Open Source Initiative (OSI) President Michael Tiemann has responded to queries about the organization’s decision to “rush through” approval for a new badgerware license by saying that the OSI board did its best for “the community.”

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JGraph Layout Pro is a high performance graph
layout library for JGraph that automatically
positions your graph, diagram, or network in a
visually pleasing manner. Layout Pro provides
flexibility and a simple design, enabling you to
use circular, tree, force-directed, and
hierarchical layouts with ease. Example uses are
organisational charts, workflow and process
diagrams, call charts, network diagrams, UML
tools, and more. It comes with its own
documentation and an example applet.

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License: Other/Proprietary License with Source

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Changes:
This release updates the double buffering
functionality to the JGraph 5.10 API. This reduces
garbage collection frequency and enables hardware
acceleration on graphics cards to be better
utilized.

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Scmbug integrates software configuration
management (SCM) with bug-tracking. It aims to
solve the integration problem once and for all. It
will glue any source code version control system
(such as CVS/CVSNT, Subversion, and Git) with any
bug tracking system (such as Bugzilla, Mantis,
Request Tracker, Test Director).

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License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

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Changes:
This release introduces support for Bugzilla 3.0,
VDD Generator fixes for Windows, and the ability
to consolidate log messages entered in CVS when
committing changes spreading multiple directories
into a single integration log message.

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Xphile is a radiology teaching library allowing
browsing by system, pathology, and region as well
as export to Keynote and MIRC sites. It requires
Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

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License: GNU General Public License v3

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Changes:
This version adds image cropping and improves the
performance of the geometric transformations.

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Nuxeo EP (Enterprise Platform) is the server-side, Java EE-based part
of the Nuxeo Enterprise Content Management platform. It provides a
framework and set of components to address document management and
collaboration needs, including metadata/taxonomies, versioning, lifecyle
management, workflow, relations, searching, reporting, transformation,
auditing, and retention. Its flexible extension system, based on OSGi,
allows developers to quickly configure and extend the platform by
creating new components. Its default Web user interface, based on the
JSF standard, uses AJAX to create a pleasant user experience. It can
also be accessed by a rich client interface through the use of Web
services, for instance using the Eclipse-based Nuxeo RCP rich client
platform.

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License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

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Changes:
The platform can now be deployed on several
servers safely. A RESTful API has been added.
Content can now be imported and exported using an
XML format. A new URL scheme has been implemented.

Halvar Flake was scheduled to teach a class on computer security entitled Analyzing Software for Security Vulnerabilities today and tomorrow at Blackhat Training in Las Vegas. Instead, US customs officials cross-examined him for nearly five hours, then decided not to allow him into the country and put him on a plane back to Germany.

I have decided most critics of Wikipedia miss the point.

They focus on the wiki aspect, the idea that many contributors can offer their input, and the chance that some of that input is wrong.

What they are missing is the pedia part. That is, anyone can start their own compilation of stuff using these open source tools, and self-select the group’s internal reality, for display to the world.

The best example of this is Conservapedia. It’s a version of the same software, for conservatives. I know there are people who take it seriously. I personally find it unintentionally hilarious.

Or take Disapedia. (This piece of Nazi pro-euthenasia propaganda is currently on the site’s main page.) This is a version of the software for people with disabilities. A lot of great insight, a lot of information, but also, like Conservapedia, a direct view into the collective worldview of the people in the community.

It goes on and on. There are pedia sites of all types and a site called Pedia.Com which tries to link to them all (while missing the two I’ve just mentioned).

The point of the pedia phenomenon is that self-organizing groups create their own collective wisdom, and the rest of us then get to see into the minds of those writers and editors.

Just as open source software offers a wide range of attitudes, from the near-proprietary to the entirely altruistic, so it is increasingly with content, thanks to the pedia phenomenon.

Whether all of that content is “right” or “wrong,” it’s out there and organized and searchable. You can enter, not just someone else’s mind as with a blog, but a whole group of minds, a collective consciousness that may amaze you, amuse you, or even horrify you.

If you need a software app that is not included or supported in the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS distribution, Red Hat’s new Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository might be an excellent place to go fishing.

The last time I wrote about the OSI it was to praise the “peace deal” it made on the licensing front.

The question today is, can Microsoft fit inside that deal?

At the same OSCON conference where OSI approved its first “attribution” license, Microsoft “good cop” Bill Hilf (left) said last week the company will submit its “shared source” licenses for OSI approval.

Online, Jay Rosenberg elaborated, calling this the culmination of a three-year process,  beginning with Big Green’s first Sourceforge code posting.

BBC writer Bill Thompson called these “new” licenses,  but they are not new at all. What’s new is the OSI’s willingness to accept these higher points on the OSI incline, and Microsoft’s willingness to accept the OSI’s process.

In accepting these, and the attribution licenses, you can argue the OSI is running away from its challenge a year ago to cut the number of approved licenses.

But OSI President Michael Tiemann feels it’s better to have all valid licenses inside the OSI tent, where both market and community forces can sort them out.

I agree. As a member of the open source community, you have the power. Community contributions rise as projects go down the incline, toward the GPL. That gravity will continue to pull people down, even Microsoft. But it will take time to work.

Market forces work best in conditions of peace.

Linux.com reviews
GeeXBox. “GeeXBoX, a small media center Linux live CD distribution,
can run from any small device, such as a USB disk or a wallet CD-R, and can
play both disk-based media like DVDs and online media like Icecast
streams. The project has been in development for several years and has just
released version 1.1. I fed it every kind of media file I could lay my
hands on — Ogg, MP3, MP4, AVI, DVDs, VCDs, and their ripped versions –
and it played them all without a hiccup. But what makes GeeXBoX a fantastic
distribution is its ease of use and malleability.”