The CentOS project, the Linux distribution aimed at the enterprise built from Red Hat's freely available source code, has hit a significant bump in the road: the project's main administrator, Lance Davis, has gone missing-in-action. This is kind of a problem as Davis is the sole administrator fo the CentOS.org domain, the IRC channels - and the CentOS funds.

Valerie Aurora has published a great article in LWN about btrfs: "You probably have heard of the cool new kid on the file system block - after all, Linus Torvalds is using it as his root file system on one of his laptops. But you might not know much about it beyond a few high-level keywords - copy-on-write, checksums, writable snapshots - and a few sensational rumors and stories - the Phoronix benchmarks, btrfs is a ZFS ripoff, btrfs is a secret plan for Oracle domination of Linux, etc. When it comes to file systems, it's hard to tell truth from rumor from vile slander. In this article, we'll take a behind-the-scenes look at the design and development of btrfs on many levels."

This morning Intel has announced the release of Clutter 1.0.0, the graphics library that is gaining speed within the GNOME development community (it is used by Gnome Shell). "This toolkit provides a library/API for creating rich user interfaces in a relatively easy to use way that conceals much of the challenges of programming your application to directly use OpenGL or OpenGL ES. Clutter is already being used within Moblin V2 and its user interface is very impressive."

"Windows 7 Ultimate has been cracked. The pirate milestone, reached almost three months before Windows 7 is set to hit General Availability on October 22, 2009, was achieved via OEM instant offline activation that passes Windows Genuine Advantage validation and keeps the operating system permanently activated. Previous cracks weren't as solid: while they may be working now, they can easily be disabled by Microsoft. This one won't be so easy."

A lot of our readers are still happily using Windows XP - 36% of our users use XP, 12% Vista, and 6% Windows 7. While Windows XP is showing its age in a lot of areas, there is at least something you can do to prettify the operating system at minimal cost. In Windows XP, and to a lesser extent Windows Vista, there are still a lot of old-style icons and graphics that should be updated to more modern variants. There are free tools that do just this (thanks to IStartedSomething).

The discussion around whether or not jailbreaking iPhones should be exempt from the DMCA has just reached a level of ridiculousness that words can't really describe any longer. As some of you might know, Apple and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are in a tussle with one another over whether or not the US Copyright Office should put an exemption in the DMCA allowing the jailbreaking of iPhones. Apple's reasoning for why no exemption should be made is rather... Over-the-top.

Most mainstream distributions, like Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva, have already adopted a time-based release schedule, meaning that releases are not done on a feature basis, but according to a pre-determined time schedule. The Debian project has announced that it has adopted a time-based release schedule too.

We haven't discussed Psystar in a while, have we? In case you've been living under a rock for a while, Psystar is a Mac clone maker entrenched in a legal battle with Apple. Recently, Psystar changed lawyers, and today they posted a vigorous entry on their website about how ready they are for the fight with Apple.

"Microsoft violated the GPLv2 when it distributed its Hyper-V Linux Integration Components without providing source code, says the Software Freedom Law Center. The violation was rectified when Microsoft contributed more than 20,000 lines of source code to the Linux community last week. The drivers are designed to improve the performance of the Linux operating system when it is virtualized on the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V hypervisor-based virtualization system."

"Google has opened the source code of several key components of Wave, the company's new collaborative messaging platform. The code, which is available under the Apache Software License, will allow third-party developers to start experimentally bringing Wave-compatible federated messaging to their own software."

We've been talking about the browser ballot screen for a while now, which led to some obvious questions we couldn't answer. As it turns out (and I completely missed this), Microsoft actually posted a fairly detailed description of its proposal on its website last Friday. It details everything from what it means not to have Internet Explorer installed to what the ballot screen will look like.

Following the Cupcake branch, the Android team is baking something new and deliciously named. The Donut branch will be developing many new features in order to compete with rival phones and OSs like the iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, and webOS. Despite what many others have said, Donut is not going to be Android 2.0, but much of the development going on in that branch will end up being rolled out in the next firmware update. The development from Donut will bring Android a slew of new features, among which are CMDA network compatibility (for Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless networks, purportedly), integrated universal search similar to that of iPhone 3.0's Spotlight, more text-to-speech, "automatic backup, and a home-screen widget to let users easily toggle functions like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth." Following the pastry theme, we may expect to see the next two Android branches to be named "Eclair" and "Flan." The only thing I'm wondering is if Android will evolve to a point beyond personal pastries where we'll begin to see "Lasagna," "Orange Chicken," and "Carl's Junior's Famous Star." I'll buy an Android phone just to get those updates that will remind me just how beautiful the world is.

The news just broke that Apple has rejected the official upcoming Google Voice application, and stopped distributing the third party "GV" application, an app that was previously authorized. Read on for a quick commentary, from the point of view of not an Apple or Google fangirl, but from someone who genuinely appreciates VoIP SIP (even if Google Voice itself is not VoIP, read on). For those who have read my blog over the years, would probably remember my VoIP-related rants since 2005. UPDATE: A more direct, more personal, reply from me to Apple and AT&T.

A lot of work is under way in designing the user interface for the next two releases of Firefox - 3.7 and 4.0 - and both of the currently proposed themes (Windows-specific) look interesting. These interface refreshes were needed as well, as the current Firefox interface is showing its age. Looking at the mockup for Firefox 4.0, it all becomes clear: This is Firefox - Chromified.