MacNN has just published an important news item regarding the future of the Mac OS X version of the VLC mdia player. According to VLC's developers, the Mac version is at risk of being discontinued due to a lack of developers. Update: The VLC developers claim that Apple is working against them: "Apple doesn't want us on the Mac platform and is blocking us a lot, and refuses to explain why."

The ReactOS project has released version 0.3.11 of their operating system. A lot of changes in this delayed release, but the two main points of interest are a more or less rewritten memory manager, as well as many improvements in the sound stack.

InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy takes an in-depth look at VMware Workstation 7, VirtualBox 3.1, and Parallels Desktop 4, three technologies at the heart of 'the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years.' The shake-up, which sees Microsoft's once promising Virtual PC off in the Windows 7 XP Mode weeds, has put VirtualBox -- among the best free open source software available for Windows -- out front as a general-purpose VM, filling the void left by VMware's move to make Workstation more appealing to developers and admins. Meanwhile, Parallels finally offers a Desktop for Windows on par with its Mac product, as well as Workstation 4 Extreme, which delivers near native performance for graphics, disk, and network I/O.

Last week, OSNews received an interesting email from a German attorney. It informed us that a company called Smartbook AG has a trademark in several countries to the term "Smartbook" and admonished us (semi-threateningly) not to use the term for anything but his client's company's products. Our first reaction was, "huh?" But a quick search reminded us that several companies, most notably Qualcomm, have started referring to low-power mini-notebooks as smartbooks. It turns out that OSNews, and many other news sources, have been caught in a trademark dispute between Smartbook AG and Qualcomm. This prompted me to do a little research on trademark law.

Mono 2.6 and MonoDevelop 2.2 have been released. "About nine months ago we released MonoDevelop 2.0 and Mono 2.4. Today we are releasing the much anticipated upgrades to both. Mono 2.6 and MonoDevelop 2.2."

Well, this pretty much seals the deal. Psystar is now officially burnt down to the ground, nothing left, it's all over. Judge William Alsup has granted Apple's motion for a permanent injunction, and even though the actual legal case only involved Leopard, the injunction specifically covers Snow Leopard and Rebel EFI as well.

Yesterday, we reported that the Software Freedom Law Center had started a lawsuit against several companies who they claim violated the GPL. The subject of the violation was BusBox, and the SFLC claims it is operating on behalf of the authors of BusyBox. Original BusyBox author Bruce Perens, however, begs to differ.

Now that Windows 7 has been out and about for a while, the first balance sheets regarding its success start popping up. Consumer helpdesk firm iYogi surveyed 100000 of their customers, and the results of that test paint a relatively positive picture for Microsoft's latest operating system release - but one problem point sticks out like a big eye sore.

Over the weekend Barnes & Noble's Nook was rooted and the hacking and developer community is hard at work bringing new functionality to adventurous Nook owners.

"An increasing number of machines are equipped with hardware that can be used to support trustworthy computing. Trustworthy computing enables applications to make strong assurances about their behavior. Existing operating systems do not provide the right execution environment for trustworthy computing, and so are unable to fully exploit this emerging opportunity. The Nexus is a new operating system for trustworthy computing. Its microkernel architecture greatly reduces the size of the trusted computing base (TCB) by moving functionality out of the kernel."

Ah, MinWin. The elusive project in the Windows team that has been misunderstood more times than I can count. Once again, Mark Russinovich, more or less the Linus of the Windows world (I win stupidest comparison of the year award), has explained what MinWin is all about, while also touching upon a number of other changes to the core of Windows. Before we start: thanks to BetaNews for once again detailing these technical talks regarding the core of Windows so well.

Version 0.7.7.0 of KolibriOS, the OS with its kernel and most applications written in assembler, is out. One of the biggest improvements is the port of the linux ATIKMS driver (meaning, resolutions such as 1920x1080 now work). Other changes include new games and improvements on the network applications.

The CrunchPad/Joo Joo soap opera continues. Michael Arrington remained silent during the introduction of the Joo Joo, but today he filed the lawsuit against Fusion Garage, and posted the actual document of it on the internet (naturally). The case presents, in great detail, Arrington's side of the story.

After Linus began criticizing Red Hat over not upstreaming the Nouveau driver and Red Hat then attributing this on microcode issues less than a day ago, David Airlie has prepared a patch to introduce the Nouveau DRM in the Linux 2.6.33 kernel. This free software NVIDIA driver will finally be entering the mainline Linux kernel.