The OpenBSD folks are informing us that mozilla works in -current, the SMP branch works okay with a big lock on i386, the UltraSPARC III goes single user now and the AMD Hammer port: kernel works so far, toolchain/compiler stuff in the works now.

Symbian PLC will outpace Microsoft Corp. in the market for cellular phone operating systems, reaching double the market share in 2007, a research firm said Friday. Symbian, a software consortium formed by handset makers, will have 5 percent of the market in five years, with Microsoft coming in second with 2.5 percent and Linux third with 2 percent, the Probe Group, Cedar Knolls, N.J., said. Get more mobile computing news on our sister site, NMC.

4osx has some screenshots of panther. Because there site is down from time to time, they have asked for mirrors. We have mirrored their screenshots and can be found here.

"Steve Jobs should take his own advice and sacrifice some profit margin in exchange for some market share. When Apple releases 970-based Macs, they may well be better than their PC counterparts, but Apple's current price structure will drive the masses off to the competition." Read the editorial at MacObserver. C|Net News.com says that Apple is preparing to introduce a new line of machines that are built around IBM's speedy new PowerPC 970 chip, analysts say, a move that won't erase the "gigahertz gap", but should at least narrow the chasm. Elsewhere, Shake 3 is out.

The Fink, Gentoo, and DarwinPorts projects are pleased to announce the formation of a cooperative development alliance, MetaPKG, forged to facilitate delivery of freely available software to Mac OS X. While each project will continue to deliver software in their own way, the coordination between projects will: accelerate the development efforts of all projects, avoid unwanted duplication of effort, improve the consistency, quality, and responsiveness of ports.

This essay describes a visit to SCO, to discuss SCO's claim that Linux infringes on its intellectual property rights. Elsewhere, Eric Raymond says he has evidence that could undermine some of SCO's legal arguments. Raymond claims to have collected the names of 60 Unix users who are willing to sign affidavits that disprove SCO's contention that its Unix System V source code, which forms the basis of IBM's AIX Unix, contains trade secrets.

A first release of the official MorphOS SDK is immediately available to members of the MDC in the files section. Info here and here.

FreeBSD turned 10 years old yesterday. Happy Birthday FreeBSD.

Sun's Jonathan Schwartz is not so sure about the idea of an open-source Java. Elsewhere, Sun seeks boost from stronger Java while in the meantime Sun slips and its CEO slams takeover talk: Sun's shares dipped into negative territory Thursday after CEO Scott McNealy tried to shoot down rumors that the network-computer maker was a takeover target. Additionally, Web services must start delivering, says Sun, while they will also sell and support all x86 versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

"How does a distribution that's a carbon copy of Red Hat 9 install and perform better than Red Hat 9 itself? By having the inside track on the platform being used, that's how. Brian Proffitt had the opportunity to use Red Hat 9 on an Intel notebook and Yellow Dog 3.0 on an iBook recently, and in terms of ease of installation and ease of use, Yellow Dog won by a big, wet nose" LinuxPlanet claims.

Extreme Programming (XP) founder Kent Beck likes to say he made up XP's fundamentals during a particularly troubled project in 1996. While strictly true, from talking to him you sense he'd really been formulating the process for quite some time. Find out what Kent thinks about the contribution of the Java platform to software development's success (or lack thereof). In this interview he explains how better applications can arise from the ashes of failure.

LWN features an article on how SuSE is now a big force in Linux with new products every so often while MandrakeSoft is in deep lethargy media and PR-wise. Note that SuSE made it big also because of help from its own country, Germany (and the rest of Europe), while MandrakeSoft failed to captivate France in the government level and land big contracts that would keep the company in a healthy state.

Read more about Koffice 1.3 Beta 2 here. On another note, Ximian has a nice presentation on the changes and planned changes for OO.org here.

The Inquirer features a long article on AMD Opteron and its potential.