Open Source News
February 5, 2004
Security posters from Microsoft
Microsoft has had some high-profile security problems recently. A big company like that knows what to do in this sort of situation, however: release a set of motivational posters for the work place.
U.N. report says open source produces better software
The United Nations has concluded that better software comes from the open-source development model. "The report says that OSS software is better for four primary reasons: More people looking for defects means more defects are found and fixed. Free from marketing considerations, developers release more fixes and improvements, more often. Proprietary software does not guarantee quality, in order to avoid legal liability. Source code availability allows users to fix, customize or improve on their own."Five Live CDs Reviewed
This guest article by Lenish Namath takes a look at five of the leading Live Linux CD distributions; MEPIS Linux, KNOPPIX, GNOPPIX, ADIOS and MandrakeMove. "MEPIS had the best hardware detection. The others had problem identifying my laptop's refresh rates, so my screen was flickering. It also had a control center where you can configure the system. The fonts seemed a bit clunky, but it was very easy to mount partitions. It also had QTParted which can be used to resize your fat32, NTFS and GNU/Linux partitions."
Nvu 0.1 Released
Nvu version 0.1 has been announced. "Version 0.1 of Nvu, the open-source Web development tool based on Mozilla Composer, has just been released."
Plone 2.0 Release Candidate 4 available
Release Candidate #4 of Plone 2.0, a content management system, has been announced. "A new Release Candidate of the highly anticipated Plone 2.0 is ready, this time with a lot of migration fixes."
What's New in Tomcat 5
Jason Brittain reviews the latest version of Apache Tomcat on O'Reilly. "On Dec. 3, 2003, the Apache Tomcat developers released their latest version of the popular open source Java servlet and JSP container, version 5.0.16, as the first stable release of Tomcat 5. If you're already running Tomcat 4, you'll be happy to know that Tomcat 5 is easy to migrate to, and has many new features that make it advantageous to upgrade. In this article, we'll take a look at the latest features in Tomcat 5."
Mono 0.30 released
Version 0.30 of Mono, an open-source implementation of the .NET framework, has been announced. "This is mostly a fine tuning release: bug fixing and performance improvements are the major benefits, but new classes and new features are also included."
GIMP Animation Package for GIMP 2.0
GnomeDesktop.org looks at GIMP-GAP, a newly released animation package for the GIMP. "GIMP-GAP is a set of plug-ins for the GIMP-2.0 that extends GIMP for creation of animations based on a series of frame images. GIMP-GAP is the next development step of the Video Menu that once was part of gimp-1.2."
GIMP 2.0pre3 Released
Version 2.0 pre 3 of the GIMP has been announced.
MozillaZine Independent Status Reports
The Mozilla Independent Status Reports are out for February 2, 2004. "The latest set of status reports includes updates from Urlnav, Weather, Dictionary Search, easyGestures and QuickNote."Building A Better Browser
Forbes tries out Mozilla Firebird. "If, in its unfinished state, Firebird is this good, perhaps Microsoft should be worried."
NTT joins OSDL
The Open Source Development Labs has sent out a press release announcing its newest member, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). "NTT, a telecommunications giant that oversees a group of more than 430 companies with 200,000 employees in Japan and around the world, is joining OSDL to accelerate the development of Linux for enterprise computing. NTT's research and development arm, NTT research laboratories, will take the lead for the firm on open source software development to strengthen Linux for use as a major platform for enterprise computing."
What Should Governments Examine in Acquiring COTS Open Source Software?
David A. Wheeler has posted a presentation on governments and open source software. It's a short presentation, available in PDF format.