Java steward Sun Microsystems has sent a letter to members of Eclipse, urging the increasingly influential open-source project to unify rather than fragment the Java-based development tool market.

The XFree86 Project modified their license (fully effective as of the upcoming 4.4.0 release). The updated license change applies to the base XFree86 license, and to source files that explicitly carry a copyright notice in the name of The XFree86 Project, Inc. Copyrights and licenses in the names of others will not be affected by this change, however some fear that these changes might be GPL-incompatible.

BeOS Max 3 is a collection of third party updates, drivers and new applications on top of BeOS 5 Personal Edition (e.g. enabling AthlonXP and P4 machines to work, install on its own partition etc). Because of the non-standard nature of burning a BFS ISO (discussed here and here) and also because the .cue file (needed to burn the BFS ISO) has a undocumented typo in it, many tried to burn it unsuccessfully (you need to edit the MaxV3.cue file with a text editor and enter the correct .iso filename in it). Now, the French print magazine Login carries the BeOS Max 3.0 in its cover disk. OSNews heard that BeOS Max 3.1 is ready for weeks now but its developer doesn't have the bandwidth to upload it yet.

Microsoft Corp. will put a more human face on its upcoming global multimillion dollar advertising program for its Windows Server System. The company, which is set to announce the new ad campaign at its Silicon Valley campus on Thursday afternoon, will spend tens of millions of dollars on this worldwide campaign, which will feature specific IT staffers from enterprise and mid-level firms that use the Windows Server System solutions.

Users will have to balance their IT security requirements with potential Java and .net performance problems if they are to take advantage of the features being introduced in Windows XP Service Pack 2.

For some reason, Microsoft's brilliant and cutting-edge .NET development environment left out one crucial tool... a tool that has been common in software development environments since, oh, about 1950, and taken so much for granted that it's incredibly strange that nobody noticed that .NET doesn't really have one. Read more on what Joel has to say here.

Thanks to Lindows.com, I was able to get my hands on a free copy of LindowsOS 4.5 Developer Edition just for being a reader of OSNews. Apparently a lot of other OSNews readers did as well considering the long wait in the queue for downloading. It is great that Lindows gave away their product this way. Update: The article was updated (look at the end of the article).

Apple continued the further development of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther this week with the first seedings of Mac OS X 10.3.3 build 7F24 and Safari 1.2 build 125. Meanwhile, the latest version of Safari boasts the ability to use the tab key to cycle through form elements and hyperlinks, in addition to sporting a beefed up download manager supporting resuming downloads. The browser update will also deliver improved performance and the ability to view image dimensions, sources said.

Tom Cosgrove has committed the OpenBSD pieces that make booting from partitions with offsets greater than 8GB.

"Although nobody has been able to smuggle out a single screenshot of the top-secret IBM Linux desktop OS—often referred to as Blue Linux—I have friends who have seen it. I am assured that it not only exists, but is being used by large numbers of IBMers. "They are going through a process of eating their own dog food right now," I was told." Read the aeditorial from John C. Dvorak .

Before I add 'my' two cents worth upon the current heap of Xandros reviews, let me introduce myself... rather my Linux self. I am a noobie. Perhaps not such a newbie as a newbie could be since I have been playing with and learning Linux since 'Corel Linux' (1999-2000?). Before Corel I'd purchased a copy of a 1998 Turbo Linux in a discount store and was beyond elated to find something to mess with.

Here you can download Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 version for the AmigaOne/Teron series of motherboards, AmigaWorld reports.

For almost 20 years, Windows has been an ever-evolving graphical environment which has focused on providing users, as well as developers, easy access to the latest technologies, hardware, and services. "Longhorn", the codename for the next version of Windows, represents a significant jump in the definition of what a Windows Application is, and is capable of achieving. In this episode of the .NET Show, MSDN TV provides a general overview of the larger technology "pillars" of Longhorn, introducing their concepts, as well as showing some of the coding techniques for gaining access to them. Use Windows Media Player on Mac/Windows or Win32_Codecs on Unix/Linux to view the videos.

Eclipse, an increasingly influential open-source development tools project, will kick off its first programmer conference next week amid strong industry momentum and lingering questions regarding its future direction. Elsewhere, learn how an application in Java SWING can invoke and display a Windows Form, pass parameters to the form and wait for a return value when the form is closed. This type of technique shows how organizations can introduce new forms and controls based on Windows Forms into an existing Java SWING environment and helping them to rapidly deploy .NET applications without having to rip out existing infrastructure or wait until new replacement applications are written.