The H Week - German FO drops Linux, Firefox 4 still delayed & Microsoft's malware malfunction
From the dropping of Linux by the German Foreign Office to what went wrong at Nokia; from the latest moves on government open source to the latest delays on Firefox; from the latest releases to the controversial issues, they are all part of The H week...
Features
This week on The H, Oliver Diedrich took a look at the history behind the dropping of Linux by the German Foreign Office, Richard Hillesley looked at Nokia's history with open source and Thorsten Leemhuis's Kernel Log looked at the networking support in the coming Linux 2.6.38. The H also published March's community calendar of open source related events in the UK.
- Background: German Foreign Office drops Linux
- Nokia and open source – a trial by fire
- Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.38 (Part 3) - Network drivers and infrastructure
- The H Community Calendar - March 2011
Open Source
A good week for open source and open standards in the UK public sector as the Cabinet Office defined open standards as royalty free, the Land Registry deployed Talend's open source data management and the NHS was encouraged to go open.
- UK Government defines open standards as royalty free
- Land Registry deploys open source data management
- Open source and standards encouraged in the NHS
The latest version of Python, 3.2, arrived along with new releases of FreeBSD and WordPress, but Firefox 4 continued to be delayed.
- Python 3.2 arrives with a better global interpreter lock
- FreeBSD 8.2 and 7.4 released
- WordPress 3.1 released
- Firefox 4 beta 12 delayed
The Document Foundation welcomed Canonical's work with LibreOffice and Unity but the Banshee developers were less impressed with Canonical taking a cut of its GNOME Foundation donations. The next Fedora will include the Sqlninja hacking tool, but the alpha for that Fedora release has been delayed. An open source driver for the tricky Intel GMA500 / Poulsbo chip-set appeared.
- The Document Foundation welcomes Canonical contribution
- Canonical to leave Banshee Amazon store enabled
- Fedora to include hacking tool Sqlninja after all
- Fedora 15 alpha delayed - Btrfs may be default in 16
- Rudimentary open source driver for Intel's GMA500/Poulsbo
Novell's shareholders let the sale of the company to AttachMate go ahead but the patent sale is still delayed, Acer released a monitor that can run as a stand alone Chrome web browser and the class action against Sony and Linux on the PS3 stumbled.
- Novell shareholders approve sale of company
- Acer Monitor doubles as all-in-one Chrome browsing PC
- Action against Sony for blocking Linux on the PS3 broadly dismissed
Google's attempt to obtain summary judgement on the copyright portion of the Oracle vs Google Android case was denied, but at least Google eliminated the confusion about version 2.4 (there isn't one). Android 2.3.3 appears to have WebM support and the SDK for Android 3.0 was finalised. Meanwhile, a developer ported Nokia's Qt toolkit to the Android platform.
- Google must continue to fight Oracle's copyright claims
- Version confusion on Google's Android resolved
- WebM/VP8 support appears in Android 2.3.3
- SDK for Android 3.0 is now ready
- Qt implementation for Android introduced
Open Source Releases
This week there were updates for VirtualBox, Fluxbox, Redis, LibreOffice and Cappuccino, while Ning Galaxy, a deployment system, made its debut as open source. Google's Native Client advanced, a new HTML5 framework appeared, Java 7 got a developer preview and the first beta of GNOME 3.0 turned up.
- VirtualBox 4.0.4 supports Ubuntu 11.04 alpha guests
- Fluxbox X window manager version 1.3 released
- Final version of optimised Redis released
- Ning Galaxy deployment management system open sourced
- LibreOffice 3.3.1 now available
- Cappuccino 0.9 released with key/value bindings
Development
- Google's Native Client API almost complete
- The-M-Project: new HTML5 Framework for Mobile Apps
- Java 7 on schedule: Oracle releases JDK 7 developer preview
- GNOME 3.0's first beta makes an appearance
Security
The fallout from Anonymous vs HBGary continued as fake identity projects were found, social networks got a site which listed zero day attacks, the police were called after vandals got into a UK universities medical database and researchers reported on the difficulty of effectively wiping a flash drive.
- Security firm proposes next-generation fake identities for PR
- Security vulnerabilities galore in social networks
- Police called after obscene mails sent from university medical database
- Many SSDs and USB flash drives can't be securely wiped
Microsoft released Service Pack one for Windows 7, mTAN attacking banking trojans turned up on Windows Mobile and Microsoft's submission on protection from web tracking was accepted by the W3C.
- Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 available for download
- Online banking trojan attacks Windows Mobile smartphones
- Microsoft's "Web Tracking Protection" submission accepted by the W3C
Security Alerts
The DNS application Bind was found to be vulnerable to a denial of service and Microsoft's Malware engine allowed local attackers to raise their privileges.
(djwm)