News (14)

Public debate on GPL 3 draft begins

The Free Software Foundation on Monday released the first public discussion draft of the General Public Licence version 3, shedding light on proposed reforms to the document's patent and digital rights management provisions. Read more »

Torvalds says DRM isn't necessarily bad

Provisions against digital rights management in a draft update to the GPL could undermine computer security, Linus Torvalds said this week in e-mails reflecting the Linux leader's pragmatic philosophy. Read more »

Newest GPL draft leaves Novell in the clear

The Free Software Foundation released the final draft of an updated General Public License late last week, a draft that prohibits future deals similar to the Microsoft-Novell patent pact but lets that one go ahead. Read more »

GPL getting tougher on patent deals

The third draft of General Public License version 3 includes provisions to toughen the license's stance on patent deals between software providers. Read more »

Overhaul of GPL set for public release

A major revamp of the General Public Licence is scheduled for public release next week, a move that's expected to kick off a long and vocal debate over the key foundation of open-source programming. Read more »

Microsoft teams with Linux distributor Xandros

Microsoft and Linux distributor Xandros announced on Monday a technical and legal collaboration, the latest step in the software giant's ongoing program to partner with open-source companies. Read more »

Stallman unbending on software patents

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, debated proposed changes to the General Public License at a public forum but made it clear that provisions to protect users from patent litigations will remain intact. Read more »

New Linux look fuels old debate

Efforts to bring glitzy new graphics to Linux are fuelling an old conflict: Does proprietary software belong in open-source Linux? Read more »

GPL3 welcomed by IBM, Red Hat, Novell, MySQL

Sixteen years after releasing GPL2, Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation launched GPL3 over the weekend. Read more »

Linux, digital rights on collision course

Widespread use of Linux and open-source software is an inevitability, but the new programming technique is running into troubles with the important new technology of digital rights management, Hewlett-Packard's top Linux executive said Tuesday. Read more »

Features (8)

Sprucing up open source's GPL foundation

Modernisation is coming to the General Public License, a legal framework that supports a large part of the free and open-source software movements and that has received sharp criticism from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Read more »

In defence of freedom

The principles are the same, but technology has moved on significantly in the 15 years since the release of GPL 2. Read more »

Special report: Linux.conf 2005

Builder AU will be covering the latest news, interviews and blogs from Linux.conf.au 2005 live in this special report from Canberra. Read more »

Open source vs open standards

Customers and government bodies should focus on products with open standards and realise the pitfalls of open source, argues Scott Petty, Dimension Data Australia COO. Read more »

How to make money from Open source

Ever pondered how companies make money from free and open source development projects? Could you open source your code and still make a profit? Con Zymaris puts forward the case. Read more »

The FUD war against Linux

Open-source activist Bruce Perens uncovers the SCO-Microsoft connection behind a campaign to convince users that trade secrets of Unix have been copied into Linux. Read more »

Why open source is bad for Australia

Open source is actually anti-industry, and protecting it is not in Australia's interests, says one industry observer. Read more »

Using Perl's Finance::Quote to retrieve stock information from the Web

Looking for a way to add stock quotes to your web site? With a little Perl and the Finance::Quote module you can script this up in no time. Read more »

Blog (1)

Samba gets an inside look at Microsoft documentation

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- A complicated third-party arrangement means that the open-source Samba project will be able to make use of proprietary documents describing Microsoft file-sharing software. Read more »

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  • Staff Crying, mooning and leaving

    In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Brendon Chase Sun eye Web developers with Netbeans 6.5

    Despite the recent employment axe hitting Sun the company has pushed out a new release of its Netbeans open source IDE with an eye to appeal more to Web developers. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

  • Renai LeMay BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

    Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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