LWN.net

Those who are interested in the Openmoko phone may want to look at this lengthy look forward by founder Sean Moss-Pultz. "Nobody will doubt the value of openness for the mobile industry anymore. This seems like good news at first glance. But what openness are they talking about? Look around and you'll find it's pretty different than what we've been talking about. Yes, the very definition of openness is changing. This troubles me because we cannot influence markets with our words - only our products. And the quality of our products is not world class yet. The bar has been seriously raised. Time is running out. We need to find a way to lead again. I don't believe playing catch up will work. Something fundamental needs to change."

Elijah Newren has posted a lengthy analysis of the recently-concluded developer survey on distributed version control systems. "It looks like there's a strong preference in the community toward switching, and that git has a strong lead in preference among the community, followed by svn, then bzr, then mercurial."

The San Francisco Chronicle looks at another entry into the Linux-based mobile phone space. Palm is expected to unveil "Nova" as a replacement for Palm OS on both phones and mobile internet devices. "Palm is poised to make what some analysts are calling its last stand at this week's Consumer Electronics Show, where it is expected to introduce its long-awaited Linux-based operating system. [...] Code-named Nova, it will power a new generation of smart phones and potentially other devices. The move is Palm's best chance to get back into the smart phone market, which it pioneered with its Treo handsets and later ceded to companies such as BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion and Apple with its iPhone."

TechRadar takes a look at personal finance applications for Linux. The article looks at five free applications (GnuCash, KMyMoney, Buddi, Grisbi, and JGnash) as well as the Moneydance 2008 proprietary solution. "This kind of software is all about the data; getting it in, getting it out and doing useful things with it. In terms of getting data into the package, there are three things we need. We want software that makes it easy to add items to the spending side because you'll be less likely to update your ledger if doing so proves annoyingly difficult. [...] We want filters that will import transaction data downloaded from our bank account and allow easy reconciliation between local and remote records. Finally, we want to be able to set up periodic transactions that can be added to the ledger at certain points each month to deal with things such as mortgage payments."

The results of the Lenny general resolution vote for Debian are in. The project has chosen to "Assume blobs comply with GPL unless proven otherwise" which will allow the Lenny (5.0) release to proceed. The basic problem is one that recurs each time a release is imminent in that kernel firmware does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We looked at this contentious vote a few weeks back; since that time project secretary Manoj Srivastava has resigned and Bdale Garbee has stepped in as acting secretary. It would appear that the outcome was decided shortly after the vote ended on December 27, but we somehow missed the announcement until now.

Ryan Paul reflects on the best of 2008. "The past year brought some exciting advancements for the Linux operating system and open source software. Open technology continues to become more pervasive and the Linux kernel is now widely used in a multitude of mainstream products ranging from set-top boxes to mobile phones. With 2008 coming to a close, we wanted to take a minute to look at some events of significance to the open source software community."

The Inquirer looks at Google's Android OS on the netbook. "Matthäus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann who run an outfit called Mobile-facts claim that it took them just four hours to compile Android so that it works on a Asus EEEPC 1000H."

Fedora has updated F10: perl (directory traversal).

Slackware has updated thunderbird (multiple vulnerabilities).

The January edition of Linux Gazette is out. Articles include Gnuplot in Action, by Philipp K. Janert; Joey's Notes: Sendmail and Dovecot e-mail on RHEL 5, by Joey Prestia; Our monthly column of basic Linux advice and education; Using Hyperestraier to search your stuff, by Karl Vogel; Getting Started with the Exim Mail Server, by Neil Youngman; plus the usual features.

Researchers presenting at the 25th Chaos Communication Congress (25C3) have used MD5 collisions to generate bogus, but trusted, SSL certificates as reported by heise online. This would allow nefarious web sites to generate a certificate purporting to be from any other site—greatly increasing the reach of phishing and other scams. "Using a weakness in the MD5 cryptographic hash function, which allows different messages to generate the same MD5 hash – known as an MD5 'collision', the international team of Alexander Sotirov, Marc Stevens, Jacob Appelbaum, Arjen Lenstra, David Molinar, Dag Arne Osvik and Benne De Weger, have used one attack scenario to create a certificate which will be trusted by all browsers because it appears to be signed by one of the root CAs that browsers trust by default. The certificate can also be used to sign other certificates, which could allow attackers to carry out 'practically undetectable phishing attacks'."

MIT Technology Review takes a look at the NEPOMUK Project. "People naturally group information by topic and remember relationships between important things, like a person and the company where she works. But enabling computers to grasp these same concepts has been the subject of long-standing research. Recently, this has focused on the Semantic Web, but a European endeavor called the Nepomuk Project will soon see the effort take new steps onto the PC in the form of a "semantic desktop."" (Found in KDE.News)

The lca (linux.conf.au) miniconf schedule has been announced. "The miniconf schedule includes 12 miniconfs: Open Source Databases, Linux Kernel, Systems Administration, MythTV, Linuxchix, Mobile Devices, The Business of open Source, Linux Security, Multimedia, Virtualisation and Management, Gaming and Free as in Freedom."

Dave Phillips looks at audio software for Linux. "This week I'm your straight reporter bringing you news of of updates, upgrades, and new releases in the world of Linux audio software. Development in this world is continuously productive, so I'll present only a selection of the Linux sound and music applications and utilities announced in the month of November in the year 2008."

Longtime free and open source software developer Thiemo Seufer died in a car accident on December 26. Thiemo was involved with a number of different projects in our community including Debian, binutils, MIPS-Linux, and QEMU. An obituary written by Bdale Garbee, Steve McIntyre, Ralf Baechle, Daniel Jacobowitz, Aurelien Jarno, and Thomas Gleixner gives more information about Thiemo and his contributions. Click below for the obituary.