SFLC has filed a new BusyBox case against Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and 11 other companies.
Oracle Makes Commitments about MySQL
To fend off the European Commission’s concerns about the Sun/MySQL acquisition, Oracle has made a public commitment to maintain certain aspects of the MySQL open source business offering. They include: continuing to make available Storage Engine APIs, a pledge not to assert that third party vendor’s implementations of storage engines must be released under the GPL (“A commercial license will not be required by Oracle from third party storage engine vendors in order to implement the application programming interfaces available as part of MySQL’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture.”), and continuing to “enhance MySQL and make subsequent versions of MySQL, including Version 6, available under the GPL.” Oracle also pledged to increase spending on MySQL research and development.
This is an interesting approach. It also is an interesting example of public messaging about not reserving the right to make aggressive stands on GPL interpretation or enforcement.
US Air Force uses Linux-based PS3s to Create Supercomputer
The Economist’s lastest issue contains an interesting article about an Air Force acquisition of PlayStation 3’s. The PS3s are beign re-purposed to build a supercomputer, and part of the attraction is the customizable Linux platform.
French Army Adopts Thunderbird
Here is an article that is somewhat informative notwithstanding the cheesy military metaphors.
Oracle/Sun/MySQL Antitrust Case Draws More Public Comment
Several different sources weighed in over this case recently, including Eben Moglen as reported in the Wall Street Journal, and open source users as surveyed by 451 Research and reported in Matthew Aslett’s blog.
Artifex Sues Palm over MuPDF
Artifex sued Palm in a case filed last week. This involved different software from the subject of the Artifex v. Premier Elections Systems case. Artifex announced the suit in a press release.
DoC Considers Drupal Open Source Deployment
The US Department of Commerce is considering moving to Drupal. It issued a Request for Information soliciting input from vendors on the capabilities of Drupal. An RFI solicits information as opposed to bids (which are solicited in an RFP).
