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News By Category |
| New Standards etc. |
| | | Linux Foundation Publishes Guide to Participating in the Linux Kernel Community
Press ReleaseLinux Foundation August 13, 2008The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced it has published an important new guide to participating in the Linux kernel community. The 30-page book was written by noted Linux authority Jonathan Corbet and is available today on the Linux Foundation’s Linux Developer Network. Readers will learn why contributing code to the mainline kernel is desirable, how the contribution process works, and how to avoid common pitfalls along the way. Since the Linux kernel depends on outside contributions for its continued success, it’s vitally important to make participating in that community easy for new developers. While the kernel community is thriving with more than 1,000 developers at more than 100 companies* contributing just last year, the Linux Foundation, in collaboration with its vendor and technical advisory councils, wants to encourage participation through education and promotion. This guide is a centerpiece of those efforts.
The guide provides a process-oriented discussion and does not require a deep knowledge of kernel programming. Sections from the book address the following:
• The development process, including the kernel release cycle and the mechanics of merge windows
• Early-stage planning and the importance of involving the kernel community early
• The coding process, including patch requirements
• Posting patches for review
• Working with reviewers as part of the development process
• Advanced topics, such as managing patches with Git and reviewing patches submitted by others ...Full Story | | |
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New Initiatives |
| | | Launchpad Wants to Host Your Project
Mike Gunderloy| Ostatic.com July 30, 2008Launchpad, the open source hosting site sponsored by Canonical (who are, of course, the folks driving Ubuntu Linux) has announced their 2.0 relaunch. The new version of the site offers several big improvements over the old one, and points a way for other sites to follow. But is it the right place for you to host your next project? Here's a rundown on the new features to help you decide....Launchpad is certainly not the only project hosting site around; GitHub has been getting plenty of attention lately, SourceForge remains huge, and even Microsoft's Codeplex has its adherents. The new features in Launchpad, though, especially the API and sharing bugs, make it a strong choice moving forward. ...Full Story | |
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| Intellectual Property Issues |
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| | | EU launches new Microsoft antitrust probe
Richard Waters| Financial Times.com January 14, 2008The European Commission on Monday opened its first new anti-trust campaign against Microsoft since the late 1990s,...The Commission said its investigation would focus on “allegations that a range of products have been unlawfully tied to sales of Microsoft’s dominant operating system”....Central to the new investigation will be Office, the widely-used suite of applications. According to ECIS, Microsoft has refused to disclose full information about file formats and other technology in Office, making it hard for rival software products to create files that can be exchanged easily with it. That in turn unfairly supports Windows, since Office does not run on the rival Linux operating system, according to ECIS.... ...Full Story | | |
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| Open Source |
| | | Linus Torvalds on Why Users Aren\'t Flocking to Linux
Scott Gilbertson| Wired.com February 8, 2008...according to Torvalds the reason Linux hasn't taken off is that most people are happy with the way things are. “If you act differently from Windows, even if you act in some ways better, it doesn’t matter; better is worse if it’s different.”
Torvalds also attributes much of the frustration with Windows Vista to this same idea. In other words, it’s not that Vista is worse than XP, but it’s different and that causes distress among users....But Torvalds thinks that can work to Linux's advantage:
"The desktop itself is something that people aren’t necessarily interested in new features and I think that actually is something that helps open source because now you can’t have one company that kind of tries to move the goal post because if it keeps trying to move the goal post, that’s just going to irritate that company’s own constituents." ...Full Story | | |
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| Who's Doing What to Whom |
| | | ODF Wins the Office Document Format War?
Neil McAlister| PCWorld.com May 22, 2008Good news for those of you who have been following the XML office document standards battle. Microsoft today announced that Office 2007 will support ODF (Open Document Format), the document standard used by OpenOffice.org and other open source productivity suites, with the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, due sometime in early 2009.
Even more surprising, however, was the corollary to the announcement. While the Office programmer bees are busy buzzing away at ODF, OOXML (Office Open XML) is being put on the back burner. Don't expect Office to support a fully ISO-compliant version of OOXML until the next major release of the suite, currently codenamed Office 14, release date unknown....Any way you slice it, this is a big step toward shaking off Microsoft's dominance of the office software market and ensuring that we can all preserve our files for years to come. ...Full Story | | |
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| Story Updates |
| | | China to get its own version of HD DVD, incompatible with the world standard
| HDTV.uk October 16, 2006In a bid to stop piracy and to provide a lower cost system and discs for the Chinese population, it has been confirmed by the DVD Forum that China will get its own HD DVD format which will be incompatible with the standard the rest of the world has adopted.The only difference is the modulation scheme. The Chinese version will use Four to Six Modulation instead of Eight to Twelve Modulation.
The financial motivation is that China's consumers have lower purchasing power compared to those in the US and Europe. Supposedly the anti-piracy measures will primarily stop trade of counterfeit discs between China and the rest of the world, as 'internal piracy' could still continue whatever format is adopted. ...Full Story | | |
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| Miscellaneous |
| | | In California, Retro-Tech Complicates Budget Woes
Jesse McKinley| NYTimes.com August 6, 2008SAN FRANCISCO — Faced with a $15 billion budget shortfall and a testy State Legislature, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is dealing with a host of critics, including pro-tax Democrats, tax-averse Republicans and a public increasingly displeased with him.
Now, even the state’s computers seem to be against him.
Last week, with no budget agreement in sight, the governor issued an executive order terminating thousands of part-time and temporary state employees and slashing the wages of about 170,000 of the state’s full-time workers to the federal minimum wage.
But the California controller, John Chiang, says the state’s payroll system — which uses a programming throwback known as Cobol, or Common Business-Oriented Language — is so antiquated it would take months to make the changes to workers’ checks. ...Full Story | | |
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| Standards and Your Business |
| | | Techie’s green pet: IDC develops new report card for tech asset recyclers
Heather Clancy| ZDNet July 18, 2008Researcher IDC has come up with a new certification and weighting system for IT assess disposal functions that it is calling the Green Recycling and Asset Disposal for the Enterprise (G.R.A.D.E.) certification. The new designation, which only focuses on the United States for now, studies how disposal organizations handles 34 functions that IDC considers key to ensuring a green disposal process. These fall into five areas: remote applications, onsite services, logistics, in-plant processing and post treatment. ...Full Story | | |
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| Legislation/Regulation/Advocacy |
| | | Travelers\' Laptops May Be Detained At Border
Ellen Nakashima| Washington Post August 1, 2008Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.),...DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism....Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.... ...Full Story | | |
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| Standards and Society |
| | | Money Makes the World Go Around: ISO Publishes New Edition of Currency Codes Standard
| ANSI.org August 13, 2008Ever traded USD for EUR, GBP, or JPY? Banking, commerce, and trade transactions rely on these familiar three-letter currency codes, which are defined in a newly revised standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The seventh edition of ISO 4217:2008, Codes for the representation of currencies and funds, specifies the structure for unique three-letter alphabetic codes (alpha-3) and equivalent three-digit numeric codes that represent global currencies and funds. ...Full Story | | |
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| New Consortia |
| | | The Open Source For IT Management
Sean Michael Kerner| InternetNews.com May 10, 2009A new open source-led effort wants to bring open choice to the systems management space. The OMC effort is starting off with a who's who of core open source systems management projects, including Nagios, Webmin, Zenoss, Emu Software's NetDirector, Qlusters openQRM and Symbiot's openSIMS.
Among the goals of the OMC is to help establish and utilize standards that allow for interoperability and integration of systems management solutions.
Promoting open source systems management solutions is another key goal and challenge for the OMC. ...Full Story | | |
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| Standards in Action |
| | | ANSI Celebrates the 2006 Winter Olympic Games
| ANSI.org February 19, 2009The origin of winter sports equipment dates back to 1000 BC when the first ice skates, fashioned from the bones and skins of reindeer, elks, and oxen, were donned to facilitate hunting across ice covered lakes. Precarious and unstable, these rudimentary skates were paired with poles to maintain balance. Winter sports, and the equipment used in these games, have seen great developments and diversification over time. Sports equipment today makes use of the most technologically advanced materials and designs to maximize speed, agility, and safety. Athletes depend on standards to ensure that sports equipment meets performance specifications and safety requirements. ...Full Story | | |
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| Mergers, Dissolutions etc. |
| | | Standards Forum LiPS Folded Into LiMo
Press Release| LIPS Forum July 4, 2008The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum that, as of this month, its membership and activities will be folded into the LiMo Foundation, in a bid to further support and unify the growing momentum of Linux platforms in the mobile market.
LiMo Foundation is a dedicated consortium of mobile industry leaders working together to deliver an open and globally consistent handset software platform based upon Mobile Linux for use by the whole mobile industry.
The groups said the move will serve to accelerate the emergence of common mobile Linux specifications and implementations. They said it will also bolster the emerging mobile Linux developer community and support the creation of a range of new applications, services and end-user experiences. ...Full Story | | |
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| Quote of the Day |
Let us build a better world. Lets go to work
| | | Brazilian National Body representative Jomar Silva (privately) calling for the creation of a new global standards body in the wake of the rejection of OOXML appeals...Full Story |
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