open source software and open content
projects in higher education.</span>" Read the article for the relevant
text before and after Microsoft's intervention.
The New Barbarians (Forbes)
Forbes is running a series of articles called <a
href="http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0918/102.html">The New
Barbarians</a>. It seems that Daniel Lyons has finally figured out that
commodity hardware and free software might offer some value. "<span>Linux
today has less than 2% market share on the desktop. That's because with
past versions of Linux only hackers could get Linux installed and running
right. But a new batch of easier-to-use versions is putting Linux within
reach of regular folks.</span>" There is also a rather confused article
about the GPLv3 process.
Ubuntu 6.10 alpha - Knot 2 released
Edgy Eft Knot 2, the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be
released throughout the Edgy development cycle, is now available in Ubuntu,
Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu flavors.
FSF reaches out to social activists (NewsForge)
NewsForge <a
href="http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/158231&from=rss">covers</a>
the Free Software Foundation. "<span>2006 may be remembered as the year
that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) reached out to the community. The
FSF has already undertaken an unprecedented year-long consultation process
about the revisions to the GNU General Public License, and the Defective By
Design campaign against digital rights management technologies. Now, the
FSF is planning a third campaign to deliver its message about ethical
software to social activists outside the technical communities. "We think
that social groups taking on policies about free software can act as a huge
lever within schools, trade unions, local governments, and churches," says
Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF.</span>"
Personal wikis: Three small, simple alternatives (Linux.com)
Linux.com <a
href="http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/23/1911200">looks
at</a> some lightweight wikis. "<span>Wikis aren't just great tools for
sharing information and collaborating on projects. They also make excellent
personal information managers. With a personal wiki, all of your to-do
lists, notes, and appointments are at your fingertips in form that's easy
to use and maintain.</span>"
Security advisories for Friday
<b>Debian</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/197999/">capi4hylafax</a>
(missing input sanitizing).
<p>
<b>Mandriva</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/197984/">mysql</a> ( denial
of service), <a href="/Articles/197987/">sudo</a> (vulnerability via
scripts), <a href="/Articles/197988/">xorg-x11</a> (local privilege
escalations).
<p>
<b>rPath</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/197985/">kernel</a> (denial of
service).
<p>
<b>SUSE</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/197997/">dovecot, openldap2,
gtetrinet, ruby, sendmail, rubygem, streamripper and alsaplayer</a>
(various vulnerabilities).
Opening Up: Laurie Tolson on Open Source Strategy for the Java Platform
The Sun Developer Network has <a
href="http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javaopensource/OS_qa/">an
interview</a> with Laurie Tolson, VP of Developer Products and Programs at
Sun. "<span><em>Jim: Where is Sun in the process of open sourcing the code
for Sun's Java platform implementations? When can developers expect to see
the code released?</em> Laurie: Sun will release several significant
components of Java SE by the end of 2006. We don't know exactly which ones
yet, but the javac bytecode compiler and the HotSpot Virtual Machine
--among other things-- are on the table. The rest of a buildable JDK will
be released in early 2007. In addition, Sun plans to open source
implementations of the Java ME platform (both CLDC and CDC). We intend to
roll this out by the end of 2006. Most importantly, we're not doing this in
isolation. We want to learn from successful open source projects how best
to go about this.</span>" (Thanks to Drew Daniels)
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 updated
The Debian project has updated the stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux
3.1 (codename `sarge'). "<span>This update mainly adds security updates to
the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems.
Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update
many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in
this update.</span>"
Transcript of Richard Stallman at the 4th international GPLv3 conference
A transcript of Richard Stallman at the 4th international GPLv3 conference
is <a
href="http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/bangalore-rms-transcript.en.html">available</a>.
This page links to audio and video recordings as well as text. "<span>The
overall topic of this speech is what we've changed in the GNU GPL. In
order to speak about this, I need to remind people what the point of it
is. The reason we change the GPL is to make it do it's job better, so what
is that job? That job is protecting the freedom of all users of our
software.</span>" (Thanks to Ciaran O'Riordan)
