Open Source News
April 29, 2004
CherryPy-0.10 released
Version 0.10 of CherryPy, a Python based web development toolkit, it out. Changes include a new project wiki, threa-safe operation, restored Jython compatibility, bug fixes, and new documentation.
Rapid Web Application Deployment with Maypole
Simon Cozens writes about the Maypole project on O'Reilly. "You have a database. You have a web server. You have a deadline. Whether it's bringing up an e-commerce storefront for a new venture, implementing a new front-end to HR's employee database, or even providing a neat way to track citations for U.S. English slang terms, it's always the same story -- and the deadline is always yesterday. For this month of April, I'm working on a Perl Foundation sponsorship to develop a project of mine called Maypole, which enables Perl programmers to get web front-ends to databases, as well as complex web-based applications, up and running quickly."
Windows vs Linux - Which is easier to install?
Dave Fancella experiments with an "average idiot user" as she installs Windows 2000 and Mandrakelinux 9.2 for the first time. "The average 'idiot' user is someone who will characteristically describe themselves as an 'idiot with computers'. They don't know what a kernel is, they frequently think that 3.5" floppy disks are 'hard disks', they don't know what the 'internet' is (although they know how to check and send email), and they don't know a whole lot of things. Windows has abstracted most things so that people don't *have* to know about computers to use them. This is bad, but is a subject for another article entirely."
Free Software's killer applications
NewsForge takes a quick look at a few free software "killer apps". "While GNU/Linux has gained popularity as an operating system, many criticize it for lacking "killer applications" capable of competing with their Windows and Mac OS X proprietary counterparts. Some killer applications, however, haven't received the recognition they deserve. Here's a short overview of some professional-quality Free Software applications that run under Linux."
Interview with Miguel de Icaza
Netcraft News interviews Miguel de Icaza. "We cannot choose one desktop over the other - Gnome or KDE - because there's users for both code bases.... Gnome and KDE are basically the shells, but then there are higher-level applications like the office suite. We're making the decision it's going to be OpenOffice, the browser it's going to be Mozilla, the email client it's going to be Evolution, the IM client it's going to be Gaim. So we basically have to pick successful open source projects and put them together."
An Interview with Harald Welte
OrangeCrate.com has done an interview with Netfilter maintainer Harald Welte. "I'd much rather prefer spending my time developing software and not dealing with legal issues at all. But I am developing this software for the freedom of the users - and I am determined to make use of legal means against any party who wants to prevent users from exercising their freedoms."
Scribus 1.1.6 Reviewed
Mad Penguin reviews the latest version of Scribus. "Scribus is a desktop publishing program for Unix and Linux. It is built with the Qt libraries and is run natively in the KDE desktop environment. Scribus is published under the Gpl and is similar to similar to Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign. Scribus has an unusually small development team and is mostly the work of a German programmer called Franz Schmid. The Scribus team are positioning the program as an easy to use DTP publishing program for the Linux and Unix operating systems with support available for professional publishing features."