A reader reports: I was trying to raise some money to start a Linux technical support website by selling Debian GNU/Linux and Fedora Core CD's on eBay and suddently after a month all my items were pulled and my account suspended. I received this message from ebay as reason: "As a matter of eBay policy, recordings on CD-R (including CD-RW and DVD-R) may not be listed on eBay, unless the seller is the copyright owner and states this in the item description. This policy also means that even lawful reproductions on CD-R are not permitted on eBay." This link was also provided.

NewsForge reports that PalmSource Vice President of Engineering Mike Kelley has published an open letter to the Linux community. IN essence, the end result will be the ability to run PalmOs and (bits of Beos integrated in PalmOs) on Linux. It will be a software layer that runs on top of Linux, and won't be open source.

The second release candidate of FreeBSD 4.11 is now available, more info here.

Drobe.co.uk once again looks at RISC OS toolchain issues - this time it's Unixlib under the microscope and drobe considers how to improve it by adding code from the GNU C Library, or making a port of glibc to RISC OS.

PPCNerds has some news on the new images of the GNU-Darwin project now available, and includes a few screenshots.

At the end of the year here is a small gift to all game-fanatics out there: SAM Xmas Fun 2004, a game-collection for your pocket with around 40 games. Also the basic things for having fun with Linux are there: Firefox 1.0, Gaim 1.1, Xchat, Totem, Leafpad... all together on a 210mb mini cd. Check out OSDir.com's SAM Xmas Fun 2004 Screenshot tour.

Oracle Database 10g is the first database designed for grid computing and now it's on Mac OS X.
Another source notes that Oracle is using the Xserve RAID in its own datacenter.

While everybody was out partying and what not this New Years eve, Tech^salvager decided to sit down and write a review of SkyOS beta 8.2. Read the review here.

From spintronics to clockless CPUs, 2004 was a year of process and research in the microprocessor industry. As a way to transition into the new year, this article offers a month-by-month look at the highlights of the 2004 microprocessor timeline.

"Despite its current misadventure with Linux, Sun isn't in the generic desktop computer business. The Java desktop is cool, but it's a solution driven by necessity, not excellence. In comparison, putting Mac OS X on the Sunray desktop would be an insanely great solution for Sun." read the rest macnewsworld.com

This is the fourth update of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (codename 'woody') which mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems.

From all of us here at OSNews, Happy New Year! 2005 promises to be an exciting year in technology - what surprises do you think this year will hold? What news do you think will top the technology news sites in 2005 - Linux? SCO? Microsoft? Firefox? Security? Wireless networking? A destructive new worm? Share your thoughts here.

The Mockup project published screenshots of the recent released source code. The development of the GUI is following these mockups, using Qt 4.0 beta1 and key technologies like HAL and DBUS. The announcement, with instructions about how to compile source code, of the latest release is here.

Systems architect and engineer Judith Myerson explains the ins and outs of wireless robots: their components, their shortcomings, and how they can interact in a competitive or cooperative team within professional environments. Learn how smarter robots can relieve us of the most tedious -- and dangerous – tasks.