Thanks to SGI, a potential disaster for Free software purists has been averted. Back in January 2008, it was discovered by the OpenBSD guys that some of the contributions to X.org and the Mesa 3D Graphics Library made by SGI were covered under permissive open source licenses that didn't fall within FSF's definition of Free software. The FSF Compliance Lab worked with SGI to resolve the issue, and they succeeded.

The One Laptop Per Child project announced Wednesday that it plans to downsize half of its staff and reduce the salary of the remaining employees. OLPC will also halt its development of the open source Sugar environment and focus on building its next-generation hardware device. These plans are part of a major restructuring effort that has been necessitated by the financial downturn and the organization's dwindling resources.

Asus' success with its Eee line of netbooks might have come as a surprise, but the company is now determined to expand the Eee brand into every possible niche and form factor. Case in point: the insanely cool Eee Keyboard, which will surely bring a smile on the faces of those who remember the glory days of the home computer.

At ladt night's MacWorld keynote, Apple's last, one product in particular shone in absense: Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. Many had expected Apple to give out more details regarding its new operating system, maybe even a release date or a developer preview. Instead, all they got was nothing. Some say it's a mistake not to show off Snow Leopard now that Windows 7 is stealing all the thunder. Or is it?

At MacWorld, Apple announced its new iWork.com beta, a Google-Docs-esque online collaboration application to work closely with the original iWork program to share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with others. When beta testing is over, it will be a paid service (though the monthly price as of yet hasn't been released), much unlike Google Docs, which is free.

Tech ARP has a collection of dates regarding Microsoft's update program. The upgrade program concerns upgrade paths from Windows Vista to Windows 7, and basically entails that when you buy a Windows Vista machine after July 1 2009, you will get a free upgrade to Windows 7 once it's released. The data also confirm a number of versions for Windows 7.

Amidst the hubbub over MacWorld 2009, El Reg quietly noted that the company UIQ, the joint venture of Sony Ericsson and Motorola and eponymous creator of the UIQ interface layer for the Symbian smartphone OS, has filed for bankruptcy in the Swedish courts.

At the MacWorld Expo today in San Fransisco, Apple announced new versions of iWork and iLife, as well as an updated 17 MacBook Pro, which promises a battery life of 7-8 hours. More interesting, however, is the fact that yesterday was Mac OS X Server's 10th birthday.

If you live in the United States, then it's almost certain you've heard about this big digital switch that public television is making due to a new US law. If you live outside of the US, I bet you've heard of it anyway since we like to let people know what we're up to. The big day that's coming up -- February 17th, 2009 -- that magical date when all television stations will historically abandon the infamous analog broadcasting for greener, digital pastures -- didn't strike fear into the hearts at my household. We rarely utilize the antenna, and then only two to four times a year for a special program. Nonetheless, we got our hands on one of those nifty coupons anyway and went out to purchase a digital converter for the sake of those few intrinsic public broadcats. Read on for the whole story. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...

Despite what the project name's suffix might imply, Whitix is in fact not a Linux distribution. Whitix is a new operating system, written from scratch, and aims to combine the stability of UNIX with the user friendliness of other platforms. It will offer a consistent, clear interface and a new way to navigate the desktop while basing the fundamentals on proven system technology updated for the twenty-first century. The project released version 0.2 today.

Microsoft has announced two products designed to provide users of Office 2008 for Mac with improved access to existing server-based Microsoft services. The first of the two, Microsoft Entourage for Exchange Web Services, will be a free upgrade to Entourage 2008 for Mac that will enable that email, contacts, and calendaring client to more fully benefit from the Exchange Web Services built into Exchange Server 2007. The second, Microsoft Document Collaboration Companion for Mac, will be a free Cocoa-based companion app to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac that's designed to improve document-management control for Mac users of Microsoft's SharePoint Server document-sharing technology. The app will work whether document sharing is provided by enterprise SharePoint Servers, third-party leased or subscription-based SharePoint services, or Microsoft's free (for now, at least) consumer and small-business oriented Office Live Workspace.

The developers behind the Debian Linux distribution are preparing for the upcoming release of Debian 5, which is codenamed Lenny. The decision to move forward with the release follows a contentious vote over whether to permit the inclusion of binary blobs in the new version of the distribution. Consensus coalesced around a controversial proposal to assume blobs comply with the GPL unless proven otherwise.

It seems that after Intel, just about every chip maker wants a piece of the netbook pie. AMD is an obvious competitor, but VIA is also eyeing the little notebooks. However, more exotic options like the Chinese Loongson chips and ARM's Cortex A-8 and A-9 chips are also among the contenders. We can now add a new contender: Freescale.

After far too long a wait, today, Google released the first beta of Picasa for Mac. Picasa is a free, powerful photo management tool that includes many photo editing operations that the Mac native iPhoto lacks. In addition, Picasa is tightly bound to Picasa Web Albums, the first 1GB of which is also free, in contrast with Apple's MobileMe, which runs $99/year. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...

In the age of dynamic languages and closures, most of you have probably heard of a mighty dragon called Lisp (which stands for LISt Processing), whose fans look almost with despise at other languages rediscovering it. Invented half a century ago, Lisp went on to become a de facto standard in the world of AI research, and has stood behind a handful of very neat inventions in the 1980s. Nevertheless, the long AI winter and the drift of technology towards other paradigms have almost lead to forgetting Lisp alltogether; IT has only recently started to rediscover parts of what made Lisp so cool back then. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...

The FreeBSD 7-STABLE branch saw its first point release today. Don't let the point release moniker fool you, though, as FreeBSD 7.1 comes packed with a number of petty significant changes, such as support for OpenSolaris' DTrace, as well as a new, more efficient scheduler.

Last week, Gizmodo rumoured that that Apple CEO Steve Jobs' health was in a very bad condition, so bad in fact that the inevitable news would arrive coming Spring. Then, Apple characteristically declined to comment on the rumour, meaning Gizmodo's story couldn't be verified. As it turns out, Gizmodo's story does have a hint of truth, but luckily, Jobs' health isn't even remotely in as bad a condition as they made it out to be.

Last week, Gizmodo rumoured that that Apple CEO Steve Jobs' health was in a very bad condition, so bad in fact that the inevitable news would arrive coming Spring. Then, Apple characteristically declined to comment on the rumour, meaning Gizmodo's story couldn't be verified. As it turns out, Gizmodo's story does have a hint of truth, but luckily, Jobs' health isn't even remotely in as bad a condition as they made it out to be.

MacInTouch reviews the EFI-X kit, a pre-assembled computer equipped with the EFI-X module which allows you to boot Mac OS X on a non-Apple machine without having to resort to hacks. They conclude: The EFI-X kit offers the ability to run Mac OS X Leopard without hacks, to run Windows without special Boot Camp drivers, and to run nearly any other personal computer operating system from Linux to Solaris to OpenVMS! It's not quite the seamless experience of Apple's Mac computers, but it comes darn close. Its quad-core 3.82-GHz Core 2 Quad, combined with a fast Nvidia 8800 GT video card and 10,000-RPM Western Digital Velociraptor hard drive, leaves even today's quad-core Mac Pro in the dust. For anyone but scientific and engineering users, the EFI-X kit offers even more real-world performance than Apple's high-end, eight-core Mac Pro costing over twice as much.

Keryx provides a way to download software and updates for Ubuntu systems that have little or no connectivity to the internet. Simply put Keryx on your pen drive, use it to create a new project file which retains a copy of your software sources and other system details, then take the pen drive to a computer with a better connection. Via its Synaptic-like interface, users can then select all updates for download, plus select any other software they may want to install, complete with dependency resolution.

Reviewing the first beta of an important release like Windows 7 is never an easy job to do. A confouding factor is that many people have already made up their mind about Windows 7; not because they have tried it, but because it's a Microsoft product, and therefore it sucks. At OSNews we try to judge products by their own merits, not by the parent company that created it. Read on for a set of impressions regarding the Windows 7 beta. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...

The Linux version of the Acer Aspire One netbook comes with a customised version of the Linpus distribution pre-installed, which might not be to everyone's fancy. Linux4one, a modified Ubuntu, could be a good alternative. Linux4One is optimized for the Aspire One; it includes drivers for the One, and comes with an interface derived from the Netbook Remix version.

Even though the EULA accompanying the beta build of Windows 7 prohibits the publication of benchmark results (good luck enforcing that one, Redmond), everybody and their dog will still compare the Windows 7 beta to Vista and Windows XP. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is one of those benchmarking the beta, and according to his results, the Windows 7 beta beats both Vista and XP in just about every scenario.

Netbooks run either Windows or Linux, and both are readily available in shops all over the world. The Linux variants chosen by several netbook manufacturers are usually derived from desktop distributions, and obviously, Windows is a desktop operating system as well. However, netbooks have small displays, and both Windows and GNOME/KDE and some of their applications aren't always suited well for such an environment. Enter Android, Google's Linux-based phone operating system. It is suggested that Android-based netbooks will appear on the market in 2010, maybe even sooner.

Geek.com gave a graphics designer a few months with the latest Adobe CS4 suite, and tells you everything you wanted to know about CS4. From the article: It's been several months since the CS4 Master Collection became available, and the focus of this follow-up review is to highlight the new features that have remained on my radar since first installing the programs. While every Adobe release features a slew of new features, I usually find that only some of those features remain completely indispensable as the novelty wears off.

You probably have seen or heard about HomeGroup by now. We demonstrated it at PDC this year during Steven's keynote, it was mentioned a few times at WinHec, and some of you may have even tried it on your PCs with the PDC pre-beta build of Windows 7. HomeGroup represents a new end-to-end approach to sharing in the home, an area in which Windows has provided many features before - the intuitive end to end is what's new. HomeGroup recognizes and groups your Windows 7 PCs in a 'simple to set up' secure group that enables open access to media and digital memories in your home. With HomeGroup, you can share files in the home, stream music to your XBOX 360 or other devices, and print to the home printer without worrying about technical setup or even understanding how it all works. This blog post is designed to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we designed HomeGroup.

Information Week released what they deem the top ten stories dealing with open source for the year of 2008 earlier this month. Reminisce all of the happy memories we've had of open source throughout this past year: nestle with netbooks, gallop with Google, frolic with Fedora, cuddle with copyrights, and even get your hands on a juicy murder mystery.

The internet, and much of the real world as well, is currently in list mode. Just about any possible list that can be made up regarding 2008 will be made up somewhere, so we decided not to reinvent the wheel and look forward instead of backward. Since we like to leave the guessing predicting to the analysts, we just limited ourselves to what tech-related matters we