The White House switches to Open Source

The White House website has now moved over to an Open Source platform to make the system more robust and more secure - and more open. The President's website is now using Red Hat Linux as operating system and the classic combination of Apache web server and MySQL database. The system also uses the Apache Solr search engine and the JavaScript library jQuery. The PHP-based Drupal has been chosen as the CMS.

The White House website has not changed its appearance - all the changes has happened below the surface. The switch to Open Source is not just about technology. In an interview with the Huffington Post it is implied that the administration also wants to send a message of openness and transparency by switching to Open Source.

Source: http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/whitehousegov-goes-drupal

Top 10 Open Source Hall of Famers

Inforworld have been looking at the many thousands of open source projects that exist to find out which ten are the most important ones in the world.

The Open Source Hall of Famers is created in connection with Inforworld's annual designation of the best open source applications for business, published on Monday.

In first place we find Linux, which has been one of the greatest drivers in the promotion of open source. Linux is followed by the GNU tools and compilers in second place.

In the remaining seats you will find projects such as BIND, Apache, Samba, and the three BSD releases. Follow the link to read a detailed explanation of each project location, or see an overview here.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/

Danish Satellite Providers In GPL/LGPL Violation

I live in Denmark where the GPL/LGPL violation case against the satellite and cable boxes from Viasat, Yousee and Stofa is ongoing.

The number of satellite and cable boxes on the Danish market using Linux has significantly increased during the last couple of years. The providers Viasat, Yousee and Stofa all provide HD receivers based on Linux, and all of them fail to provide the source code or make customers aware of the fact that the units are based on GPL licensed software. You can follow the case here."

Open Source people are by nature not a group who want or need to carry out lengthy cases. In other industries, there are different ways to conduct business and tries to push every single dollar out of its licenses, but this is all about free software.

http://duff.dk/viasat

If you read and understand Danish, read the Comon article here...

Source: Slashdot

Eclipse survey results show growth in Linux, open source

Arstechnica writes about the findings of the Eclipse Foundation latest user survey. According to the results, the number of developers using Eclipse on Linux workstations and deploying their applications on Linux servers has increased. The results also show an increase in the number of respondents who say that their companies are contributing to open source software.



Read the whole article at ArsTechnica.com