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"In a move that has raised eyebrows, Microsoft has submitted a patch to the WebKit project to extend the open source rendering engine with a prototype implementation of the Pointer Events specification that the company is also working on together with Google, Mozilla, and Opera. WebKit is the rendering engine used in Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome browsers, making Microsoft's work a contribution to products that are in direct competition to its own."

As the Syllable project predicted many years ago, version 3 of the REBOL programming language has finally been open sourced, under the Apache 2 licence (screenshot on Syllable Desktop). Also, the alpha version of the high-level Red programming language, supporting Syllable Desktop, has been released, by now in version 0.3.1 (screenshot, demo program, video at the Science Park in Amsterdam).

Linux kernel 3.7 has been released. This release includes support for the new ARM 64 bit architecture, ARM multiplatform support - the ability to boot into different ARM systems using the same kernel; support for cryptographically signed kernel modules; Btrfs support for disabling copy-on-write on a per-file basis using chattr; faster Btrfs fsync(); a new experimental "perf trace" tool modeled after strace; support for the TCP Fast Open feature in the server side; experimental SMBv2 protocol support used by modern Windows systems; stable NFS 4.1 and parallel NFS; the vxlan tunneling protocol that allows to transfer Layer 2 ethernet packets over UDP; and support for the Intel "supervisor mode access prevention" security feature. Many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. Here's the full list of changes.

The Contiki open source OS for the Internet of things works on a bunch of different hardware platforms that operate in large, potentially lossy, wireless networks. How can the Contiki developers be sure that the system works in such networks during development of core Contiki functions? To make this easier, Contiki just got a new regression test framework, ported over from Thingsquare Mist, that allow the entire Contiki system to be run through 42 automated tests on 9 emulated hardware platforms with 4 different microprocessor architectures on 1021 network nodes with 3 different network stacks and 16 different network protocols, for every commit. There's more details available.

Desktop users deserve a significant rethink of the Windows 8 gaffes and omissions for the next version of Windows, writes InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard, offering 10 must-have features for Windows 9. From a "Get out of hell" modal dialog to prevent unwanted jumping to Metro, to a Control Panel that actually controls the kinds of things you would want a Control Panel to control, it's 'due time we diehards speak out.' What's your feedback for the Windows dev team as it puts together its Windows 9 (or "Windows Blue"?) specs.

The Register is running a very interesting article by Dominic Connor, telling the insider story about OS/2 1.0/1.1 development in the old days. From the terrible management in IBM, to the hilarious coding practices of Microsoft, there's lots of stuff in here - and it's only part one. "The unholy alliance of IBM and Microsoft unleashed OS/2 25 years ago with a mission to replace Windows, Unix and DOS. Back then, I was a foot-soldier in that war: a contract bug hunter at Big Blue. Here's how I remember it."

Haiku R1/Alpha 4 had a couple critical bugs that were immediately identified and resolved shortly after release. These issues affected a significant number of users, and Haiku developers felt it made sense to do an Alpha 4.1 point release to provide a better experience for subsequent user downloads. The new download links and torrents have been provided, and they encourage people to update.

"I'm writing to inform you that the release team discussed Drop or Fix Fallback Mode yesterday. We've come to the conclusion that we can't maintain fallback mode in reasonable quality, and are better off dropping it." Gnome-fallback has been my refuge, as I find both Unity and Gnome 3's shell unusable. Yes, we have been warned this would happen. I thought the cost of maintaining gnome-panel would be so low that it might never need to happen. But as it appears, it is deemed necessary. As for me, I'm bound for something Qt, as I am very angry at Gnome for abandoning its 'classic' users.

A new version of the real-time Linux scheduler called SCHED_DEADLINE has been released on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. For people who missed previous submissions, it consists of a new deadline-based CPU scheduler for the Linux kernel with bandwidth isolation (resource reservation) capabilities. It supports global/clustered multiprocessor scheduling through dynamic task migrations. This new version takes into account previous comments/suggestions and is aligned to the latest mainline kernel. A video about SCHED_DEADLINE is also available on YouTube.

ActiveWin.com has just posted their 17-page, 90-screenshot review of Microsoft Windows Server 2012. The review covers many different aspects of the OS including start screen, server manager, VHDX, chkdsk improvements, Hyper-V, private cloud, IIS 8, and more. "On the desktop, Windows 8 remains the most talked about release, but within the datacenter, Windows 8’s counterpart on the server is also creating its own noise amongst Sys Admins and Integrators. One of the themes around Windows 8 is mobility and Touch, Windows Server 2012 itself follows a theme that is part of an industry trend, the Cloud. Windows Server 2012 promises to embrace the concept of private clouds fully while maintaining the traditional concept of on premises administration using its familiar tools."

Peter Bright has written a fascinating and well researched look into the real architecture and general internals of WinRT that largely contradicts some commonly accepted marketecture myths propagated by Microsoft (namely that WinRT is a new peer, NT native subsystem and framework alternative to traditional Win32 that doesn't depend on traditional Windows frameworks). Given all the recent news and discussions regarding the future of Windows and the openness of the platform, understanding WinRT's actual underpinnings and technical place in the Windows stack will prove valuable.

Miguel de Icaza, founder of Xamarin and lead developer of the Mono open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET platform, announced on his blog today that the third major revision of the Mono framework is now available. Mono 3.0 was released on GitHub on October 18. It adds support for some of the most recently added key features of the .NET platform, incorporates Microsoft's open-source framework for Web development, and beefs up the capabilities of Mono on Mac OS X and iOS. It also lays the groundwork for much more rapid development of features for the Mono platform going forward.

Contiki is a lightweight open source operating system designed for the 'Internet of Things': Networked, low-power embedded devices. It's been used for smart grids, smart streetlights, badger tracking systems and connecting a Gameboy to the Internet. Computerworld Australia recently caught up with its creator, Adam Dunkels, to talk about the system's history and future plans, as well as a new company he's founded, Thingsqure, which hopes to make creating applications for the Internet of Things as easy as creating apps for smartphones.

Linux kernel 3.6 has been released. There are new features in Btrfs: subvolume quotas, quota groups and snapshot diffs (aka "send/receive"). It also includes support for suspending to disk and memory at the same time, a TCP "Fast Open" mode, a "TCP small queues" feature to fight bufferbloat; support for safe swapping over NFS/NBD, support for the PCIe D3cold power state; and VFIO, which allows safe access from guest drivers to bare-metal host devices. Many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. Here's the full list of changes