Bill Weinberg, LinuxPundit.com   read more »

Today, Nokia announced its intention to acquire UI application framework provider Trolltech ASA . This move on Nokia's part is touted as facilitating "application development for multiple platforms and devices", and indeed one of Trolltech's claims to fame is the cross platform agility of its Qt framework.  I have already encountered waves of exuberance (rational and otherwise) about the virtues of this acquisition for Nokia, but little discussion of the trends and values underlying it.

Bill Weinberg - LinuxPundit.con   read more »

Now that the Google/Android SDK has hit the streets and some of the dust has settled, we can begin to assess the particulars and peculiarities of the new platform.

And now, a brief digression into late medieval history.  Fourteenth century Franciscan monk and philosopher William of Occam is credited with formulating the principle of Lex Parsimoniae - the law of parsimony, a.k.a. Occam's Razor:  Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem - "Entities ought not be multiplied beyond necessity".  

Bill Weinberg - LinuxPundit.com   read more »

The recent Google announcement of the soon-to-be-released Android mobile stack and SDK has spawned incredible industry and media frenzy.  In my roles at the LiPS Forum, at the Linux Foundation and in my consultancy , it is splitting my brain into more fragments than Carrie's (but not as many as Mobile Linux)

Bill Weinberg - Linuxpundit.com 

On Wednesday the 13th of June, Microsoft announced yet another of its strong-arm cross licensing deals (Microsoft and Linspire Collaboration Promotes Interoperability and Customer Choice), this time with commercial Linux-based desktop vendor Linspire.  Linspire, readers may recall, used to be called "Lindows" until lawyers from Redmond showed up on their doorstep to warn them away from Microsoft trademarks.  read more »

The government of Luis Ignacio (Lula) da Silva announced a new addition to the Computadores para todos (Computers for Everyone) program, announcing this week a financed purchase plan for Linux-based notebook computers (see Globo On Line - Laptop popular vai sair em até 24 vezes de R$ 80).   For those readers who don't read Portuguese, the article describes a program in which end-users can buy a Linux-based notebook in 24 payments of 80 reals, or about 24 x $40, about US$960.&n  read more »

On April 18, 2007, Microsoft and Samsung announced a broad patent agreement , covering hardware and software products,
including Linux, and states that the deal is expected to accelerate product development for both companies.  Apparently a similar deal was closed with Fujitu-Xerox.   read more »

This week Wind River (Nasdaq WIND) of Alameda CA announced that it had acquired patented technology from FSMLabs to endow embedded Linux with real-time responsiveness normally associated with an RTOS (real-time operating system).    What most industry watchers don't realize is that this move is just the latest in a very long history of cherry picking Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) by the embedded market leader.  read more »

Cisco has just been cited for violating the GPL - this time, for not relasing the code for some of the applications built in support of its iPhone.  read more »