Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder, Jun 26, 2007

There was a time when he was known as a cantankerous but visionary open source programmer. His work was funded by the government; he was widely credited (and sometimes reviled) for rethinking the structure of the Linux operating system. Now he is known as prisoner BFP563.

There's no denying that Linux is a popular operating system and is genuinely seen by many as a viable alternative to Microsoft's market domination.

There's been a lot of legal saber rattling in and about the Linux world in recent weeks, including dire warnings from Microsoft's lawyers that open-source software violates patents held by the software giant and fears that the Free Software Foundation might punish Novell for its controversial patent deal with Microsoft. But so far the response from the solution provider community has been more of a collective shrug.

Google told the judge overseeing the 2002 consent decree that even though Microsoft has agreed to modify Vista to address the concerns, "more may need to be done to provide a truly unbiased choice of desktop search products."

Back in January I wrote a review of Vector Linux 5.8 Standard. The fact that as I write this, over five months later, that review is still in the O’Reillynet Blogs Hot 25 says a lot about just how much interest there is in this up and coming Canadian distribution, a user friendly derivative of Slackware.

Although Linux geeks are not often found on the sports field, this week Linux computers will help in a fund raiser to donate a million soccer balls to improve children's lives through sport.

The Green Party is accusing the Berlin city government of lacking a coherent IT strategy and thus not being in a position to adequately judge the merits of open source software.

Developers of Moonlight, a Linux client version of Microsoft's new Silverlight multimedia technology, are closing in on feature-completeness, a leader of the project said on Monday.

For many years, the term "open source" has been subject to abuse. Despite efforts by the OSI (Open Source Initiative) to trademark the phrase, the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) claimed the phrase was too generic to be trademarked, thereby weakening efforts to guard against its improper usage, according to Danese Cooper, secretary and treasurer of the OSI board.

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