March Welcome

Hey there readers, (both of you) I figured since it’s a Sunday and the first day of the month, I could recap some of the interesting things going on.

Mark Suttleworth released details about the next version of Ubuntu after 9.04, this version (9.10) will be nick named ‘Karmic Koala’. All those people who like ‘Cloud Computing’ should be happy, it’s mentioned a lot. No mention of any exciting projects to my mind though, no breakthroughs. Although new versions of xorg, linux and gnome are always handy.

It looks like Microsoft is starting to sue more in conjunction with software patents. There are concerns this move is an attack against Linux because TomTom uses the Linux kernel and no doubt the FAT patents being used here are provided at the kernel level. All those pundits who argue that this isn’t an attack are mistaken. Every software patent attack is an attack against Free and Open Source Software. How are we expected to have the freedom to modify and distribute if patent holders can sue everyone who comes in contact with our work? We shouldn’t be looking for specific attacks against open source vendors, an attack against one user (no matter how big) is still a threat to everyone else and we must treat it as such.

Obama said he backs going back to the moon, it’s an interesting move. If we can enthuse people with science and make discoveries in the process when weighed against the environmental impact and the cost; then I say let’s do it, it’s about time we went back before the moon moves further away (it moves a few centimeters each year further away from earth).

Darwin’s 200th anniversary of his birth is upon us and artists have been doing some truely wonderful works in celebration. There has also been quite a lot of creationist criticism in every article posted by New Scientist. It seems religious people love to crowd out psudo-scientists on a proto-science magazine websites.

Novell is hitting a rough patch these days, though the business was in trouble before it even acquired SuSE Linux way back when. I know a lot of people who would be happy to see Novell go away and for OpenSuse to be taken fully community based. It’s sad to watch a company, that has produced good work, melt from unfortunate prioritisation.