Most security scare stories are about potential problems. This was a real, successful break-in at the open source movement's most high-profile brand. So here's the big question: Why did it take Red Hat a week to acknowledge the problem? Because I can imagine the reaction if Microsoft did that.

(Photo by Eric Skiff)

Unfortunately, it doesn't have a suspend-and-resume capability, which Stallman called "somewhat inconvenient." Nor does the battery charge while it's running, which he called "an annoyance."

"But it's worth it to you," I said.

"For freedom," he responded, "I will make a sacrifice."

I'm no fan of Microsoft's software or business practices, but turning to a machine wholly developed in China doesn't exactly scream "freedom" to me, either. CEO Steve Ballmer may be a tyrant, but even he bows to Paramount Leader Hu Jintao.

European consortium releases Open Source quality assessment platform

* Submitted by: Sirius
* Friday, 11 July 2008

The European Commission supported Software Quality Observatory for Open Source Software (SQO-OSS) project has announced the release of its software quality checking platform, Alitheia Core.

Developed by a consortium of European businesses, academics and open source software projects, the new application will analyse the product quality of open source software projects and assess the true potential of the development communities around them.

A demonstration of the system is available at the Alitheia Core demo server, where users will be able to see the system as run against a selection of different open source software projects.

As the Alitheia Core matures it will allow open source software projects to deploy the system for themselves to monitor their own code quality.

Alitheia Core's current features include:
- System administration allowing the installation of new project data
- Metrics: lines of code count, lines of comments count and a cross-language metrics tool
- A web-based user interface for the display of calculation results

This release should be considered a usable alpha release; whilst core functionality is provided, performance issues remain and customisation is currently disabled. The Alitheia Core is released under the 2-clause BSD license.

The Alitheia Core source code may be obtained from the project's SVN server or a pre-compiled package of the source can be obtained. Distribution-specific packages for Linux users will be available for Alitheia Core in forthcoming releases.

The SQO-OSS project is always looking for new contributors. Currently its focus is on extending the portfolio of metric plug-ins available to the system. All contributions (bug reports/fixes, code, etc.) are all gratefully received.

Professor Diomidis Spinellis, Project Coordinator said: “This release opens up SQO-OSS to the scrutiny of the open source software developers and users community. It demonstrates SQO-OSS's commitment to the deployment of a practical working system.”

NOTES TO THE EDITOR

ABOUT SQO-OSS
SQO-OSS is a community-based project dedicated to checking the quality of Free and Open Source software and making its data publicly available. It's founding partners are the Athens University of Economics and Business, the Aristotle University Of Thessalniki, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, KDE e.V., ProSyst Software GMBH and Sirius Corporation plc. For more information visit the SQO-OSS community website.

CONTACT
For further information please contact:
- Diomidis Spinellis, Project Coordinator, dds@aueb.gr
- Giorgos Gousios, Project Manager, gousiosg@aueb.gr
- Tom Callway, Project Dissemination, +44 870 608 0063

Scott, Scott, Scott: Negroponte has never been in the business of doing anything. His core competency is talking. The sooner you learn this, the happier you'll be at One Laptop Per Child. Negroponte's goals with One Laptop Per Child are admirable and visionary. As with many visionaries, his contact with reality is infrequent and tenuous. The best way to get OLPC's hardware and software built: Send Negroponte on another worldwide goodwill tour, keeping him as far from the labs as possible.

Schmidt said NASA should seek more collaboration with other government agencies as well as the private sector. He asked for more programs like NASA's Centennial Challenge, the program which awarded a Maine engineer $200,000 last year for designing a new space glove. And Schmidt said he's glad NASA allows Google to use some of its satellite imagery for Google Earth.

It's all good advice, but let's hope NASA remembers that unlike Google's OpenSocial and Android, it takes more than hype to launch a rocket. (Photo by Thorne Enterprises)

Hey, Jordan! Your tipster's accurate. We played a game of cat and mouse with a "security enthusiast" from Europe yesterday. :) No harm done, though, and everything's running smoothly.

"We Are All Actors" already tried to inject social networks into the political process with big Valley names like Brad Fitzpatrick, Jay Adelson, and Jimmy Wales — with predictably pathetic results. At least that effort focused on one campaign issue, budget reform, and Fitzpatrick's bar tab alone probably exceeded the mere $170 Goffman has raised from his supporters.

Does Goffman seriously believe a political movement based on a software development methodology that can't garner 5 percent of the operating system market can be a more viable force than the other "sad and hopeless alterna-candidates"? Or is he merely trying to generate some attention for his new social network Mondo Globo which promotes his other Web content at 10 Zen Monkeys, the RU Sirius show, Neofiles, and other locations? Gratuitous self-promotion disguised as activism is a cynical enterprise we could embrace, if Goffman's execution of it weren't as sad and hopeless as his political ambitions. (Photo by Mark Ismay)

Web-based email is, more and more, what most people use. Firefox might as well be people's email software; we can get by without special email software, but not without a Web browser. Thunderbird, naturally, drew a much smaller base of volunteer coders. And, more importantly, while Firefox makes money by directing users to Google and Yahoo's search engines, Thunderbird has no easily tapped source of revenues. While setting up Thunderbird with its own company may force Ascher — now on his own — to address these realities, it does nothing, by itself to change them.

If you're truly looking to save your cash, Dell's entry-level Windows model is a third cheaper than the Penguinmobile — $499 versus $774. Its Windows Vista Basic is hardly the "stripped-down" operating system Times writer Larry Magid claims — see this checklist. It'll run iTunes. It'll play DVDs without choking, unlike Magid's Ubuntu test unit. Spring for the cheaper laptop and your savings will more than cover an upgrade to Vista Home Premium ($30), a gigabyte of RAM ($50), a legal copy of Office 2007 ($149), and a double cappuccino for me as a reward for saving you from this sort of alterna-chic foolishness.

While Microsoft has been known to try just about every tactic in the book to undermine the competition, this paranoid theory mischaracterizes the open source community's beloved Mono. True, Mono, in theory, weakens Windows. But only in theory. In practice, Mono is not a threat to Microsoft — rather, it's spread the popularity of .Net far beyond Microsoft's Windows-developer base, and thereby tied the open-source developers who use it to Microsoft's software-development roadmap.

No, rather than a devious and elaborate ploy concocted in Microsoft's legal department, the right way to see Microsoft's Shared Source program is as a feeble attempt to mask its inability to move its business to the open-source model, as rivals IBM, Sun, Novell, Adobe, and Apple have done to varying extents. Sure, Microsoft could start suing developers — with the result, of course, that they'd simply drop .Net and move to other development tools untouched by Microsoft's hands. (Photo by BotheredByBees)

–Video by Sarah Meyers

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Prezzish, and Look Shiny. Wanna fight?