There is a controversy in the Linux world. It doesn't have to do with Microsoft, or anything overtly technical. It may seem, to the outsider, the open source equivalent of the question, "Boxers or briefs?" But it's much more serious than that. More here.

Valgrind is a tool that helps you find memory management problems in Linux programs. From the 3.3.0 log: Helgrind works again with improved race detection and better error messages. Massif generates better output. Cachegrind has been extended to do branch-misprediction profiling. Both conditional and indirect branches are profiled. Scalability has been improved for very large programs, particularly those with a million or more malloc'd blocks in use at once. These improvements mostly affect Memcheck, which is also up to 10% faster for all programs, with x86 Linux seeing the largest improvement. The documentation has been reorganized. Experimental tools have been added, and more.

"The GNUstep Windows installer is based on the MinGW system and consists of the basic MSYS and MinGW libraries, other library dependancies and the GNUstep Core packages (gnustep-make, gnustep-base, gnustep-gui, and gnustep-back). The installer installs GNUstep onto most varieties of Windows (see below for tested installations) and sets up the computer to make it easy to run GNUstep applications. It is based on the NSIS installer."

The Syllable project has published the source code for Syllable Server. The code to build Syllable is maintained in Builder, the build system. There is a main repository of build specifications and overlays for Syllable Desktop and Syllable Server. The code for Server is now completely published in the source repository. A package of Builder (11 MB) for Syllable Server has been released that corresponds to Syllable Server 0.2 with a few fixes. The procedure to build Syllable Server will be the subject of an article in a future Syllable Newsletter.

"It looks like the Haiku Webkit port initiated by Ryan Leavengood has entered a productive second stage of development, and thanks to the recent work by one of the new project team members, Andrea 'xeD' Anzani, tangible progress has been made as shown by the recent screenshot showing the HaikuLauncher application rendering bebits.com. I was curious about his work, so I went directly to the source and asked a few questions to Andrea; here are his answers." On a related note, Haiku now has a new nightly build archive.

"The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. Hardy Heron Alpha 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features."

Matthew Szulik writes: "After almost a decade of leading Red Hat, I have decided to transition my CEO and President role for the personal reasons I have already discussed. It’s my privilege to continue serving this great company in the role of Chairman of the Board. Red Hat will be in the capable hands of a world-class executive team under the leadership of Jim Whitehurst as President and CEO."

"Today the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation, a non-profit organization created by the Software Freedom Law Center, signed an agreement with Microsoft to receive the protocol documentation needed to fully interoperate with the Microsoft Windows workgroup server products and to make them available to Free Software projects such as Samba. Microsoft was required to make this information available to competitors as part of the European Commission March 24th 2004 Decision in the antitrust lawsuit, after losing their appeal against that decision on September 17th 2007."

It's the time of year again, folks. "The year 2007 has been an interesting year that brought us improved security with Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5). But to get some perspective of how many publicly known holes found in these two operating systems, I've compiled all the security flaws in Mac OS X and Windows XP and Vista and placed them side by side. This is significant because it shows a trend that can give us a good estimate for how many flaws we can expect to find in the coming months." Do with it as you please.

Tcl/Tk 8.5.0 has been released. "The 8.5 release was a long time in development, and brought about several good enhancements to Tcl/Tk. Source releases, the exact changes and ChangeLog for each release are available in the SourceForge Tcl project's file distribution area."

Microsoft has posted the release candidate of Windows XP Service Pack 3 to its download site. The move marks the first opportunity for all users of the six-year-old operating system to try out its final upgrade. Previously, several thousand users were given access to test builds of SP3 only by Microsoft's invitation. Update: I just installed the RC on my Windows XP MCE installation, and it all went fairly painless. I haven't noticed anything radically different either yet.

Straight from the ADC site (a free online account is enough to gain access to the download): "Java SE 6 Developer Preview 8 is an implementation of Sun's Java SE 6 for Mac OS X v10.5.1 and later. This Preview includes Java SE 6 version 1.6.0_01. This Developer Preview does not change the default version of Java. This release is only for Mac OS X v10.5.1 and later, and should not be installed on earlier versions of Mac OS X. This release is for 64-bit Intel-based Macs only and cannot run on PowerPC-based or 32-bit Intel-based Macs."

"As a team, we've spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8. Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. Internet Explorer 8 now renders the 'Acid2 Face' correctly in IE8 standards mode." Insert freezing and hell joke.

"Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update, the next in a year-long series of planned updates to Apple's new Leopard operating system, promises to be one of the most hefty maintenance releases put out by the company for its operating system software in recent years. According to people familiar with the matter, Tuesday evening gave way to the first test builds of the software update for developers, including a 354MB bare-bones delta build and a 362MB combo updater- both of which were labeled OS X 10.5.2 build 9C7."