News Bytes
By Michael Conry
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Contents:
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Selected and formatted by Michael Conry
Submitters, send your News Bytes items in
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Legislation and More Legislation
FSFE Establishes Presence in Brussels
Free Software Foundation Europe has
announced the employment of Ciaran O'Riordan
on a full-time basis.
This has been made possible through the success of
FSFE's Fellowship campaign.
Ciaran will work principally in Brussels and will focus on
various issues of concern to the free software community.
An example of this is the question of software patents,
where he will collaborate with
FFII.
Others interested in making a significant contribution to
this work may be interested to learn that
FSFE is
recruiting for an intern.
Linux Links
As reported in LWN,
FSF attorney Eben Moglen discussed the state of the GPL
and software patents in at linux.conf.au. LWN's editor has
called it one of the best talks he's seen in some time.
In a related, but still relevant,
article written in
2003
Moglen explained why
software-controlled radios matter.
A reviewer installs Windows XP, compares it unfavourably to
Linux.
Karsten Gerloff, an intern with Free Software Foundation
Europe,
has been keeping a blog describing the experiences and
surprises he has encountered in his new job.
Bruce Perens
says too many licences deter sharing.
Nokia's Linux forays.
Who's
the most famous Finn? Well, one clue: the person in
question is not a racing driver.
EU pledges EUR660k to understand Open Source.
News in General
Advanced Bash Scripting Guide
A new version of
the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide
has been released. Distributed under a Free licence, and
starting from basics, this guide describes through examples
and practical projects how to get the most from your shell.
Red Hat Open Sources Netscape Directory
Red Hat
has
announced that it is to open source the Netscape
Directory software. Retitled
Red Hat Directory Server, the release of this codebase
is a valuable contribution to the open and free software
community.
LACFREE 2005 in Brazil
UNESCO
in Brazil has
announced
that it will be partnering with a collection of other
governmental and non-governmental Brazilian institutions to
sponsor LACFREE 2005: Latin American and Caribbean
Conference on the Development and Use of Free Software.
This event will take place in Recife and Olinda,
Brazil, from 28th September to 1st October 2005.
FLOSS and Government
A new Free Software tool,
supported by the
UK Local E-democracy National Project
of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister,
has recently been announced.
GroupServer aims to
combine e-mail lists and web forum technologies to allow
diverse individuals and groups to participate online in
shared discussions. The
online forums already using this software
provide a good demonstration of its practical application.
Linux Kernel
The latest incarnation of the stable
2.6.x series of
Linux Kernels has been made available.
Linux 2.6.11.11, released on May 27th, includes a
collection of fixes, constituting further minor changes
to the original 2.6.11 release.
Those tracking the previous stable kernel series, 2.4.x,
also have a new source tarball to play with.
Released on the first of June,
2.4.31, can be downloaded
from the usual mirrors.
Distro News
Debian
As we approach the launch of Debian's next stable release,
the project has been pleased to announce the freeze of
Sarge, the current testing release. What this means is that
packages are now no longer being accepted into testing
without hand-approval by a member of the release team.
This surely points to an imminent new stable release. Certainly
it would appear we can expect this to happen on a timescale
of a week or two,
though as always this final step will wait "until it's
ready".
Linspire
Linspire 5.0,
a desktop-oriented Linux distribution,
has been reviewed (very favourably in fact)
at MSNBC.
Linux From Scratch
The Linux From Scratch project,
has announced that Clearly Open has published in a
hard-copy, handy reference, format the documentation
required to hand-build your own GNU/Linux system. Also
included in the package is a CD containing the sources you
need to get started. Clearly Open Linux From Scratch V.6.0
costs $19.99 and is
available from CheapBytes.
Scientific
Scientific Linux has been
featured
in NewsForge's My Workstation OS articles series.
Software and Product News
LIRC
LIRC, or Linux Infrared Remote Control, has reached
version 0.7.1.
GNU Ghostscript
GNU Ghostscript, version 8.16, has been released.
This release includes bug fixes as well as improved font
rendering, and significantly better PDF generation and
handling.
Libtool
The Libtool Team have announced the release of GNU Libtool
1.5.18. This is largely a bugfix release,
available for immediate download.
Mick is LG's News Bytes Editor.
![[Picture]](../gx/2002/tagbio/conry.jpg)
Originally hailing from Ireland, Michael is currently living in Baden,
Switzerland. There he works with ABB Corporate Research as a
Marie-Curie fellow, developing software for the simulation and design
of electrical power-systems equipment.
Before this, Michael worked as a lecturer in the Department of
Mechanical Engineering, University College Dublin; the same
institution that awarded him his PhD. The topic of this PhD research
was the use of Lamb waves in nondestructive testing. GNU/Linux has
been very useful in his past work, and Michael has a strong interest
in applying free software solutions to other problems in engineering.
Copyright © 2005, Michael Conry. Released under the Open Publication license
unless otherwise noted in the body of the article. Linux Gazette is not
produced, sponsored, or endorsed by its prior host, SSC, Inc.
Published in Issue 115 of Linux Gazette, June 2005
