Should Fedora abandon release names?

Fedora has a long history of release names. Some have been serious (Verne, Goddard, Cambridge), while others have been a little less so (Werewolf, Moonshine, Zod). Perhaps the silliest of them yet, Fedora 17 will be "Beefy Miracle," a release name that's been floating around for quite some time. Apparently, some consider Beefy Miracle to be offensive, because it refers to food made with beef. Given the complexity of selecting a "safe" release name, should Fedora drop names altogether?

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Larry Ellison knocks Oracle's Linux strategy

The Oracle v. Google trial is kind of hard to miss this week, and it's dragging out all kinds of nuggets of information. One of the best this week? Oracle's CEO unintentionally taking a jab at his own company's enterprise Linux strategy.

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Fedora 16 to skip btrfs by default

One of the main features planned for Fedora 16 was a switch to btrfs by default. However, as the first alpha for F16 approaches, it looks like it will be another cycle before the filesystem gets its day in the Sun.

Josef Bacik has announced that btrfs won't be meeting the FESCO requirements set for the filesystem's inclusion in Fedora 16.

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Say what? GNU Emacs violates the GPL

GPL violations are a dime a dozen. Some are intentional, some are not — but I don't think I've ever seen one quite as surprising as this one. Yes, Richard Stallman has sent out a note letting everybody know that the 23.2 and 23.3 releases of GNU Emacs are in violation of the GPL. Says Stallman, "We have made a very bad mistake.

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Close to the wire, Novacut nears its Kickstarter goal

Want people to open their wallets? Give a good deal on games. Want people to fund an open source video editor project with a big vision? That's a bit tougher, but the Novacut project looks like it might just make it the second time around.

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The hard-line anti-anonymity approach for Google+ shows Google still doesn't get social

When Google+ launched, I was really happy with the service and thought that Google was in a great position to demonstrate that they "get" some of the complaints that users have long had with Facebook. While Google seemed to be getting it right initially, the missteps it's making in handling user demand for pseudonyms and anonymity are every bit as clueless as Facebook's privacy policies.

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Custom distro hammers hardware to detect system failures

One of the things I love about Linux? You can do so many interesting things with it. Take, for example, Breakin — a stress-testing and hardware diagnostic tool that will put hardware through its paces to make sure it's production-ready. The 3.2 release was announced today with the addition of several new utilities and improvements to its user interface.

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Facebook bans another tool for contact exports

After just a few days of operation, Facebook has already slammed the door for Open-Xchange's OX.IO export tool.

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Debian and Software Freedom Law Center publish software patent FAQ

Software patents have, unfortunately, become an inescapable part of working with software. They're of particular concern to free and open source projects (FOSS), but like many matters legal people have a lot of questions and misinformation to deal with. That's why the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and Debian have created the Community Distribution Patent Policy FAQ.

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Anti-rantifesto: Why free software and free culture aren't the same

Nina Paley, a professional illustrator and animator, has produced a fairly energetic rantifesto arguing that the "four freedoms" of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) should apply to free cultural works as well. While that might be nice, I think Paley is way off base.

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Giving Google a B- for Plus

The first and foremost feature of Google Plus (or just Google+ if you prefer)? It's not Facebook. That, of course, is not enough to sell the service entirely — but it's a good start. After tooling around the service for a short while, my first impression is that the service trumps Facebook, but still needs refinement. If you're still on the outside of Google+ looking in, here's some of what to expect.

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Facebook restores access and uploaded photos for KDE apps

A day after KDE users found their pictures gone missing and KDE apps unable to load pics, Facebook has restored access and photos. What happened? Apparently the KDE Plug-Ins were whacked in error by Facebook's automated systems.

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Facebook bans KDE application, deletes user photos

KDE users have gotten a rather unpleasant surprise from Facebook: Not only is the site blocking KDE apps like Gwenview from uploading, the social media giant has also taken down photos uploaded with the KDE plugins. Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on Facebook for photo storage.

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German company claims it can disregard GPL requirements in aggregated software

A Germany company that provides DSL modems, using in part the Linux kernel, is trying to deny another company the right to modify GPL'ed software. The company, AVM Computersysteme Vertiebs GmbH (AVM), says that Cybits AG is violating its copyright by distributing Internet filtering software that modifies AVM's software.

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Sorry HP: Oracle's right - give up on Itanium already

Hewlett-Packard is doing what all losers in the IT industry do these days when it loses a technology bet: It's trying to sue its way into relevance. Case in point, HP is suing Oracle over its decision to stop supporting Itanium.

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Et tu, Adobe? Dropping Adobe AIR support for desktop Linux

Folks can quibble about the market share of the Linux desktop, but Adobe has read the tea leaves and said it's not interested in pursuing desktop Linux with Adobe AIR. But things look good for Android.

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Bad news for Microsoft is bad news for FOSS

Microsoft hasn't exactly been the best friend to FOSS, but it's hard to feel good about the company's $290 million loss to i4i. The company lost its appeal in front of the Supreme Court, which has affirmed that issued patents are presumed valid. So much for common sense.

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Apache president Jim Jagielski talks about OpenOffice.org next steps

The announcement yesterday that Oracle proposed OpenOffice.org as an Apache Incubator project was heavy on impact, but light on detail. To get a bit more information about the hand-off, I checked in with Apache Software Foundation (ASF) president Jim Jagielski.

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Oracle proposes OpenOffice.org to Apache Incubator

In what may not be the best-kept secret, Oracle has finally spilled the beans: It's proposing OpenOffice.org as a Apache Incubator project — and not to The Document Foundation.

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Does Amazon "owe" open source? Maybe a little

When most people look at Amazon, they probably see a retail giant that's constantly growing and reaching into new markets. But at the core of almost all of Amazon's success is open source — yet you rarely see Amazon participating and contributing. What's up with that?

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