Linux world news

Master of Open Source

Italy is making open source software (OSS) a new academic discipline. Together with an Italian open source solution company, Net7, the Universitá di Pisa has organized a master course on the subject. The aim is to train OSS managers, who will facilitate the dissemination of OSS in IT industries and public administration, after finishing their studies. There is a demand for OSS managers within Italian companies and public offices, and the course is anticipated to bridge the human resources gap. The syllabus is divided into four main subjects: computer science, business, law and the political aspects of OSS. As one of the course coordinators, Dr. Simone Montangero, reports: “We are training new managers, not only software developers. The students attending the course come from a wide range of disciplines including computer science, social science and economy.” To acquire hands-on experience, students are asked to spend three months in corporations and public administration for a stage project. The first course started September 2004. Unfortunately, of the 18 students only two are women. The next course will begin this autumn. Another master course on open source software with a stronger technical focus is available at the Universitá di Bologna. http://www.master.netseven.it/ http://www.cs.unibo.it/en/undergraduate/master/

From an “Orange” to an “Open Source” Revolution?

If there was any residual doubt about the Internet’s influence on politics and history, recent developments in the Ukraine served as an eye-opener. The country’s “Orange Revolution” would not have happened without the reliable sources of information the on-line community provided. About 80 percent of all independent Ukrainian web pages, among them the Dnepropetrovsk National University site, sported orange ribbons, polygons and similar signs of support. And the only independent TV channel “TV 5” used FreeBSD and Linux to broadcast on-line live reports from Maidan (“Independence”) Square in the capital Kiev. Now that President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko’s new government has been inaugurated, expectations are generally high, and the expected use of Open Source software in the public sector is no exception. Hence the Ukrainian Internet community reacted very angrily when news broke that the new minister of education and science, Stanislav Nikolayenko, had asked Microsoft for help to teach school-teachers. At the time of writing more than 4,000 persons had signed an open letter to President Yushchenko, stating that it was “high time to switch to Open Source software.” Apart from demanding a discussion on this issue in parliament and lobbying for a new law to favor open source software the letter also points out examples of thriving Ukrainian open software projects. For example, the list mentions the embedded Linux platform “myLinux”, the popular “iceB” accounts program, or the “Blin Linux” and “Black Cat Linux” distributions. The latter belongs to the main Russian Linux distributor “ASP Linux” and was certified by the Ukrainian Security State Agency (which uses the distribution itself). Besides political debates “Blin 2.0: Desktop Edition”, a new version of the popular single CD live distribution has been released, featuring kernel 2.6.10. For better performance it can be copied onto a hard disk. This is a small revolution in its own light: Apart from KOI8U, the de-facto standard text encoding for Ukrainian Linux users, it uses UTF8 (Unicode) by default. http://news.media-objektiv.com/society/2005/21895.shtml http://observer.sd.org.ua/news.php?id=6477 http://observer.sd.org.ua/news.php?id=6339 http://letter.org.ua/ http://www.asplinux.ru/ru/blackcat/ http://www.azpower.com/mylinux/ http://www.iceb.vinnitsa.com/iceb.html http://blin.zp.ua/

Linux Certification Centers to Open in Taiwan

Two Novell Authorizing Testing Centers (NATC) are being established in Taiwan, the first Asian country to have NATCs. The Taiwanese software-solution providers Systex and Shinewave International will be offering compatibility testing and certification of hardware and software products for Suse Linux at the new facilities. The decision to invest was motivated by the prospect of localizing Open Source Customer Relationship (CRM) and Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Application Integration (EAI) software. The two new local certification centers will also save time and the cost of shipping hardware and software from Taiwan to Germany or the US for certification. Novell’s move is anticipated to encourage more Linux distributors to invest in Asia and hence increase the market share of Linux worldwide. NATC is the second organization in Taiwan to provide Linux certification following the Taipei Computer Association’s Linux Compatibility Test and Certification Center. http://linux.tca.org.tw/linux-test/index_home_List.php http://www.systex.com.tw/systex2/home/ http://www.shinewave.com.tw/chinese/about/2005news/20050218b.htm http://www.linuxcenter.com.tw/LinuxCenter/ShowShinewaveNewsContent.do?newsID=142¤tPage=1 http://www.tndc.com.tw/tndc/

African Women Push Open Source

Africa’s contribution to the open source movement is still marginal, but grassroots activities of African women have often kindled a light of hope for a continent that – seen from a Western perspective – doesn’t have a lot of positive news to offer. Seen in this context, it comes as no surprise that African women remain at the helm, even in the male-dominated open source scene. February 2005 saw the launch of the “Linuxchix Africa” website and mailing list, representing an organization that wishes to “help toward building the critical mass of Linux skills among African women, and to advocate the use of Free and Open Source software for the many community development challenges being faced by Africans, especially African women.” The website features a report from the first Open Source Software Weekend in Kampala/Uganda in February. The African chapter of Linuxchix Worldwide was founded back in 2004 by South Africa’s Anna Badimo and Kenya’s Dorcas Muthoni, two long-standing Women in ICT activists. http://www.africalinuxchix.org/ chix@africalinuxchix.org http://www.linuxchix.org