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OPINION

FSF’s Star Turn in the Android FUDathon, Part 4

"Strike while the iron is hot" -- and the usual suspects have made Android licensing a hot issue. However, the title of the FSF article, "Android GPLv2 termination worries -- one more reason to upgrade to GPLv3," gives the game away. This is about politics, not licensing. About pushing a specific ...

OPINION

FSF’s Star Turn in the Android FUDathon, Part 3

Where did this "you are permanently barred from distributing" stuff originate? In digging around, I found a post titled "A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance" at the Software Freedom Law Center dated August 26, 2008, written by the team of Bradley M. Kuhn, Aaron Williamson and Karen M. Sandler. It st...

LINUX PICKS AND PANS

Pybackup Makes Saving and Restoring Easy as Pie

Sure, we all know that making regular file backups is an essential survival task for frustration-free computing. But backing up data and backing up computer systemfiles are not entirely the same things. Doing one without the other is like having an uninterrupted power supply that's not connected. Fo...

Google’s Java Jam

Sometimes things that are supposedly free for the taking -- such as open source software -- can ultimately cost a wad of dough from the corporate coffers. That could well be the lesson Google learns from a lawsuit Oracle filed last year alleging that Google violated its intellectual property as well...

EXPERT ADVICE

Wringing More Value From Enterprise Cloud Computing With Open Source

You're an IT manager responsible for keeping your infrastructure up and running while squeezing every bit of value from your budget. You're interested in the latest trends and have done your research. Many enterprises rely on their existing vendors for guidance on these trends and probably recommend...

Who Are the FOSS Police?

More than 70 percent of mobile applications containing open source code fail to comply with basic open source license requirements, OpenLogic claims. The company scanned compiled binaries and source code where available for the top paid and free Android and iOS apps in the business and consumer sect...

Why RHEL 6 Keeps Its Patches Under Its Hat

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0, which was released last November, packs a hidden punch: The latest version of the operating system pre-bundles patches with the kernel. The disguised fixes have shaken up some controversy, but Red Hat contends that the move is aimed at making it more difficult for rival...

Version Vexations: Keeping Big Linux Operations on the Same Page

Modern data centers with large number of Linux servers and heavy use of virtualization often don't have the tools they need to handle system version control and modeling. "Twenty years ago, most companies had tens of servers to manage," said Erik Troan, founder and chief technology officer of rPath....

LINUX PICKS AND PANS

Linux Video Editing Apps: The Simple, the Slick and the Stumbly

It used to be that only hard-core film buffs carried video recording equipment on vacations. Unless your job required working with film, film editing software was not on most computer users' must-have list of tools. Maybe that is why until recently, few really useful film editing apps existed for th...

LINUX PICKS AND PANS

3 Free Personal Finance Apps You Can Take to the Bank

The Linux platform has several really good financial applications that are more than capable of handling both personal and small-business accounting operations. GnuCash, HomeBank and Skrooge are among the best financial apps I've found for Linux. In terns of features and performance, all three are a...

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