Monthly Archive:: October 2007

"The Hardy Heron Roadmap has over 130 new ideas that have been proposed thus far. I've examined each one of these ideas in detail, threw out the ones that weren't interesting to me, wrote an explanation for each, and sorted the list into three categories: user experience; networking and security; support."

"Best known for a recent series of posts on Sun's ZFS filesystems, Drew Thaler has worked on many projects at Infinite Loop in the last decade. One of his areas of expertise is filesystems and optical discs, on which he is working right now at Sony but which also is the underlying theme on his blog, aptly titled 'Recording artist'. We contacted him to ask some questions and he very generously answered providing a lot of interesting and background info and tidbits on Apple and its technologies and inner workings." And another Leopard review.

"Personal computing is currently in a state of transition. While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of web browsers. And they are surrounded with controls - like back and forward buttons and a location bar - that have nothing to do with interacting with the application itself. Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur."

The Software Freedom Law Center and Monsoon Multimedia today jointly announced that an agreement has been reached to dismiss the GPL enforcement lawsuit filed by SFLC on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox. As a result of the plaintiffs agreeing to dismiss the lawsuit and reinstate Monsoon Multimedia's rights to distribute BusyBox under the GPL, Monsoon Multimedia has agreed to appoint an Open Source Compliance Officer within its organization to monitor and ensure GPL compliance, to publish the source code for the version of BusyBox it previously distributed on its Web site, and to undertake substantial efforts to notify previous recipients of BusyBox from Monsoon Multimedia of their rights to the software under the GPL. The settlement also includes an undisclosed amount of financial consideration paid by Monsoon Multimedia to the plaintiffs.

Microsoft has apologized for a Windows Server update that automatically installed the Windows Desktop Search tool on users' desktops without approval. The mistake happened because Microsoft reused the same update package for when WDS was first published in February as an optional update that was only applicable to systems with the search tool previously installed.

"I recently read this article about how the Linux device driver project needs more work to do. I pondered this for awhile, and came to a realization. While Linux still does indeed lack drivers for some hardware, I believe that the lack of drivers is no longer the largest technological obstacle to Linux adoption. The thing Linux needs to focus mostly on now is completeness, not quantity, of hardware support." Read on.