FLOSS News

As a long time fan of the Linux desktop I was interested to see the the Linux desktop usage number for personal computers increase to over 1.02%. I suspect it’s partially fueled by the popularity of Linux netbooks from the Dell (who offers an Ubuntu option) and Asus (that’s uses a special version of Xandros Linux).

This year’s MacWorld and CES seems to be a big let down when it comes to new gadgets. The Mac fan boys were crossing their fingers even though El Jobslimo wasn’t doing the keynote that Apple still might announce a new Mac tablet. Maybe they can get Dan Lyons next year. CES seemed to be a let down too, spewing a bunch of products but none that made me say, “Wow”.

Starting in 2009 popular, autonomic configuration management tool, Cfengine will be commercially supported by a company formed by Cfengine author, Mark Burgess. Cfengine has a laundry list of brand names that are using their software –AT&T, Bloomberg, IBM, Nokia, and many more. I suspect that many of them would pay for commercial support:

Here’s the news from the newly formed Cfengine AS:

I was going through my email today and found a recent email from Matt Rechenburg of OpenQRM who just released OpenQRM version 4.2. In the latest addition OpenQRM has support for provisioning server images in the cloud.

Here’s the list of features:

Tomorrow is the fourth annual Software Freedom Day. A world wide celebration of of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

This week I was happy to see this white paper by Jane Curry a certified Tivoli Consultant and Instructor. Her Open Source Management Options paper compared OpenNMS, Nagios and my favorite network monitoring software, Zenoss Core.

I finally listened to Randy Pausch’s last lecture linked from Stephen Walli’s blog. It was so good I clapped at the end of the lecture alone in my office. Randy passed away last week from pancreatic cancer and this is his last speech.

I am not a big podcast listener but one of the ones I listen to regularly is the IT Management podcast with Redmonk’s Coté and John M. Willis. Today Zenoss’ Matt Ray and Tarus Balog from OpenNMS were guests and I thought it was a particularly good episode because of the open source angles.

tecosystems » Earth Class Mail: Still Open for Business? - Stephen’s review of Earth Class Mail a snail mail handling service.

A few weeks ago I felt a little like a proud pappa, well maybe more like an uncle since I can’t claim to have been present for the conception.

SourceForge.net: ICEcore - ICEcore collaboration software is the July 2008 SF.net project of the month.
GNOME hires Stormy Peters as Executive Director - Open Logic’s Stormy Peters leaves OpenLogic for the GNOME Foundation interesting job.
(Via Savio)
SnapLogic Blog » Connecting Clouds - Integration and Cloud Computing - Mikeyp gets it right, “…cloud computing will not happen overnight [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Open Source Links 7-11-2008", url: "http://socializedsoftware.com/2008/07/13/open-source-links-7-11-2008/" });

Today Linux desktop manufacturer Xandros acquired Linspire for an undisclosed amount. Xandros will also be keeping existing engineering, support, and key sales employees and long-time Linspire employee and CEO Larry Kettler will be joining the Xandros executive team as the VP of Business Development.

Removing Barriers to the Community - MySQL Moves to Bazaar - Jay Pipes
It is the role of a community manager to remove the barriers — both technical and ideological — between the user/developer community and the company or group of individuals which produces the open source software

Linux.com :: Lessons learned from NCSU FOSS class
As textbooks, [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Links: Open Source Week in Review", url: "http://socializedsoftware.com/2008/06/22/links-open-source-week-in-review/" });