03.21.08
Links - Good Friday: Open Source ATI/AMD in 3-D; Vista SP1 Causing Trouble, As Expected
- Open-Source ATI R500 3D Milestone Reached!
- Nouveau Companion 37
- Is Google Android the Next Windows?
- Roger Kay’s Wax Wings of Icarus vs the Flight of Apple
- HTC tight-lipped about Google phone
- A third of all phones “smart” in five years
- Limewire to offer DRM-free music
- Linux Blog: Hacking the iPod for Linux
- Mozilla says Firefox 3 ready for prime-time
- Extend Firefox 3 is Here!
- Vista SP1 downloaders bite back
- Hacker Pleads Guilty to Computer Fraud
- Sequoia attack dogs kill review into e-voting discrepancies
- After a year of open source, Second Life looks ahead
- Fifteen years of NetBSD
- What to Expect from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
- Hardy Heron Alpha 6
- [Compiz Fusion] Freewins
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Robert Millan said,
March 21, 2008 at 7:57 pm
What AMD/ATI have just released is not “open source” (or free software)! It’s a big blob of binary data:
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=mesa/drm.git;a=blob;h=89d2a2414c10878b68e23be8429516adb69e5caa;hb=1021799b6ca6b195ad2d5f002e45668f69c44651;f=shared-core/radeon_cp.c
Please don’t claim this is an “open source milestone”. It simply means their binary firmware is under a more permissive license. Which is good (as in, a step in the right direction), but only maginally.
Roy Schestowitz said,
March 21, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Robert, you’re right. I confused it with another project and the headline didn’t help.