In the News Archive

The OpenPKG project released version 2.3 of their unique RPM-based cross-platform multi-instance Unix software packaging facility. OpenPKG 2.3 consists of 545 selected (from a pool of over 850) packages. The major technical efforts for this release were spent on the porting of all packages to the now officially supported Unix platform Sun Solaris 10 on both Intel and SPARC architectures.

FOSDEM 2005 will take place this Week-End in Brussels, Belgium.

BitRock InstallBuilder is a multiplatform installation tool that supports Linux, Windows, Solaris and, soon, OSX. Free, fully functional licenses for open source projects. The new version added Solaris support. You can also rate the app here.

Aqua Data Studio 4.0, the popular multi-platform DB front-end, is released and it's adding many new features. Aqua Data Studio is free for personal usage. In other interesting multi-platform commercial releases, Lost Marble recently released Moho 5.0.7 (screenshot, running under my Novell Linux).

Apple has unseated Google for the number one spot of major global brands, compiled by Interbrand, a marketing industry analyst. Ikea and Starbucks were numbers three and four, and number five was a surprising newcomer: al-Jazerra. I guess being on the front lines of a major world conflict really gets your name out there.

"I'm tired of the constant fear mongering around intellectual property and open source software and "enterprises being sued" and thought it time to offer a different opinion" says Stephen R. Walli, an ex-Microsoft employee who worked on open sourcing projects at Microsoft (FlexWiki and Wix).

#2 US Telecom company SBC has a new set-top box with Tivo-like DVR and music and photo access capabilities. "Owners will be able to control the box remotely over an Internet connection, which will also provide access to streaming music and video downloads through SBC's deal with Yahoo. SBC said future enhancements will allow the box to be controlled through a Cingular wireless phone, and allow SBC's local phone customers to see caller ID and call logs on their TV sets." With TVs acting more like computers, and computers acting more like TVs, what will it look like when they meet in the middle?

A reader reports: I was trying to raise some money to start a Linux technical support website by selling Debian GNU/Linux and Fedora Core CD's on eBay and suddently after a month all my items were pulled and my account suspended. I received this message from ebay as reason: "As a matter of eBay policy, recordings on CD-R (including CD-RW and DVD-R) may not be listed on eBay, unless the seller is the copyright owner and states this in the item description. This policy also means that even lawful reproductions on CD-R are not permitted on eBay." This link was also provided.

A new version of Openoffice.org has been released. Release notes. There is also a preview of 2.0.

The folks over at Codeweavers have released Crossover Office 4.1. Having tried this one myself, I can tell you it seems a pretty major improvement, running several of my Windows apps formerly unusable under Linux.

OSNews contributor Thom Holwerda posted his end of 2004 best of list, filled with lots of OS-related highs and lows for the year. I particularly like his "Best Computer News Site.

Interview with David Lee, CEO of Cambridge (Mass.)-based Advent Consulting, "A recent Jupiter Research survey shows a growing number of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) using open-source alternatives to Microsoft (MSFT ) products. About 9% of SMBs are using Red Hat (RHAT ) Linux on the desktop, and 7% are using the OpenOffice productivity suite, which contains word processing and spreadsheet programs."

According to an article at DesktopLinux.com, TheKompany.com today formally launched Mindawn, a music download service that, unlike iTunes and Napster, targets Linux desktops. Mindawn is claimed to provide CD-quality song files and "virtually no" digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, offer full previews of the entire songs, and provide downloads in Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, and other formats. Update: Deleted some extraneous text outlining which formats are "lossy" and which aren't.

Symantec Corp., the top global security software maker, on Thursday said it will buy Veritas Software Corp for $13.5 billion, expanding into the data storage and recovery business. More can be found just about everywhere.