Bell, SuperMicro Sued Over GPL, Jun 18, 2008

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed two more copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of the developers of the Linux-based BusyBox utility suite.

Former Gentoo developer Bryan Østergaard recently announced a new linux distribution aptly named Exherbo.

Several months ago a workgroup of the W3C decided to include Ogg/Theora+Vorbis as the recommended baseline video codec standard for HTML5, against Apple's aggressive protest. Now, Nokia seems to be seeking a reversal of that decision:

"Today I visited PC World (London, UK) because my 5-month-old laptop has developed a manufacturing fault: the hinge to the display has started to crack the plastic casing. Anyone in the know will know that this is due to the joint inside, and it means that in time the screen will separate from the keyboard. Repair was refused, because I have Gentoo Linux on my laptop, replacing the Windows Vista that was pre-installed."

"A little while ago members of the Debian project voted to make changes to the Social Contract. As previously reported on Slashdot, the end result looked likely to be a delay in the release of Sarge, the next Stable edition of Debian, until 2005. But on Saturday Debian developers voted to postpone the changes until after Sarge releases, effectively affirming that the changes need to be made but making a pragmatic decision to not let the next release be delayed as a result. The official voting page doesn't show the result yet, but it's been semi-officially announced."

"The BitKeeper to CVS gateway was apparently hacked in an attempt to add a root exploit back door to the Linux kernel, according to the linux-kernel archive. The change was in the file kernel/exit.c and changed the user ID of a process to root under the guise of checking the validity of some flags. The core Linux BitKeeper kernel repository was not at risk, and in fact it was the BitKeeper CVS export scripts that detected the unauthorized modifications to CVS. The changes were falsely attributed in CVS to long-time Linux developer davem (David Miller). Users of the BKCVS repository should resync their trees to remove the offending code if they had replicated it since yesterday."

Webmaster's note: We may post a lot of news about SCO and other things, but stories like this one are the most important - the ones about how Linux can be used to improve the quality of people's lives - and the dedicated members of the Linux community who develop these applications

Skipper 1.6.0 is a GPLed Linux accessibility suite for the severely physically disabled - cerebral palsy, road traffic accidents, motor neuron disease, Parkinsons etc. It takes input from multiple devices like graphics tablets and microswitches connected directly to the printer port, does input switching and processing (configured graphically like modular synthesisers), and provides clever genetically annealed menu systems for application and desktop control. With just one detectable click, people can have full Web and email access - in fact the whole Linux desktop - in complete privacy.