The H Roundup for the week ending 20 August

Welcome to The H Roundup, your rapid review of the week with the most read news on The H, the security alerts and open source releases, and the essential feature articles – all in one quick-to-scan news item.

Top News

Mozilla released version 6 of its Firefox web browser and detailed how it plans to improve add-on controls in future releases, the next version of the C++ programming language standard was welcomed with open arms, and Mark Shuttleworth wrote about upcoming features that will be added to the Unity interface in Ubuntu 11.10. The Open Source Observatory and Repository published a report on how a Romanian government tender bans the use of open source software.

• Firefox 6 available, version 8 to offer add-on control
• Firefox 6 arrives officially, but it's hard to tell
• C++11 unanimously approved as a standard
• Romanian government tender prohibits open source
• Ubuntu 11.10's Unity Dash is taking shape
• Mozilla plans to hide Firefox version numbers
• Google buys Motorola for $12.5 billion
• Kaspersky study finds Adobe software is biggest security risk
• Android ecosystem in peril due to GPL?
• First dent in the AES crypto algorithm

Featured Articles

This week Christiane Rütten looked at how to stay secure on the go by using a VPN connection on smartphones, Thorsten Leemhuis detailed the networking changes coming in Linux 3.1, Jürgen Schmidt offered some tips on how osCommerce administrators can protect themselves, and the second episode of series two of CSI:Internet took a look at a PC that seemingly developed a life of its own.

• Mobile VPN: staying secure on the go
• Kernel Log: Coming in 3.1 - Part 1 - Networking
• Rapid relief for osCommerce administrators
• CSI:Internet - Controlled from the beyond

Open Source Releases

• Mozilla Public Licence 2.0 gets a release candidate
• SmartOS brings KVM to the Solaris kernel
• MoonScript shines on Lua
• LXDE edition of Linux Mint 11 arrives
• Financial analytics software OpenGamma 0.9 released
• Rails gets updates for critical issues in all versions
• Parallel programming: Intel Cilk Plus becomes open source project
• Thunderbird 6 takes flight
• Third Blender 2.5 series release brings improved stability
• FlightGear 2.4.0 overhauls weather module
• PHP 5.3.7 update closes security holes
• PyPy 1.6 fully implements Python 2.7.1
• OTRS plugs security hole, launches OtterHub

Security Alerts

• German Federal Office for Information Security warns of hacked online shops
• Rails gets updates for critical issues in all versions
• Firefox, SeaMonkey and Thunderbird updates address critical errors

For everything The H has published in the last week, check out the last seven days of news.

(crve)