Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

When Ubuntu first appeared, the free and open source software (FOSS) community was delighted. Suddenly, here was a distribution with the definite goal of usability, headed by a former space tourist who not only understood computer programming but had the money to throw at problems.

The only objections were that Ubuntu was ripping off Debian, the source of most of its packages. For everyone else, Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical seemed everything FOSS had been waiting for.

German researcher breaks into Amazon Cloud Services

A German Internet security researcher was successful in tapping into Amazon's Cloud Computing Services to crack open WiFi passwords in a fraction of the time and for a tiny percentage of the cost of using his own equipment.

Thomas Roth used custom software running on Amazon's Elastic Compute (EC) Cloud service to break into a WPA-PSK protected network in under 21 minutes. With improvements to his software, he said he could even cut the time down to about 6 minutes.

Intel signs new 6-year agreement with Nvidia

Intel says it will gain access to Nvidia's patents while paying the graphics chip supplier $1.5 billion in licensing fees as part of a new six-year agreement.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang reiterated today that ARM processors are the future. For the future use of Nvidia's technology, Intel will pay Nvidia an aggregate of $1.5 billion in licensing fees payable in five annual installments, beginning Jan. 18, 2011," Nvidia said.

Open source community asks investigation of Novell patent sale

The Linux and open source community is asking a German competition law regulator to fully investigate the acquisition of patents owned by Novell by a consortium led by Microsoft that includes Apple, Oracle and EMC.
U.S.-based open source advocacy body the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has said it was informed that the German Federal Cartel Office was "open to receive comments from the public" about the acquisition, and it has written to the office to air its concerns.

Open Source Initiative chimes in on Novell sale

OSI is primarily known for being the keeper of the flame for the Open Source Definition (OSD) & approving licenses that meet the definition. But members of the self-appointed OSI board, in particular Simon Phipps, have stated they need to nudge OSI into becoming a more active organization with an actual representative membership structure. So far, little has happened, but this is at least a minor step in that direction.

Parted Magic 5.8 Comes with Linux Kernel 2.6.36.2

Parted Magic 5.8 is out and comes with a bunch of updates and some new packages. The latest version is mostly a bug-fixing release and doesn't  add any new features. It comes with a brand-new Linux kernel and the latest version of the Gnome Partition Editor. Parted magic 5.8 also allows the whole ISO picture to be loaded in to RAM.

"After several months of work, a brand new version is prepared for release. lots of bugs have been fixed and lots of core programs have been updated," Patrick Verner announced.