You have perhaps heard that while we were on vacation Linux file system ace and convicted wife killer Hans Reiser took the cops to where he had buried her body. Two days later when Reiser was supposed to be sentenced to 25 years to life for first decree murder the judge disclosed that Reiser could have pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for three years in jail and - given the time served while awaiting trial - could have been out next spring, which would have saved his little boy from testifying.

In order to describe itself as an 'open source' company, need a company merely be 'a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company' - or does it have to be one that lets users feely download, compile, and use the software in question? Where is the dividing line? How open is 'open'? At Enterprise Open Source Magazine we contacted a range of FOSS luminaries for their take on the issue.

John C Dvorak's PC Magazine article called 'How to Kill Linux,' introduced the world to what he called 'the lopped-off head approach' - the head being that of Linux, and the beheader being Microsoft.

This year it looks certain that a new participation record will be set, more than 16,000 votes have already been recorded, as more than 20,000 SYS-CON Media readers are estimated to cast their votes in this year's Readers' Choice Awards.

Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, the publisher of the popular Mandriva Linux distribution, has announced an agreement to purchase several assets from Lycoris, a major North American Linux distribution for home users.

EnterpriseDB, based in Edison, New Jersey, has announced what it calls an 'enterprise class' open-source database strategy that leverages PostgreSQL with Oracle compatibility. In an exclusive SYS-CON.TV interview, Andy Astor, co-founder and CEO said the company will offer 'enterprise class' functionality and capability with its EnterpriseDB (EDB) software, which is available immediately for download.

The Cuban government daily 'Juventud Rebelde' is reporting that Cuba, which already has 1500 computers using Linux, is working on a legal framework that would allow the replacement of the Windows system throughout the Cuban government.

'Commit reporting has been done before,' Micah Dowty tells LinuxWorld Magazine's founding editor Alan Williamson in this exclusive interview at the recent Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, 'but one of the things that makes CIA really unique is that it brings projects together into a larger community.' There are several large projects that are making use of CIA and showing their support by linking to the web interface, Dowty says. Gaim, AnhkSVN, Enlightenment, Gentoo, Adium, and Beagle are just a few of the larger projects that use CIA and link to it prominently on their web sites.

Yakov Fain reaches Lesson 11 in his popular 'Java basics' series. This time he deals with how and why Java programmers working on large projects that have lots of classes usually organize them in different packages; and explores the new element introduced in Java 5.0 called static imports.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a rock star. I wanted to play guitar, get up on stage, and have everyone scream while I cranked out some hard rockin' tune. I wanted to see lighters held up in the crowd as I finished my last set - dripping with sweat, completely tired, and no energy left. Leave it all on the stage - that's what I wanted. My friends all felt the same - we talked about it all the time.

Google is giving people the ability to upload video files and send them across the Internet.

At the Open Source Business Conference taking place today in San Francisco, Sun's President and COO, Jonathan Schwartz emphasized that 'free' equates not to 'no revenue' but instead to 'more opportunity to create revenue.'

Now that Yahoo! Mail has matched the Gmail offer of 1GB storage to its free e-mail customers, Google is doing the obvious thing and pulling ahead again, reopening 'the one-gig gap' between its Gmail service and all-comers.

The emergence of commodity supercomputing has driven clusters based on the Linux operating system into engineering and scientific research organizations that couldn't afford their own supercomputing resources before. But Linux clusters have the potential to become a hot topic in traditional information technology circles as well. The coming year may well be the technology tipping point when Linux cluster technology escapes its current home in research organizations and inhabits the traditional data center.

The Alexis de Toqueville Institution (ADTI), which becamse infamous last year for spuriously claiming that Linus Torvalds wasn't the true father of the Linux Kernel, is back with a report certain to raise hackles: it will argue that open-source software is on an inevitable collision course with standard intellectual property law.

Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation, contends that the FSF's views have been misrepresented elsewhere by Maureen O'Gara and hastens to set the record straight: 'The idea that the GNU General Public License would never stand up in court is sheer fantasy,' he writes. 'The GNU GPL stood up in court,' he adds - citing a case involving Harald Welte, developer of netfilter.

Google yesterday launched Code.google.com, a site for external developers interested in Google-related development. 'It's where we'll publish free source code and lists of our API services,' Google said as it unveiled the site, adding: 'We really care about free and open source software (F/OSS) at Google, and this site is one aspect of that affection.'

Sun is creating three new licenses for Java. Henceforth there will be a Java Research Licence, a Java Distribution License, and a Java Internal Use License.

'Web services is what enabled eBay to become what it is today,' said Matt Ackley, as he opened Web Services Edge 2005 - International Conference & Expo with a tremendously well attended keynote devoted to the role of Web services in e-commerce called 'Enabling the Level Playing Field.' View the keynote in full on SYS-CON.TV (http://sys-con.tv).

'We do plan to ease the commercial use restrictions on the Java source code, but I will not comment any further on that,' said Sun's Matt Thompson last week, in a Technical Exchange panel discussion called 'Empowering Software R&D with Open Communities' held in the Hyatt Regency Harbor Room at the EclipseCon 2005 conference.

'Linus has this bad habit of fixing security holes quietly,' admitted kernel maintainer Alan Cox during a talk given in Brussels last week during this year's FOSDEM (Free & Open Source Software Developer's European Meeting).

Saying that its support of the open source scripting language PHP does not reflect any dissatisfaction with Java, IBM is partnering with Zend Technologies to create Zend Core, a bundling of IBM's Cloudscape database based on Apache Software Foundation Derby and Zend's open source PHP environment.

Have you ever needed to set up a firewall in a network without anyone knowing it was there or so that it wouldn't require you to change your network? Welcome to the world of stealth firewalling. We dedicated one chapter in our book, Troubleshooting Linux Firewalls, to it but honestly the topic has so many uses, to do it justice it really needs its own book (or books!).

Starting yesterday, stock of The SCO Group has started trading under the symbol SCOXE instead of SCOX - the extra 'E' being a flag to the world that Nasdaq has served notice on SCO that it is not in compliance with the exchange's listing requirements having failed to file its annual report with the SEC.

This year it looks certain that a new participation record will be set, as more than 4,000 votes have already been recorded in just the first seven days of voting, as more than 50,000 SYS-CON Media readers are estimated to cast their votes in this year's Readers' Choice Awards. Highlights after just one week's voting are as follows.

Was Carly Fiorina fired today because she was a bad CEO or because she was a woman? Should HP have hired someone from the inside? How about that Compaq merger? Who should the new CEO be? Take the opportunity to participate in Roger Strukhoff's 'instant survey' that asks these questions after Fiorina's 6-year reign was brought to an abrupt end this morning.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has quickly taken centre stage as the primary development style of the next decade and beyond. Businesses of all types are preparing for the SOA revolution that promises consistency of process, reduction in duplicate work, ease of maintenance, service reusability and broad interoperability.

If you have ever met Robin Miller or 'Roblimo' as he prefers to be called, you immediately realize that he's one of the endearing 'characters' that make Linux colorful. Roblimo is editor-in-chief for the Open Source Technology Group, which includes Linux.com, slashdot.org, and SourceForge.net, and is the author of the Online Rules of Successful Companies (FT Prentice Hall).

Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced the immediate availability of Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7, previously code-named 'Blackstone,' the fastest, easiest way to build and deploy powerful Internet applications. Developers are already embracing the latest version of the ColdFusion application server, and are now solving development challenges with new printable web content, rich forms, more flexible deployment options, and integrated, structured business reporting. ColdFusion MX 7 also provides new cost-effective and powerful innovations to interact with mobile phones using short message service (SMS) text messaging, which allows developers to create a new class of Internet applications for the mobile world.

eBay, The World's Online Marketplace, has more than 114 million registered users, 10,000 developers, and over 700 live, third-party applications.

On February 16th at Web Services Edge 2005 in Boston, Mass., Mr. Farquharson will present the topic: 'B2B Policy Enforcement: The Third Rail of SOA Implementation.' In this presentation he will discuss XML Virtual Private Networks (XML VPNs) and their potential to mitigate security policy enforcement issues in B2B SOA.

SYS-CON Media, the world's leading i-technology media company, announced that its 2005 Readers' Choice Awards polls opened today, February 1, 2005, and will remain open for six months, until July 31, 2005. More than 50,000 readers are expected to cast their votes to select the best software products and services of the year for Java, Linux, Web Services, XML, Microsoft .NET, ColdFusion and Macromedia MX.

What happens when you turn a perfectly good Apple PowerBook into a tri-boot system with Mac OS X, Yellow Dog Linux, and Ubuntu Linux? Read on to find out.

What does Apple have in common with Google, Ikea, Starbucks, and Al Jazeera? Answer: it has been rated one of the 'most influential brands of 2004' in a survey of about 2,000 advertising executives, brand managers and academics, conducted by the online magazine, Brandchannel. In fact, Apple came in at No. 1 - edging out Google, that took the top slot in the same survey one year ago.

The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) yesterday sent Sun Microsystems Chairman and CEO, Scott McNealy, an open letter about the announcement earlier this week that Sun was granting the open source software community access to more than 1,600 patents. PUBPAT's letter, written by Executive Director, Dan Ravicher, told McNealy that in its view there are serious questions about what Sun really means to do with its patent grant and that 'free and open source software developers need clarification in order to get a handle on when Sun can and cannot come after them for patent infringement.'

An 'Internet advertising agency' last November successfully registered the domain name OpenJava.org, leading to speculation that Sun has no immediate plans to follow up on its OpenSolaris.org strategy with a similar open-sourcing of Java.

Open source certainly now is 'good enough' for the needs of most end users who merely use their computers for simple office productivity work, Webbing, and e-mailing. As any Tux-lover can tell you, a good case can be made that open source desktop offerings can handle those basic jobs better than the products of the desktop market leader. So it would appear that world domination is right around the corner.

SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com), the world's leading i-technology media company, announced today that SYS-CON.TV (www.sys-con.tv), the first streaming live i-technology television is scheduled to debut on February 15, 2005 to coincide with the first day of the upcoming Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference Expo.

Sun Microsystems will be in Boston on February 14-17 at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2005, and the Web Services Edge Conference 2005 East at the Hynes Convention Center. You'll have the opportunity to learn more about Sun's work in the Linux and open source communities and meet with key executives.

'If Solaris is from Venus, and Linux is from Mars,' wrote HP's Linux VP in his blog, adding - in a barb at Sun Microsystems: 'Venus is way too close to the Sun.' It drew a heated reply on behalf of the Solaris open source community. With the CDDL release of Solaris now a reality, we revisit the discussion.