"A lot of people complain about the Firefox 'memory leak(s)'. All versions of Firefox no doubt leak memory - it is a common problem with software this complicated. We look to fix the issues where we can. David Baron and others have done a huge amount of excellent work in this area. What I think many people are talking about however with Firefox 1.5 is not really a memory leak at all. It is in fact a feature."

Linus may have it wrong on digital rights management, but it's the vague wording and confusing concepts - like what is meant by a 'derivative work' - that is causing the real headaches over the next General Public License. A representative of the Free Software Foundation, leading the effort around GPL 3.0, said that Linux creator Linus Torvalds had 'misread' the license's provisional terms.

Sun Microsystems is trying to persuade Hewlett-Packard to move its HP-UX Unix customers over to Sun's Solaris, Sun President/COO Jonathan Schwartz said at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. But HP is not interested, an HP representative said. During his presentation at the conference and in a subsequent interview, Schwartz said Sun has proposed merging the road maps of HP-UX and Solaris. And on a related note, HP will offer complete SUSE Linux server packages.

"I had a situation where I needed to control two computers over the Internet. The best solution for me was to use VNC networking technology. VNC stands for Virtual Network Computer and is a real nice way to remotely control computers through a GUI interface in which you see the remote desktop. I tried all of the Mac OS X VNC clients I came across and from my experience Chicken of the VNC is the way to go."

It seems like flee-in-Apple's-fur, cracker 'Maxxuss', has succeeded in cracking Mac OS 10.4.4 for Intel. "We were just about to hunker down and wait through the cold winter and a wet spring until we saw some results on the OS X 10.4.4 for Intel hacking efforts, but it looks like we're getting a little Valentines present from 'Maxxuss' who has already broken through Apple's heightened security that is present in their shipping version of the OS. It's just a preliminary release, not all hardware is supported and it requires a bit of futzing around to get it to work, but seeing as we weren't expecting this kind of breakthrough this early, we really can't complain."

"After using PC-BSD several days, I was impressed with how easy it is to use. It's a good desktop OS, and a great way to introduce BSD to new users. The 1.0 release has a few rough edges, but nothing that should scare off prospective users. For the future, I'd like to see something like Synaptic to manage PBI packages and allow users to browse for software without having to visit the PC-BSD Web site, and it would be nice if the site had a little more documentation, but I expect such things will come along in due time as the project matures."

Apple released the fifth version for Mac OS X Tiger 10.4. A number of bugs are fixed and upgrade is recommended for all PPC, x86 and Server OSX users. This update focuses on iChat's video conferencing, Safari's rendering engine, usability of Dashboard widgets, iDisk syncing, and much more. It's available as a stand-alone download (delta | combo), and through Software Update.

Camino 1.0 for PPC and Intel-Mac is now available. Camino is a web browser optimized for Mac OS X with a Cocoa user interface, and powerful Gecko layout engine. It practices the art of simplicity with an uncluttered user interface but with the features you expect from a modern browser like tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking settings. On other browser news, Access has announced new Netfront plans.

On Feb. 15, Microsoft will release to testers first beta releases of three Office Live small-business subscription services. Office Live is a family of add-on services designed to complement Microsoft Office, the same way that the growing stable of Windows Live services will extend Microsoft Windows. The LiveSide.Net Web site on Feb. 13 posted details on Office Live Beta 1's availability, as well as some screen shots of the pending Office Live beta releases. The Office Live beta bits will be downloadable by testers starting at 6 a.m. PST Feb. 15, Microsoft officials said.

"AMD has developed more details in its cunning plan to counter Intel's Viiv scheme - it provisionally rolled the idea out during the Consumer Electronics Show with a whimper rather than Chipzilla's big bang. Intel finally realised that it should go back to the future with a tweaked Pentium 3 as it performed better than the overclocked Pentium 4 generation. That's whats Pentium M and Merom are ultimately based on and this puts Intel in much better shape than it enjoyed in 2005. AMD plans to embrace the Athlon FX and X2 and to sell them as part of the Live platform." At least this name doesn't require pronunciation advice.

As one can already see by the activity of the mailing lists, Haiku seems to be moving forward in a serious pace. Studio-33 takes a look at the latest build (many screenshots included, boys and girls), and concludes: "I was pretty impressed by this build. Deskbar and espacially Tracker seemed much more stable and Haiku didn't crash every four or five minutes like previous builds I tested. Work on Haiku seems to go pretty fast lately and more and more pieces are getting finished. Offcourse Haiku still needs a lot of work to become somewhat useable, but it is definately going in the right direction."

Apple today announced that it will begin shipping the new 15-inch MacBook Pro this week with faster processors than previously announced. The $2500 model now includes a 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo processor, up from the previously announced 1.83GHz, and will begin shipping this week. The $2000 model now includes a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor, up from the previously announced 1.67GHz, and will begin shipping next week. In addition, customers may now upgrade to a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processor as a build-to-order option on the Apple Online Store. Note: Expect a review of the MacBook Pro on OSNews.com soon.

"Every time I've ever spoken with Mark about DLS to ask him if Ubuntu would come to the show and participate, he says the same thing - Ubuntu is hesitant to come to 'The Linspire show'. Now, Mark has never actually been to the Desktop Linux Summit personally, and try as I have to explain to him the history of the show, I can tell he's just not buying it - it seems that there is nothing I can say to change his view that the Summit is and has always been a 'Linspire show'. If Mark Shuttleworth is misinformed, I'm sure others are misinformed as well. So, rather than dodge the controversy that arose four years ago during the birth of the first DLS, I would like to address it head on."

"In issue 77 of Linux Format we have an interview with Chris DiBona - former Slashdot editor, developer, OSS consultant and now Google's open source program manager. Here are a few of the questions we asked Chris, along with his answers."