In the ever-evolving Linux universe, there’s no such thing as stasis. This week’s Linux Top 5 on Linux Planet reports on the end of an era with the closing of Groklaw, the birth of a new generation of GNOME as well as KDE’s ‘congrats’ offering, and more.
Groklaw declares ‘mission-accomplished’, KDE and GNOME have some news of their own, Android stays open and more.
The Linux Planet never stops spinning, and this past week was no exception. We saw the end of an era at Groklaw, the beginning of a new era at GNOME and Linux continuing to push forward in the embedded market.
1. Groklaw Declares Victory — SCO Is Dead
The name Groklaw is synonymous with SCO. Led by Pamela Jones (PJ), Groklaw was always first on the scene as news in the SCO case was breaking, whether it was IBM, Novell, Autozone or otherwise. SCO is no longer in the news and is a zombie corporation that exists only under bankruptcy protection, so PJ has decided to declare victory, call it quits and close Groklaw.
Is her declaration of victory much like President Bush’s infamous Mission Accomplished?
Not really (but maybe). The patents that SCO was threatening the Linux community about are still floating around. Those patents have not been invalidated, although SCO’s claims of UNIX copyright ownership have been.
Novell, apparently the rightful owner of the UNIX copyrights, is in the process of selling off a mountain of its patents to CPTN Holdings, a group led by Microsoft. Yes, Novell has publicly stated that the UNIX copyrights are not part of the CPTN sale, but Novell itself is being acquired by Attachmate. Is that something we should be worried about?
2. GNOME 3 Released, Unity Restored?
After years of development, GNOME 3 is finally out. Many in the free desktop community were worried that GNOME 3 would be such a dramatic shift that it would trigger the same kind of backlash that KDE 4 had, when that open source desktop debuted.