16 October 2010, 11:59

The H Week - Ubuntu 10.10, OpenJDK, Microsoft & Oracle updates

In the past week, The H reported on the arrival of the latest 10.10 release of Ubuntu, talked to SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin and took an in-depth look at Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit. Oracle and IBM announced that they will collaborate on OpenJDK, Mozilla appointed a new CEO, Nokia presented their roadmap for Qt and Linux enterprise use is on the rise. Microsoft and Oracle released dozens of security updates for their products, US ALDI branches were found to have manipulated card terminals and Canon copiers can now detect security sensitive keywords.

Featured

This week saw the introduction of The H Half-Hour, an occasional series where The H talks to open source's business and community leaders. In the first edition of the Half-Hour the H's editor in chief spoke to SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin. On our security channel, Daniel Bachfeld took an in-depth look at Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET).

Open Source

On Sunday, Canonical released a new edition, version 10.10 of it's Ubuntu Linux distribution, code named "Maverick Meerkat", and Oracle and IBM announced their plans to collaborate on the development of the OpenJDK reference implementation of the Java language.

An update for Google's Android Market arrived on phones running versions of Android older than 2.2, it was reported that Amazon is working on its own store for Android applications and Motorola confirmed that it has started trials of an over-the-air update to Android 2.2 for European Milestone smartphones.

Mozilla launched a new community care programme aimed at helping Firefox users get answers to their questions about the open source browser, Gary Kovacs was appointed as Mozilla's new CEO and Firefox 4 development started to fall behind schedule.

During its Qt Developer Days in Munich this week, Nokia outlined the future development of Qt, the open source GUI framework, and Nokia N900 Project Lead Harri Hakulinen discussed a pending update for the N900 smartphone that would allow it to easily dual-boot MeeGo and Maemo.

The latest Linux Foundation survey showed that Linux is making significant gains in the enterprise market, Creative Commons launched the Public Domain Mark for works free of known copyright, the Free Software Foundation announced the initial criteria of the "Respects Your Freedom" hardware endorsement programme and Oracle emphasised its commitment to OpenOffice.

Open Source Releases

Releases for Komodo, GroundWork Monitor Enterprise, Membase Server, Medibuntu, Parted Magic, Zimbra Desktop, Talend and Red Hat Enterprise MRG, updates for Wine, Transmission, digiKam and VirtualBox, and development releases for Chrome 8 and version 3.2 of Python.

Security

Manipulated card terminals were discovered at US branches of ALDI supermarkets, Webroot published details about a new trojan that forces the Firefox browser to secretly store passwords and send them to a remote server. The Wireshark developers announced that the 1.0.x branch of their cross-platform network protocol analyser had reached its end-of-life and released updates to the 1.2 and 1.4 branches to close a vulnerability that could cause a crash.

Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report showed that botnets are still widely distributed around the globe and the European Network and Information Security Agency warned of further cyberwar attacks on critical infrastructures.

Canon updated its uniFLOW software, adding features that can reportedly prevent machines from working should certain keywords be detected and even send an alert to an administrator that an attempt to copy a restricted document is being made. Facebook introduced a new one-time password feature and two Ruby on Rails updates closed vulnerabilities in the web application framework.

Security Alerts

Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday fixed a record number of vulnerabilities in the company's products and Oracle issued updates for its Java and enterprise software. Multiple vulnerabilities were discovered in the free PDF reader Xpdf, which in turn affected a number of open source products, Opera updated its web browser to close a critical security vulnerability and Research In Motion patched its BlackBerry Enterprise Server software to protect against a PDF issue.

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.

(crve)

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