Samba's Tridge clusters code and crowds, Feb 04, 2008

Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell, the man behind the Samba file server and self-confessed TCP packet molester talks with Dahna McConnachie about Samba and some of his other favourite pastimes. He also discusses the recent deal that Microsoft signed to release previously secret code and data to the Samba project. Tridge will be speaking more about clustered Samba at the upcoming linux.conf.au.

Belgian developer Dries Buytaert is on the verge of putting open source CMS (content management system) Drupal officially into business.

Developers of the Python programming language are working concurrently on two upgrades to the core platform, both to arrive in 2008, representatives of Python said Wednesday.

The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Linux project has released version 8 of its operating system with a host of new features aimed at raising the bar over rival Ubuntu.

After downloading and examining Google's Android software development kit yesterday, some software developers gave the platform favorable reviews and praised it as a breath of fresh air for an industry that has long been characterized by closed devices and software.

The Bhutan government liked its first taste of Linux so much that it has come back for seconds, releasing an updated version of its Debian-based operating system that it launched last year.

Hewlett-Packard's decision last month to sell desktop PCs with Linux installed on them in Australia is giving hope to Linux advocates at the Encompass HP user group that a similar system may be on its way in the US.

The market can expect to see by 2008 the fruits of a recently-formed initiative to develop the first globally available Linux-based mobile device platform based on industry-developed standards.

Mozilla's CEO Thursday evening answered charges that the company is dropping development of the Thunderbird e-mail client because of its partnership with Google.

Just days after a security researcher blasted its Java patching system, Sun Microsystems has issued a critical update to the consumer version of its Java software.

IBM still operates the fastest supercomputer in the industry, but rival HP has more of them in operation, according to a closely watched global survey.

ZFS, like the rest of OpenSolaris, has been available under Sun's Common Development and Distribution License for about two years, and Linux has been under Version 2 of the the GNU General Public License since its first release in 1991. The licenses are incompatible

Mark Shuttleworth made news in 2002 when he fulfilled a lifelong ambition and became the first South African into space, paying US$20 million to be a civilian cosmonaut on an eight-day flight aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. In 2004, he founded Ubuntu Linux to bring the operating system to people around the world. He is also the founder of HBD Venture Capital and the non-profit Shuttleworth Foundation.

Mozilla has met a major milestone in its march to Firefox 3.0, developers said yesterday, by adding another chunk of the new Places feature to the alpha set for release late next week.

Using a specially equipped Knoppix Linux 5.5.1 bootable CD, companies looking to see how server virtualization might fit into their IT plans can now run OpenVZ virtualization software instead of having to install and configure the full program.

Sun Microsystems has assigned company developers to work on a Mac OS X version of the open-source OpenOffice.org productivity suite.

The federal government backed IPv6 for e-Business project has yielded an Ubuntu-based IPv6 router that is now being trialled in business.

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The next revision of the Linux kernel is to include a virtualization feature developed by VMware, called VMI.

Novell is developing an open source implementation of Microsoft's identity card technology that is functionally equivalent to the Windows software but will run on both Linux and Macintosh.