"There are both popular and unpopular ways of circumventing the Free Software Foundation's General Public License. A very unpopular method, we've come to find out, is via promises of patent protection for users of specific software. However, if you're looking to leverage Free Software without completely fulfilling the requirements of the license, a better method would be to exploit the software as a service loophole, which the latest draft of the GPL3 just legalized."

Software behemoth Microsoft could be one of the biggest losers from proposed license changes to the Linux operating system unveiled Wednesday. That’s a possible outcome of updates to the license pushed by the FSF. The FSF wants to make mutually exclusive pacts such as the Novell-Microsoft open-source agreement a violation of the next iteration of the GNU GPL, the license that governs Linux use. "It is unfortunate that the FSF is attempting to use the GPLv3 to prevent future collaboration among industry leaders to benefit customers," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s vice president of intellectual property and licensing.

Fedora 7 Test 3 has been released featuring both GNOME and KDE based live CDs, a prime spin which combines desktop, workstation and server functionality. The merge of Fedora Core and Fedora Extras repositories and infrastructure is in progress. The major components included in this release are GNOME 2.18, KDE 3.5.6 and a 2.6.21rc5 based Linux kernel.

OSNews reported recently about an article from Sun comparing the Solaris 10 security extensions to RHEL 5's SELinux implementation. James Morris, a SELinux developer, talks about that article. He also links to another article about the same topic.

Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project and a major figure in the open-source programming movement, said Wednesday he's 'pretty pleased' with changes in a third draft of the GPLv3 released Wednesday. The Linux kernel and many higher-level software packages are governed by the current GPL 2, and Torvalds has expressed strong displeasure with earlier version 3 drafts. After a preliminary analysis of GPL 3, however, some of those concerns are gone or moderated, he said.

An .iso image of myOS has been released. "Minimalistic GNU/Linux system, stripped down of everything, but core necessary files to compile and run OpenGL/C code. It has simplified directory structure and cleaned up internal cross referencing. It can fit single floppy disc without development components. With Scithech SNAP/MGL drivers (based on Mesa) it was possible to run OpenGL without X. Stripped down and modified GNU gcc compiler, mixed with diet libc includes and selected shared files seem to be able to compile all relevant libraries and produce stable and relatively small code. Apart from Necromancer's file manager and OpenGL developing tools, this is pretty much your average Linux thanks to BusyBox."

The FSF has released the third draft of the revised third version of the GNU General Public License. Some of the changes in the new draft, such as the increased clarification and legal language, or the housekeeping changes that reflect new aspects of the license are likely to be accepted. However, the license also includes a new approach to the controversial issue of lock-down technologies as well as more explicit language about patents, including language designed to prevent a re-occurrence of agreements such as the one that Novell entered into with Microsoft - all of which is apt to kindle heated debate as the revision process enters its final stages after fifteen months of intensive work.

"The idea that Linux is primarily a community-based project based on the work of thousands of independent, idealist hackers died a quiet death at home on March 27th. The proximate cause of death was the Linux Foundation's naming of its new board of directors. This leading non-profit Linux organization's board included many Fortune 500 executives from around the world - but not one representative from a purely community-based Linux organization."

A review of the new Parallels Desktop for Mac. "Parallels Desktop for Mac has come along very nicely in only a short of amount of time. The software runs very smoothly and is priced reasonably at USD 79.99. Parallels has stated that in their next version, they will finally include 3D acceleration. Although the lack of 3D acceleration did not bother me, I did wish that they would have included more features for alternative operating systems like Linux."

"This article walks through the steps for using the Graphical Editing Framework. Rather than finishing each step in its entirety, we'll use a subset of your application's model and get that working first. For example, we might initially ignore connections or focus on just a subset of the types of graphical elements in your application. Next, learn what other technologies are available to add graphical editing to your applications. In the past, stand-alone GEF used to be the only option for graphical editing in Eclipse, but this has changed as Eclipse has evolved."

Sun Microsystems has launched a new business unit to sell its Sparc processors, a return to an idea it had dropped years ago. David Yen, currently executive vice president of storage but previously in charge of Sun's Sparc work, will lead the new group and retain his executive VP status, the company said Thursday.

Jon "Hannibal" Stokes is co-founder and Senior CPU Editor of Ars Technica. He has written for a variety of publications on microprocessor architecture and the technical aspects of personal computing. He recently published his first book Inside the Machine - An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture. We interviewed him to discuss how hardware bugs are dealt with, the use of reserved bits, the performance and efficiency of console CPUs and GPUs, the possibility to build a Playstation 3 cluster, and what future connection he sees between CPUs and GPUs.

Magnussoft has explained their side of the story concering the recent split between them and Bernd Korz and the Zeta development team. "The archived sales figures of Zeta were far below Magnussoft's expectations. Continuation of financing the project is economically no longer viable. For the time being, Magnussoft discontinued funding of the Zeta development team on March, 16th 2007. The exclusive distribution agreement will remain unaffected. The existing contract is valid until the end of 2007."

The third discussion draft of GPL version 3 is scheduled for release at 7 a.m. PDT on Wednesday, Brett Smith, a licensing compliance engineer for the Free Software Foundation said in a mailing list posting Monday. The current GPL 2 governs the rights and restrictions of many open-source and free-software projects, including high-profile ones such as the Linux kernel, Java and MySQL database. A 'last-call' draft is due 60 days after the third discussion draft, and the final GPL 3 will arrive 30 days after that, Smith said.