The H Week
The H Week started with the Mono debate still ongoing with no resolution in sight, and then out of the blue, Microsoft announced that their patents related to the ECMA standards for C# and CLI would now fall under their Community Promise. Mono got an updated release, ironically because the developers had forgotten to include the patent encumbered ASP.NET framework in the last release (See Update).
Mono news was knocked out of the headlines when Google announced Chrome OS, a browser only operating system. With a solid line up of partners, Chrome OS will be important, but as of now, not that much is actually known about it. The H expects it to play a part in Linux's Routing Around The Desktop. In a related development, Google also released NeatX, an alternative free version of the NX protocol server for speeding up communications with remote desktops.
After many years in development, VLC, the media player, finally reached its version 1.0.0. VLC is a versatile player; if VLC can't play it, there's a good chance it isn't an audio or video file. Making it's first appearance in the open source community, BBC's Glow JavaScript Library, as used by the BBC on their websites, is now released under an open source licence.
In other Linux news, The H Open Kernel Log series followed the latest developments in Linux graphics drivers, minimalist but not minimal CrunchBang Linux 9.04.1 was released and Peek announced it was looking for help putting Linux on their email-only hand held devices.
The H Security week was dominated by one threat which was real and one threat which came to nothing. The news that a DirectShow vulnerability was exposing Windows systems to compromise was followed by a quick fix from Redmond, then questions over when Microsoft knew about the problem and how many holes there actually were. Finally, Microsoft said fixes would be available next week on Patch Tuesday. The other threat appeared with rumours of a vulnerability in OpenSSH on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but the evidence hasn't been convincing with nobody confirming it and alleged attacks appearing to be the work of brute force on passwords.
Meanwhile, researchers slowed Conficker down by telling Conficker-A that queried systems are located in the Ukraine, Google annouced the winners in their competition to test the security of Google Native Client, Microsoft removed the last security updates for the Microsoft JVM and exploit site milw0rm closed.
To see all last week's news see The H's last seven days of news and to keep up with The H, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow honlinenews on Twitter. You can follow The H's own tweeting on Twitter as honline.
Update:A commenter notes that the ASP.NET MVC component is actually under the MS-PL (Microsoft Public Licence] and that comes with a royalty free patent grant.
(djwm)
