Kernel release: 2.6.9-rc2, Sep 13, 2004

2.6.9-rc2 has been released today.
See changelog for full details.

Files added: 343
Files changed: 3660
Files removed: 87

IBM plans to announce Monday that it will contribute some of its speech-recognition software to two open-source software groups.

The move is a tactical step by IBM to accelerate the development of speech applications and to outmaneuver rivals, especially Microsoft, in a market that is expected to grow rapidly in the next few years with increased use in customer-service call centers, cars and elsewhere. To do this, IBM is again using the strategy of placing some of its proprietary software in open-source projects, making it available for other programmers to improve.

International Business Machines Corp on Sunday announced a new computer server using its Power5 microprocessor tuned for the popular Linux operating system, as the No. 1 computer maker aims to broaden the adoption of Linux in broader corporate computing markets.

Software patents are the software project equivalent of land mines: Each design decision carries a risk of stepping on a patent, which can destroy your project.

Developing a large and complex program means combining many ideas, often hundreds or thousands of them. In a country that allows software patents, chances are that some substantial fraction of the ideas in your program will be patented already by various companies. Perhaps hundreds of patents will cover parts of your program. A study in 2004 found almost 300 U.S. patents that covered various parts of a single important program. It is so much work to do such a study that only one has been done.

In true-blue Australian style, a pub in Sydney is the venue for the release this week of a new Linux distribution and an update of the GNOME open source desktop environment.

The new Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution -- code-named "The Warty Warthog" -- is scheduled for release at the Sydney Linux Users Group’s (SLUG) Debian Special Interest Group’s (SIG) Wednesday night meeting at the James Squire Brewery on King St Wharf.

In its campaign to discredit Linux, the main rival to its Windows operating system, Microsoft once published a witty print advertisement in Germany that showed four penguins standing in a row. One looked normal, one had jackrabbit ears, the next had a frog's head and antlers, and the last had the ears of a pig and an elephant's trunk. Microsoft's point: Linux, with its penguin mascot, comes in several varieties. The tagline said: "An open operating system has not only advantages."

Open-source geeks are devout in their belief that software should be free to all, and hold as their icon the Linux alternative to the Microsoft commercial empire. As unpaid volunteers who collaborate to develop open source code, they tend to be anti-corporate types. So they watched with some trepidation as a capitalist giant, IBM, began pouring money into Linux, capped by a $1 billion investment in 2001. Yet in the past year, the corporation known as Big Blue has seen its reputation in the global open-source community shift from suspect sugar daddy to knight in shining armor.

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