lisah writes: Linux.com's Robin 'Roblimo' Miller will moderate a live debate Wednesday, December 5, between the GNOME Foundation's press officer Jeff Waugh and fair competition advocate Roy Schestowitz. Both have strong — and opposing — points of view regarding GNOME's involvement with Microsoft's OOXML standard and vehemently defend their positions, so getting them together in the same virtual room ought to prove quite interesting.
Although the broadcast will be archived as a podcast and available for free download, you can listen live as it's recorded and also call in to participate and ask questions.
Anastasia Beaverhousen writes: In what many will consider either a total change of heart (or complete BS), Forbes columnist Dan Lyons was caught on video at a recent conference professing his undying love for Linux. The words, "pry it out of my hands at gunpoint" were even used at one point. Oh, and he also let the world know that he isn't sleeping with Stallman. We can all exhale now.
lisah writes: "Though it was reported yesterday that Monsoon Multimedia and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) had reached an agreement to settle their GPL differences out of court, SFLC's legal director Daniel Ravicher confirmed to Linux.com that they are only at the discussion phase of being able to work things out. Though the SFLC says letters to Monsoon requesting that they stop unlawfully distributing BusyBox code went unanswered, Monsoon chairman and COO Graham Radstone says the company, 'always intended to comply with all open source software license requirements.'"
lisah writes: Linux users waited patiently for Google to put together a desktop search app, while Windows and Mac users have been happily indexing their system files for a long time. Now that it's available, Google Desktop for Linux is kind of a yawn. It's a bit slow, takes forever to perform an initial index, and doesn't come with the Gadgets and Plugins that are available for other operating systems. As you'd expect, it does do a great job of searching your files though. Oh yeah, and then there's the surprise you get when you turn on 'Advanced Features' . It's not for extra cool options or features, it means you give Google permission to collect 'non-personal' information from your computer.
lisah writes: Though Linus Torvalds isn't exactly tripping over himself to endorse the GPLv3 draft, he continues to warm up to it little by little and says the newest version is 'a hell of a lot better than the disaster that were the earlier drafts.'
lisah writes: "In a memorandum handed down from Department of the Navy CIO John Carey this week, the Navy is now mandated to consider open source solutions when making new software acquisitions. According John Weathersby, executive director of the Open Source Software Institute, this is the first in a series of documents that will also address 'development and distribution issues regarding open source within Navy IT environments.'"
lisah writes: "Netscape released a beta version of Navigator 9 today that includes several new components while giving some old ones the boot. This release will no longer ship with mail or composer but does have URL correction, a pre-populated RSS feed menu, and a neat clipboard in the browser's sidebar that will hold links to websites you want to visit again but not necessarily bookmark."
lisah writes: "After keeping users waiting for nearly six years, Emacs 22 has been released and includes a bunch of updates and some new modes as well. In addition to support for GTK+ and a graphical interface to the GNU Debugger, 'this release includes build support for Linux on AMD64, S/390, and Tensilica Xtensa machines, FreeBSD/Alpha, Cygwin, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9 with Carbon support. The Leim package is now part of GNU Emacs, so users will be able to get input support for Chinese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and other languages without downloading a separate package. New translations of the Emacs tutorial are also available in Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Italian, French, and Russian.'"
lisah writes: "Gentoo's recently released version 2007.0 gets a fair-to-middling review from Linux.com. Installation was a headache from the live CD and DVD versions, but the Gentoo Linux Installer saved the day and gets high marks for being 'far better than it's predecessor.' The user experience is also mixed — on the one hand, the distribution boots quickly, has great hardware support, and new, user-friendly artwork. On the other hand, 'for some strange reason, the installed Gentoo doesn't allow normal users to run any administrative applications.' Overall, it doesn't look like Gentoo offers any compelling reasons to switch to 'Secret Sauce' if they're happy with their current, uh, flavor."
lisah writes: "While the One Laptop Per Child project pulled itself together and shipped its first Beta machines, Intel was busy developing its own version, the Classmate PC. Inevitable comparisons will be made between the two (especially since OLPC's chairman Nicholas Negroponte called Intel's move "predatory"), so Linux.com's Tina Gasperson and her kids took a Classmate PC for a test run to see how it does in the real world. The upshot? Good battery life, easy to use, and great with ketchup."