Microsoft plans to launch a Web site to share the activities of its internal Linux laboratories, an effort to sample feedback from customers who combine Microsoft and open-source software. Customers will be able to submit requests to Microsoft employees. For example, a person could ask how to best test the use of Linux desktops working with Microsoft's directory software.

"In seven years of attending LinuxWorld conferences, I've witnessed its transformation from an IT Woodstock to an expo populated by Fortune 500 executives. Although the penguin has definitely changed out of the tie-dyed tee shirt and into a three-piece suit, LinuxWorld still turns heads as the heartbeat of this vibrant community. And, the latest installment has proven to be no different. Despite the presence of men in suits, this IT gathering focused on populist topics, and I'm going to talk about the hottest ones: the $100 laptop for every child; a fight between two free platforms; and wikis."

"The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of the official Java Runtime Environment and Java Development Kit for FreeBSD. The Foundation negotiated a license with Sun Microsystems to distribute these FreeBSD binaries. The binaries are based on JDK 1.5 and work with the official FreeBSD 5.4 and FreeBSD 6.0 releases on the i386 platform."

Apple's Boot Camp has stirred things up quite a bit around the net. eWeek states: "CIOs have a lot invested in Windows and aren't going to junk the OS for Apple. However, if a CIO can get a twofer - Windows XP and Mac OS on one machine - a flyer may make some sense." In an analysis, eWeek concludes: "Boot Camp might give businesses and consumers another reason to look at the Mac, analysts and IT managers say." Cnet wonders if all this is good news for MS, while Ars looks at the limitations. Apple also released firmware updates for Intel Macs, which supposedly add BIOS support to EFI so you can just boot an XP (or Linux!) CD without using Boot Camp.

Proponents of the free and open-source software development model are using the recently announced delays in the shipping of Microsoft's Windows Vista and Office 2007 products as an example of how the company's software engineering process simply does not work well. They are also pointing to how it stands in direct contrast with the way software gets developed in the free and open-source community, and using the delays to explain why theirs is the better choice.

Microsoft has urged UK PC vendors not to give customers the opportunity to buy a PC without a pre-installed operating system. Supplying base systems, or 'naked PCs', is a missed opportunity, according to Michala Alexander, Microsoft's head of anti-piracy. Writing in Microsoft's Partner Update magazine, which is distributed to computer dealers, Alexander estimated that 5 percent of computers sold in the UK in 2006 would not include an operating system.

"Jan Schaumann has been an important contributor to the NetBSD project for several years. He spent a lot of time working on the NetBSD package system, known as pkgsrc, and he currently uses NetBSD as his desktop system. We will try to learn from his experience during this interview."

"In GNU/Linux, file access is restricted. Users don't necessarily have the same rights when it comes to deleting, executing or even reading files. In fact, every file contain data such as its owner, its permissions and other information which defines exactly what can be done with it, and by whom."

The Mono team has just released the latest version of the Mono integrated development environment, MonoDevelop 0.10. This new relase introduces the Gtk# designer (screenshot), refactoring operations, printing support, and more.

"Visual XForms Designer is a set of graphical tools and interfaces for expediting the creation and editing of documents with XForms-based content. This stamdards-based, easy-to-use Eclipse plug-in makes the process of creating documents with XForms content easier, faster, and simpler."

A bill has been introduced in Minnesota that would require all Executive branch agencies to "use open standards in situations where the other requirements of a project do not make it technically impossible to do this." The text of the bill is focused specifically on "open data formats." While the amendment does not refer to open source software, the definition of "open standards" that it contains would be conducive to open source implementations of open standards.

The latest newsletter Michael Phipps talk about the Haiku's Challenges: "Since I last wrote about the reasons that Haiku is relevant, I thought that it would be balanced to write about the challenges that Haiku faces."

DevSource's John Mueller has an excellent "first look" at what it will take for Web developers to make their apps work with IE7. He says, "Unless you're using pretty much pure HTML on static pages, your application is going to break in some way."

"Eiffel Software today announced that the latest version of its cross-platform IDE EiffelStudio is now available under dual licensing, enabling users to choose between a license for commercial development and a license for open source development. Eiffel Software's dual licensing model is based on the principle of fair exchange. Users who write commercial proprietary software must purchase the corresponding licenses and may freely choose how to distribute their software. Users who donate their source code to the open source community can use the open source version and must distribute their software under the same license." The sourcecode is available via SVN and is licensed under the GNU General Public License.