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This is Topic: News
Following are the News Items published under this Topic.
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 Skype Gives Up Anti-GPL Appeal: Legal Posted by: comforteagle
From the FTW dept.:
...In the end, the court hinted twice that if it was to judge about the case, Skype would not have very high chances. After a short break, Skype decided to revoke their appeals case and accept the previous judgement of the lower court (Landgericht Muenchen I, the decision was in my favor) as the final judgement. This means that the previous court decision is legally binding to Skype, and we have successfully won what has probably been the most lengthy and time consuming case so far.
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GPL vs. Skype Back In Court: Legal Posted by: comforteagle
From the Enforcement dept.:
Tomorrow at 10:30am at the Oberlandesgericht Muenchen (higher regional court of Munich) there will be an oral hearing in the "Welte vs. Skype Technologies SA" case. The hearing is to be held in room E.06.
This case is about a GPL violation of Skype, related to their sales of Wifi Skype phones based on the Linux operating system kernel.
I'm fighting as part of the gpl-violations.org project in enforcing the GPL against Skype since February 2007. Initially Skype didn't respond, we then applied for a preliminary injunction. That injunction was granted by the court in June 2007, but Skype chose to file an appeals case against it.
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Moz Firefox Shipped Malware Attached to Extention: Security Posted by: comforteagle
From the Knowing is Better Than Not dept.:
The Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 contains inserted code to load remote content. This code is the result of a virus infection, but does not contain the virus itself. This usually results in the user seeing unwanted ads, but may be used for more malicious actions.
Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy. While we cannot determine the exact number of compromised downloads, there have been 16,667 total downloads of the Vietnamese language pack since November 2007, so we anticipate the impact on users to be limited.
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Harvard Law votes Yes on open access: Information Posted by: comforteagle
From the The Right Kind dept.:
The faculty of Harvard Law School has unanimously approved a motion for open access: articles will be made freely available in an online repository. With the success of this motion, Harvard Law becomes the first law school to make an institutional commitment to open access to its faculty's scholarly publications.
The Berkman community is tremendously excited by the news, which resonates deeply with the Center's mission and helps set the stage for other academic institutions to establish open access policies. In February, Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences did just that, unanimously passing an open access motion spearheaded by computer science professor and Berkman faculty co-director Stuart Shieber. (In addition, Harvard College Free Culture has launched a free Thesis Repository!) Professor Shieber's work and leadership, along with that of Harvard library director Robert Darnton, paved the way for Berkman's own Terry Fisher and John Palfrey to bring this open access proposal to the Law School.
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FBI Withdraws Unconstitutional National Security Letter After ACLU and EFF Challenge: Information Posted by: comforteagle
From the The Wrong Kind of Open Access dept.:
The FBI has withdrawn an unconstitutional national security letter (NSL) issued to the Internet Archive after a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As the result of a settlement agreement, the FBI withdrew the NSL and agreed to the unsealing of the case, finally allowing the Archive's founder to speak out for the first time about his battle against the record demand.
"The free flow of information is at the heart of every library's work. That's why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI's power to issue NSLs to America's libraries," said Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. "While it's never easy standing up to the government -- particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone -- I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong. I'm grateful that I am able now to talk about what happened to me, so that other libraries can learn how they can fight back from these overreaching demands."
Note: Way to go, EFF!
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Google Starts OS Security Group: Security Posted by: comforteagle
From the Help from Above dept.:
Google is spearheading a volunteer workforce it hopes will become the centralized authority for responding to security issues in open source software.
oCERT, short for the open source computer emergency response team, will aim to remediate security vulnerabilities and exploits in a wide range of open source programs by coordinating communication among publishers. According to Google's security blog, the group "will strive to contact software authors with all security reports and aid in debugging and patching, especially in cases where the author, or the reporter, doesn't have a background in security."
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MySQL Server Staying Open Source, even Backup extensions: Databases Posted by: comforteagle
From the Reversing a Dumb Idea dept.:
As reported yesterday from CommunityOne:
* MySQL Server is and will always remain fully functional and open source,
* so will the MySQL Connectors, and
* so will the main storage engines we ship.
In addition:
* MySQL 6.0’s pending backup functionality will be open source,
* the MyISAM driver for MySQL Backup will be open source, and
* the encryption and compression backup features will be open source,
where the last item is a change of direction from what we were considering before.
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Microsoft Uses Open Source Project To Extend Management To Linux: Microsoft Posted by: comforteagle
From the Interesting Headline dept.:
Management software is one category where Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has never quite measured up to competitors. Redmond hopes to change that with an unlikely weapon: using code from the OpenPegasus project to extend its System Center suite to Linux and Unix environments.
Cross-platform management is the No. 1 customer request for System Center, and using open source code to get there represents recognition by Microsoft that it's far from a Windows-only world. It's also a significant move in the company's bid to be seen as a legitimate top-tier choice for enterprise management.
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Sun Microsystems 3Q loss stuns Wall Street: Tech Posted by: comforteagle
From the Ouch dept.:
Wall Street expected Sun Microsystems Inc.'s global sales base to help it weather the U.S. economic slowdown and turn a profit in the first three months of the year.
Instead, the Santa Clara-based server and software maker stunned investors Thursday by reporting a loss in its third quarter, caused in part by sagging sales to U.S. consumer-oriented companies that are putting off big-ticket spending for better times.
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Unix Group Takes UK Standards Body To Court Over OOXML: Standards Posted by: comforteagle
From the Like Fighting City Hall dept.:
"Halfway through the two-month window of opportunity during which OOXML's ISO standardization can be derailed by a formal objection from a national standards body, the UK Unix Users Group is trying to force the British Standards Institution to do just that. According to the Unix Users Group, the BSI used a flawed decision-making process when they chose to approve OOXML in the ISO vote.
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