FOSS Week in Review Two important Internet events happened 20 years ago this week and a web browser gets an unexpected — to us —…
FOSS Force
The FOSS Force Poll
Our latest poll indicates that many FOSS advocates will end up purchasing a Ubuntu tablet when they become available in March.
Granted, you’re a special audience with a special interest. For the most part you use Linux, and not because you’re a mooch and it doesn’t cost you anything, but because you recognize it as the best that’s available. Certainly it doesn’t hurt that it’s free and open source software. Indeed, you probably think that’s what makes it best, as you most likely see FOSS as the best software development model.
You use GNU/Linux on your desktops and laptops, and most likely use Android on your mobile devices, mostly because it uses the Linux kernel and at least claims to be open source. But you know the difference between OSS and FOSS and would like nothing better than to be able to run GNU/Linux, real honest-to-goodness FOSS, on your phone or tablet — especially now that Firefox OS has been removed from the shelf.
That’s what we figured going in with our latest poll. It was an educated guess, for sure, but it turned out to be correct.
Larry the BSD Guy
The BSD licensed Lumina Desktop aims to release version 1.0 in July.
It appears the sun is rising on Lumina.
Ken Moore, the lead developer for the BSD-based Lumina Desktop Environment, announced that another step towards the release of a full-fledged desktop environment for BSD variants (and Linux distros, for that matter) has been achieved with the release of version 0.8.8 yesterday.
For those of you keeping score at home, the Lumina Desktop Environment — let’s just call it Lumina for short — is a lightweight, XDG-compliant, BSD-licensed desktop environment focusing on getting work done while minimizing system overhead. Specifically designed for PC-BSD and FreeBSD, it has also been ported to many other BSD variants and Linux distros. Lumina is based on the Qt graphical toolkit and the Fluxbox window manager, and uses a small number of X utilities for various tasks.
Judge grants IBM’s request for summary judgement and orders parties to reach dismissal agreement by February 26.
Two SCO stories in a week? As Yogi Berra would say, it’s 2003 all over again. But this time with a big difference. It’s almost over.
I told you on Monday that Judge David Nuffer with the US District Court in Utah had shot down SCO’s attempts to bring an action for Unfair Competition against IBM because the issue is already covered by another breach of contract claim by SCO. On Tuesday, Judge Nuffer issued a ruling on a pair of interference claims which effectively takes whatever winds were left out of SCO’s sails.
Bankrupt SCO, of course, lost their big $1 billion case against IBM long ago when Novell, in a separate case, proved that it, and not SCO, owned the copyrights that SCO was suing over. But SCO’s been struggling to stay alive, hoping to at least win a few bucks from IBM as compensation for all it went through.
Controversial monetization scheme DevShare gets the ax from SourceForge’s new owners.
Late Tuesday evening, SourceForge’s new owners announced that the controversial DevShare program has been ended as a “first order of business.” The announcement came in a blog post by Logan Abbott, a co-owner and the president of SourceForge Media. “As of last week, the DevShare program was completely eliminated,” he wrote.
DevShare was a monetization effort that was developed in-house at SourceForge in 2013 and implemented the same year. It worked by bundling third party proprietary software offers with Windows downloads, and generated controversy almost immediately as major free and open source software projects took exception to the practice and began moving away from the platform.
Gaming on Linux
Although Warner Brothers has abandoned plans for a Linux port of Batman: Arkham Knight, there’s lots of excitement over last week’s day-one release of XCOM 2.
Seemingly out of the blue, Batman: Arkham Knight’s planned Linux and OS X release has been cancelled. In all likelihood, this cancellation stems from the litany of problems with the game’s Windows port, which has been panned by critics and players as glitch plagued and often almost unplayable.
Indian government chooses net neutrality over a Facebook backed scheme that would bring limited free Internet.
On Monday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India shot down Free Basics, a scheme that offers free Internet access to a limited number of websites, which includes selected local news and weather sites, the BBC, Wikipedia and some health sites. The plan is backed by Facebook and six tech companies: Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera Software, Nokia and Qualcomm. Free Basics has been available in India since February, 2015 and remains available in 35 other countries.
The ruling is seen as a victory for net neutrality.
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, SCO rises from the dead
Ha! Guess who’s back in the news? Even as a ghost, SCO is trying to pickpocket IBM’s wallet. Well, it’s not a ghost exactly. It’s brain dead and on life support, but just alive enough to seek yet another day in court.
Judge David Nuffer with the US District Court in Utah gave SCO another day in court last week and returned a judgement against the bankrupt company.
Will Canonical’s outside the box thinking redefine the mobile experience?
We’re finally going to see what Canonical can do with mobile. There’s good reason to be cautiously optimistic, as there are at least three potential game changers for the mobile world in the new Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet due to be released in March.
The BQ Ubuntu phone, the first of which was released about a year ago, has turned out to be only a tease of what is to come, especially here in the U.S. where the phone has been mostly a no show and not available for purchase. Even after it became available in the U.S., the device is a mostly a brick, offering only 2G connectivity and then only on certain carriers. But at least those who have one can walk around with GNU/Linux in their pocket — even if it’s only useful at home, McDonalds, Starbucks or someplace else with Wi-Fi.
FOSS Week in Review
The big Linux conference down in the land of Oz just completed and there are no really big shows on the agenda until Atlanta’s Great Wide Open opens its great doors wide in March. Everybody here in North Carolina, which I call home, is on the road, hanging out in Baghdad-by-the-Bay waiting to see how well the Panthers play in fog and trying to pretend to be old hats at having a pro home team worth the effort of a root or two.
You’d think it would be quiet around here, but it’s not. As always, it’s one thing after another, and as a coworker often often says, I’m getting too old for this. I could tell you stories, but I’m not. What I am going to tell you is the high points of this week in FOSS…
If you’re a Windows user, which most of you reading FOSS Force aren’t, then Microsoft wants to hijack your machine. It seems that the company that’s been spending millions — and has been buying into every free and open source conference it can find and a few it can’t — to get the word out that “Microsoft has changed,” hasn’t. If you happen to be unlucky enough to be using Windows 7, 8 or 8.1, you’re probably beginning to realize this right about now.
Windows users might be well advised to think about unplugging their computers from the Internet when they’re not around to keep an eye on things or they’re likely to wake-up in the morning, or return home from work, to find they’re running Windows 10 instead of whatever version they know and love.