The pharmaceutical giant last week opened to the public the designs behind 13,500 chemical compounds that it said may be capable of inhibiting the parasite that causes malaria.

Glaxo and others hope that sharing information and working together will lead scientists to come up with a drug for treating the mosquito-borne disease faster than the company could on its own. Other researchers "may look at these structures in quite a different way and see something that we don't," said Nick Cammack, head of Glaxo's Medicines Development Campus in Spain.

The move is one of the largest experiments yet by the pharmaceutical industry to apply techniques of open-source development to drug discovery, based on the idea that collaboration by volunteers will create products that aren't owned by a single company.

In software, the approach has spawned the Linux operating system, MySQL database and an array of other programs. Those community-born technologies now compete with products from Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and other traditional, commercial software makers. Open-source developers share programming instructions called source code that software companies traditionally kept confidential.

Similarly, large pharmaceutical companies tightly guard their formulas for drugs and other intellectual property. Any given chemical compound holds the potential to be a blockbuster drug—and a cash cow, like Microsoft's Windows software. But diseases like malaria afflict mainly poor populations, and drugs to treat them don't hold the promise for such a big payoff—making experiments like Glaxo's less risky.

The Glaxo effort builds off earlier open-source drug efforts that included a nonprofit organization called Tropical Disease Initiative and a project started last year that opens compounds from Pfizer Inc. to researchers at a nonprofit called Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative.

The Glaxo data will be hosted by three websites, two of which are government-funded (one in the U.S. and one in Europe). The third is a Silicon Valley company called Collaborative Drug Discovery Inc. CDD, as it is called, was spun off in 2004 from drug maker Eli Lilly & Co. and has funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Founders Fund, a venture-capital firm.

CDD's Web service combines elements of a Facebook-like social network with an Oracle-style database. Any researcher who registers on the CDD site will be able to see graphical depictions of Glaxo's compounds and relevant chemical and biological data. The database will allow them to upload their own data to be viewed by other researchers.

The service is free of charge. If a researcher wants to combine the data with proprietary information, CDD alsooffers a fee-based, secure version of its site that allows researchers to lock up information they want to keep secret.

Developing a new drug is a trial-and-error process of testing which chemical compounds produce a certain effect on a biological target. In the case of malaria, the target can be the Plasmodium parasite that causes the deadly disease or human red-blood cells that it needs to survive. Over the past year, Glaxo has tested two million compounds, culling the 13,500 molecules that it says have some effect. However, narrowing down the compounds to a handful that might yield a drug is an increasingly complex process.Any compound that proves promising in the current effort will take years of testing and investment to turn it into a malaria drug.

Glaxo says that it won't seek patents on any malaria drug that the compounds yield, and hopes other researchers will also donate their intellectual property to a patent pool for so-called neglected diseases like malaria. If the Glaxo compounds are used to develop a drug for other types of diseases, then the company "would consider" the intellectual-property issues, a Glaxo spokeswoman said.

Researchers including James McKerrow, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, have used CDD since 2007 to share data about diseases including malaria and schistosomiasis, a parasite that can cause liver and kidney damage. The group shared data on tens of thousands of compounds to speed up the process of picking a handful of compounds (for diseases such as malaria) that are the best options to try on animals, Dr. McKerrow said.

Barry Bunin, CDD's chief executive, believes that the work on neglected diseases is a precursor for big pharmaceutical companies to eventually use the open-source techniques for developing commercial drugs.

Some drug experts doubt that will happen. The reasons include the nettlesome problem of managing intellectual property and various uncertainties. Any given compound, for example, could wind up affecting more diseases than expected and turn out to be more valuable than expected. Glaxo, for instance, found that drugs that inhibited growth of the parasite that causes malaria were of a type that is also marketed to treat cancer.

"I think that's a potentially interesting model but I don't think for-profit institutions would participate," says Brendan O'Leary, general partner at Prism Venture Management, a venture-capital firm that invests in life-sciences companies.

Yet Glaxo'sMr. Cammack doesn't rule it out. He hopes the open-source work will influence Glaxo more broadly in the future, particularly given the challenges big pharmaceuticalcompanies face in launching new drugs. "The pharmaceutical industry needs to look at lots of ways of doing business in the future," he said.

Developers from Google's Android team are due to meet the Linux kernel devs in the hope of working out their differences and closing an awkward chapter in the history of Linux.

Google open source programs manager Chris DiBona told us it would be a "multi-year" process. "I think it's going to take more than a couple of days to sort things out."

He noted, though, that reintegration would not be too hard because Google has deliberately stuck very close to the main Linux kernel with Android.

That suggests the issue is more political than technical, for two main reasons.

One is that Android has entered the rats' nest that is the mobile phone industry, and Google must now balance any desire to respect the wishes of the Linux community for compatibility with the more diverse, competing - and not always logical - interests of those now adopting Android and its own plans.

It's an industry where a maze of chip makers, handset manufacturers, and carriers have competing hardware, software and service demands, and retain an obsessive paranoia about keeping new launches secret from each other and the world. Keeping new features secret is harder when everybody shares the same code or kernel.

It's a maze Java's been bogged down in for years.

"Android is very complicated," DiBona said of the ecosystem earlier during the Summit. "I firmly believe over time a lot of the technology we've been working on [in Android] will make it into the mainstream kernel, we have to do better."

The other could be the personalities involved, who might not care for the politics of the phone industry compared to the purity of the kernel.

Appearing on a panel ahead of DiBona was Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Novell fellow and Linux developer who booted Android from the Linux kernel last year by deleting the Android drivers. Kroah-Hartman said that at the time nobody cared about the Android code and that, ultimately, Google had forked the kernel with a "sometimes bizarre" security model.

Judging from earlier comments Kroah-Hartman has made, he meant no one cared about making sure the code was merged with the main Linux tree. The world certainly cares about Android.

More than 30 phones ship on Android, with more planned, while the Linux is found on tablets and e-book readers such as Barnes & Noble's Nook.

Android had 7.1 per cent market share in the US smart-phone market January - up 4.3 per cent since October according to comScore. Since October, Android has grown faster than Apple's iPhone, up 0.3 per cent to - an admittedly already robust - 25.1 per cent, while Windows and Palm both shrunk.

If it was hoped Google would be brought to heel by being ejected from the Linux tree, it was a hope that was never realized. "Just because our code was booted out of the fork doesn't mean we aren't releasing code all the time - we are," DiBona had told summit attendees.

As far as DiBona is concerned, not all the features in Android will be relevant to mainstream or enterprise Linux kernel users because they are geared towards handsets - such as specific Qualcomm chip sets.

The dilemma of success

This has been an awkward chapter in the history of Linux. Summit speakers and Linux people around the event down played the problem, either calling it "a little fork" or saying "forks are good".

Google's operating system is helping propel Linux to new devices and even greater market share - advancing the common cause. It has done so, though, at an apparent price to unity of the kernel and in a way that's been played out in the public arena.

But attendees saw this as an issue and wanted clarification, with questions to DiBona during his session and speakers in an earlier panel about future of the kernel kept coming back to the Android fork.

James Bottomley, Linux SCSI subsystem maintainer and Novell distinguished engineer, said during the kernel panel forks are prevalent in embedded systems where companies use the fork once then "throw it away".

"Google is not the first to have done something like this by far, just the one that’s made the most publicity," Bottomley said.

"Hopefully the function of this collaboration summit is there is some collaboration over the next two days and we might actually solve it." ®

The Lucid release could also help to further accelerate adoption of Ubuntu, which has been growing over the last several years. In 2008, Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu, pegged the number of Ubuntu users at 8 million. It's a figure that could have increased by as much as 50 percent or more since then, insiders say.

"We have no phone home or registration process, so it's always a guesstimate. But based on the same methodology that we came up with for the 2008 number, our present belief is that it's somewhere north of 12 million users at the moment," Chris Kenyon, vice president for OEM at Canonical, told InternetNews.com

In contrast, as of March 29, Red Hat's Fedora Linux was reporting usage of its Linux distribution at approximately 24 million installations.

Usage numbers aside, the upcoming Lucid release from Ubuntu is a big one for the Linux distribution as it is the first new Long-Term Supported (LTS) release in two years. An LTS release provides three years of support on Ubuntu Desktop, and five years on Ubuntu Server. In contrast, non-LTS Ubuntu releases come out every six months and have only 18 months of support. The last Ubuntu LTS release was the 8.04 release, "Hardy Heron," which made its debut in April 2008. Kenyon expect that users still running the 8.04 LTS will now make the jump to the 10.04 LTS when it becomes available.

Ubuntu Desktop

On the desktop, the Lucid release is the benefactor of a new branding initiative from Canonical, which transforms the traditionally brown-colored Ubuntu interface into one with a new purple look it calls "aubergine".

The desktop also benefits from the inclusion of the new Me Menu, which combines a user's chat and social networks into a user interface button. With the Me Menu, users can access and update instant messaging and social networks including Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Identica, Google Talk, MSN and IRC.

The Ubuntu One desktop service synchronization effort is also being expanded in the Lucid release.

For the first time in its 16-year history, the Debian GNU/Linux project has a woman in the running to become leader of the project when voting for the post takes place between April 2 and April 15.

Even though the idea of formal alignment between the freezes of Debian and Ubuntu didn’t hold, there has been some good practical collaboration between the maintainers of key subsystems. There are real benefits to this, because maintainers have a much more fruitful basis for sharing patches when they are looking at the same underlying version.

Harmonization for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Debian Squeeze

I think this is where we stand now:

I’m sure there are inaccuracies, please help me keep this up to date, sabdfl on freenode is the best way to reach me. The RHEL and SLES numbers are third-hand, so up-to-date information would be appreciated.

The actual release dates of Ubuntu LTS and Debian will vary of course, because of different priorities. And there’s no requirement that the same base version be used for every major component – there may well be differences allowing for different approaches. But where we do have it, we’ll be able to collaborate much more effectively on bug fixes for key upstream pieces. If a lot of distributions pick the same base upstream version, it greatly increases the value of extended shared maintenance and point releases of that upstream.

Why every two years?

Two years is a compromise between those who want 1 year releases for better support of cutting-edge hardware and those who want 7 year releases so their software stack doesn’t change before their job description does .

A whole-year multiple has several advantages. It means we can schedule the processes that are needed for collaboration at the same time of year whenever we need them – unlike 1.5 or 2.5 year cycles. Three years was felt to be too long for hardware support. Two years is perceived to be the Goldilocks Cadence – just right.

What are the criteria for choosing a common base version?

In both the Ubuntu and Debian cases, we’ll be making a release that we support for many years. So be looked for versions of key upstreams that will pass the test of time. Sometimes, that means they can’t be too old, because they’ll be completely obsolete or unmaintainable in the life of the release. And sometimes that means they can’t be too young. In general, it would be better to be reviewing code that is already out there. But there are also lots of upstreams that do a credible job of release management, so we could commit to shipping a version that is not yet released, based on the reputation of the community it’s coming from.

What if there’s no agreement on a particular kernel, or X or component-foo?

We will almost certainly diverge on some components, and that’s quite OK. This is about finding opportunities to do a better job for upstreams and for users, not about forcing any distro to make a particular choice. If anyone feels its more important to them to use a particular version than another, they’ll do that.

Open invitations

It’s really helpful to have upstreams and other distributions participate in this process.

If you’re an upstream, kick off a thread in your mailing list or forums about this. Upstreams don’t need to do anything different if they don’t want to, we’ll still just make the best choices we can. But embracing a two year cadence is the best way you have to be sure which versions of your software are going to be in millions of hands in the future – it’s a great opportunity to influence how your users will experience your work.

Of course, we’d also like to have more distributions at the table. There’s no binding commitment needed – collaboration is opportunistic. But without participating in the conversation one can’t spot those opportunities! If you represent a distribution and are interested, then please feel free to contact me, or Matt Zimmerman, or anyone on the Debian release management team about it.

I think this is a big win for the free software community. Many upstreams have said "we’d really like to help deliver a great stable release, but which distro should we arrange that around?” Upstreams should not have to play favourites with distributions, and it should be no more work to support 10 distributions as to support one. If we can grow the number of distributions that embrace this cadence, the question becomes moot – upstreams can plan around that cycle knowing that many distributions will deliver their work straight to users.

The Free Software Foundation is gearing up for a big event March 19th through 21st to be held in Cambridge, Mass. at Harvard's University Science Center. LibrePlanet 2010 is a three day event with workshops on using free software for everything from Web development to video editing and graphics. This year's LibrePlanet is going to feature a new "Women's Caucus," a day-long track on Sunday to boost participation by women in free software projects.

There's no shortage of events focused on free and open source software. You can't swing a penguin without hitting a conference these days, so we interviewed FSF membership coordinator Deborah Nicholson to find out what makes LibrePlanet different from some of the other events going on this Spring.

OStatic: What's the history of LibrePlanet? How did the event come together, and how long has it been going?

LibrePlanet grew out of the FSF annual associate members meeting that we've been holding since 2003. This is the second year we've made it open to non-members. We realized we wanted to use our annual gathering to inspire more free software activism and allow more interactive time for teaching, sharing and hacking.

OStatic: What's the goal of LibrePlanet, overall?

We want to bring free software activists, users and developers together to talk about the free software movement on a strategic level. Communication and an understanding of how all the parts work together make us all better contributors -- whether we're fighting against DRM, writing user manuals or hacking on a free software alternatives to proprietary software like Flash. The message of LibrePlanet is that the whole community works together, in solidarity, to secure computer user freedom for everyone.

OStatic: Let's talk mechanics for a moment. This is an event that will draw about 250 people. What kind of planning goes into this sort of event, and what kind of lessons can you share for others who'd like to run a similar event?

It's important to get a mix of speakers that people have heard of and some new voices. Different projects and initiatives are cropping up all the time. It's really inspiring for new people when you can showcase people who are making significant contributions after just a year or two's involvement.

This year we also set up a Women's Travel fund. We recognize that women often don't have access to the same levels of funding that men do, so we decided to ask people if they'd like to help us even that out. We're hoping that other conferences will consider setting up something similar.

The FSF receives the bulk of its funding for its mission and events like LibrePlanet from individual donors and members but we are happy to receive donations from corporations that want to help us fund our work. We have a corporate patron program but we don't accept money for advertising at FSF events like LibrePlanet.

OStatic: Does the FSF provide support for other, like events?

The FSF subsidizes LibrePlanet by offering a low-cost admission, $60 or free for FSF members. While we don't provide financial support for other events, we're certainly happy to publicize other free software events on our website. Unfortunately, we can't list every event people ask us to because often they promote open source or mis-attribute the goal of creating a free operating system to Linux and not GNU. That kind of obfuscation only makes our work harder.

OStatic: This year's LibrePlanet features a full-day "Women's Caucus," is this new? What's the goal for that part of the event?

It is new. The FSF held a mini-summit last fall to sort out what could concretely be done to increase women's participation in free software. The schedule for Sunday's Women's Caucus is the result of that mini-summit and subsequent IRC meetings.

Our goal is to enact short term solutions with activities like Selena Deckelmann's workshop on speaking at technical conferences and lay the groundwork for longer-term solutions with Leslie Hawthorn's talk on free software mentoring. We hope that people will take the ideas presented at this event back to their projects and local communities and continue to build on them. We've been really encouraged by the fact that more women have registered for LibrePlanet this year than ever before.

OStatic: In-person events are great for people who can attend in person, but what about those who can't attend? Will the content be archived or available online in some fashion?

Saturday and Sunday's talks and workshops will be streamed as live audio and then archived for anyone who wants to listen to them in the future.

OStatic: What should an attendee expect to get out of the conference?

It depends on what they're looking for. New users can learn new ways to customize their GNU/Linux set-up, project maintainers can learn how to better recruit women, some folks may find a non-coding role that suits them, law geeks will hear what's new on the legal landscape for free software and still others can spend time hacking on GNU Social or LibreDWG. In short, we aim to present policy, activism and coding as a single, yet varied, toolbox for user freedom.

Victoria’s Electoral Commission has flagged plans to expand its use of electronic voting kiosks based on Linux software in the next state election in November this year.

The state first started using the machines in a limited trial during the last state election in 2006. It appears as if the machines were used for voting for the vision-impaired, as well as for military personnel. News of the rollout was broken by Computerworld.

However, in tender documents released last week, the state revealed it would expand its use of the machines. About one hundred kiosks will be deployed to early voting centres (including mobile facilities) around the state as well as in the United Kingdom.

According to the tender documentation, the machines will consist of one in-built 19″ LCD touch-screen, one PC with an Ethernet network port, and an in-built USB smartcard reader. The machine must be able to run Linux, as the commission has requested Linux drivers for the components.

The commission stated it would install Linux on the machines itself, but it remains unclear which exact version of the open source operating system it will use.

The tender documents stated that drivers must be compatible with the "2.6 kernel/Gentoo release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux”. However Red Hat and Gentoo are quite different Linux distributions.

It appears as if Victoria’s previous e-voting system was supplied by Hewlett-Packard, in conjunction with Spanish company Scytl.

The news comes as Linux has not been making headway for desktop use in Australia — even in such limited use as customised and locked down terminals such as e-voting systems require.

One of the last stand-out Linux desktop deployments in Australia was that found at Kennards Hire. However, in December 2009 the plant and equipment company revealed it had migrated its 300 desktop machines running Fedora Linux back to Windows (thin clients) in 2008.

In contrast, the New Zealand government is currently engaged in a pilot to replace Windows PCs with desktops running Linux and open source software. However, Linux remains a force in local server deployments, where it is seen as the main rival operating system to Microsoft Windows.

The Scout framework is the foundation for a number of BSI's products, such as BSI CRM. It consists of an application model, a reference implementation, an SDK (Scout Development Toolkit) and a number of development tools. Its primary goal is to reduce development time for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) compliant business solutions.

According to Andreas Hoegger, Eclipse Scout project co-leader and System Architect for BSI, opening up the framework is the next logical step. During EclipseCon 2010, Hoegger and BSI project manager Matthias Zimmermann will present a two hour tutorial on Eclipse Scout. 

BSI joined the Ecilpse Foundation in May of last year as an Eclipse Solutions Member. Eclipse Scout is currently at the project proposal status. The Scout source code to be released in May will be made publicly available under an Eclipse license.

Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun, has left the company following its acquisition by Oracle. Reflecting on his nearly ten years at Sun in a posting on his personal blog, Phipps feels he achieved some "amazing things", including the releasing of code for Unix, Java, elements of Linux and the SPARC chip under free licenses. Phipps is also proud of the part he has played in guiding the Open Document Format at Sun and his role in kick starting Sun's blogging culture. He pays credit to the people he worked with in pushing forward those ideas within Sun.

Phipps has had disappointments though; he wanted to see Apache get the Java TCK licence that they wanted, an issue which has led to constant friction within the Java Community Process, and he didn't manage to get code for some projects "permanently outside the Sun firewall". Overall though, Phipps says he is "amazed and humbled to see what the open source team at Sun has achieved". Phipps has not made a decision on what he will do next, but will be keeping people informed through his Wild Webmink blog.

Phipps joins a number of former Sun employees who have left since the acquisition by Oracle. Tim Bray, SGML and XML expert, left on March 1st, and a number of the Drizzle developers, but apparently not including lead developer Brian Akers, have moved to RackSpace Cloud.

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Linux Mint 8 - the system installer introduces itself
(full image size: 348kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)

Linux Mint 8 - using features in the control center
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Linux Mint 8 - finding software and getting assistance
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Linux Mint 8 - creating a different look for Mint
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Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement. I campaign for computer users' freedom -- for instance, your freedom to control the software you use, to redistribute the software to others. Software that respects the user's freedom is what we call free software.

In 1983 I announced the plan to develop a complete free operating system called GNU. The system that millions of people use, and often refer to as "Linux", is a variant of the GNU system.

What hardware are you using?

I am using a Lemote Yeelong, a netbook with a Loongson chip and a 9-inch display. This is my only computer, and I use it all the time. I chose it because I can run it with 100% free software even at the BIOS level.

And what software?

To initialize the machine and boot, it uses PMON. Above that, it uses gNewSense, one of the totally free GNU/Linux distros.

I spend most of my time using Emacs. I run it on a text console, so that I don't have to worry about accidentally touching the mouse-pad and moving the pointer, which would be a nuisance. I read and send mail with Emacs (mail is what I do most of the time).

I switch to the X console when I need to do something graphical, such as look at an image or a PDF file.

Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection. Once or twice or maybe three times a day I connect and transfer mail in and out. Before sending mail, I always review and revise the outgoing messages. That gives me a chance to catch mistakes and faux pas.

What would be your dream setup?

I would ideally like to have a machine with the speed and memory of a laptop, and the display size of a laptop too, combined with the same freedom that I have now on the Yeelong.

Until I can have them both, freedom is my priority. I've campaigned for freedom since 1983, and I am not going to surrender that freedom for the sake of a more convenient computer.

I do hope to switch soon to a newer model of Yeelong with a 10-inch display.

More(RU)

We are pleased to announce the Plasma Javascript Jam Session. This friendly competition will reward creators of the most original, interesting and beautiful Plasma widgets (Plasmoids) written in Javascript with some great prizes and community recognition.

Anyone (except members of the judging panel) may participate in this open challenge that starts on Friday February 12th, 2010. The rules are simple:

• Only Plasmoids written using the Simplified Javascript Plasmoid API may be entered.
• All submissions must be released under a Free software license in compliance with the KDE Licensing Policy.
• All submissions must be the original work of the contestants. Third party Javascript libraries, DataEngines, etc. may be used, but the actual Plasmoid itself must be the work of the contestant.
• Each contestant may submit one, and only one, Plasmoid for judging. Contestants may work in teams (an artist and a programmer is a common pairing in Plasmoid development, for instance) but only one prize per submission will be offered regardless of team size and contestants may not be a member of more than one submitting team.
• Final submissions must be in the form of an installable .plasmoid file submitted to javascriptjam@kde.org by midnight (UTC) on March 31^st 2010.

Plasmoids will be judged based on the following criteria:

• Usefulness / Entertainment Quality (40%): accounting for a full 40% of the final score, this metric reflects how indispensable, fun and "recommend it to my friends"-worthy the Plasmoid is.
• Originality (20%): the more unique the Plasmoid, the better it will do in this category.
• Beauty (20%): for Plasmoids that inspire desire, these points go higher!
• Technical (20%): code poetry and Plasmoids that expose the full power of Plasma will rack up technical proficiency points.

The prizes up for grabs are really exciting:

• Grand Prize: A brand new Nokia N900, a trip to join us at a KDE developer event, such as Akademy or Camp KDE, and a KDE t-shirt
• 1st Runner Up Prize: A trip to join us at a KDE developer event, such as Akademy or Camp KDE, and a KDE t-shirt
• 3 Honorable Mention Prizes: A KDE t-shirt

In addition to these over-all prizes, three bragging-rights titles are up for grabs:

• Beauty Queen: this crown is reserved for the most stunning Plasmoid in form and function
• Technical Giant: the Plasmoid that embodies the peak of technical excellence will walk away with this badge of honor
• Creative Genius: the Plasmoid with the most interesting and original concept will claim this title

Additionally, everyone who submits a working Javascript Plasmoid that meets the contest requirements will receive a personalized certificate of participation by email. All submissions will be published for download on kde-look.org after the results are announced on April 9th.

Contestants will also be able to take advantage of training and support from the KDE Plasma team! Training sessions will be held on Friday the 12th, Saturday the 13th and Sunday the 14th of February at 16:00 UTC on irc.freenode.net in the #plasma-training channel. Each session, led by Plasma developers, will cover the Simplified Javascript Plasmoid API in detail along with Plasmoid development tips and tricks.

In addition, contestants are welcome to ask questions and solicit development advice on #plasma on irc.freenode.net and plasma-devel@kde.org, the official Plasma development mailing list, during the competition. We won't write your Plasmoid for you, but each contestant will have access to the same level of Q&A support that all Plasmoid developers normally have. Helpful reference materials can also be found in the Plasma tutorials section on Techbase as well as in the KDE Examples module.

The judging panel will be comprised of:

• Aaron Seigo, Persona Plasma
• Marco Martin, Plasma Zen Master
• Nuno Pinheiro, Graphics Design Machine
• Richard Moore, Javascript Bindings Artiste
• KDE Community: Yes, that's you! A poll hosted on the KDE Community Forums will allow everyone in the KDE community to have a say in who wins.

Panel members will rate each entry individually in each of the four categories. The scores from the five judges will then be added up to create the final results.

The contest timeline is as follows:

• February 12^th: The Javascript Jam begins!
• February 12^th and 13^th: Online training sessions at 18:00 UTC in #plasma-training on irc.freenode.net
• March 24^th: Contest entries can be submitted for inclusion by sending them to javascriptjam@kde.org
• March 31^st: The Javascript Jam is finished, no more entries may be made after this date!
• April 2^nd: All valid entries are published on the contest website and on KDE-Look.org
• April 9^th: Winners announced

Finally: a huge round of "Thank-You!"s to Nokia for donating the N900, KDE e.V. whose support makes this event possible and Nuno Pinheiro and Sean Wilson for artwork.

More information along with the official rules can be found on the Plasma website which is is devoted to the Javascript Jam for the duration of the contest. After the Javascript Jam concludes, the Plasma website will relaunch with new content and an updated design.

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  There are concerns in the GNOME accessibility development community about what the Oracle takeover of Sun means for the efforts led by Sun's Accessibility Project Office (APO). Orca project lead Willie Walker has been laid off and is looking for work, possibly in areas that will not allow him to continue contributing to Orca. In addition, assistive technology specialist Joanmarie Diggs has published an open letter to Oracle concerning the future of the APO and its work. "Last week, Oracle laid off two more members of Sun's already-decimated APO. One of those let go happened to be both the Orca project lead and the GNOME Accessibility project lead, Willie Walker. I truly hope this was an oversight on Oracle's part, and one that will be rectified very soon. Because if it is not, and if no other company steps forward to continue this work, the accessibility of the GNOME desktop will become the open source equivalent of an unfunded mandate, doomed ultimately to fail."

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KDE 4.3 (Codename: "Caizen") Delivers Incremental Innovations to the Free Desktop Users and Software Developers

4 August, 2009. The KDE Community today announces the immediate availability of "Caizen", (a.k.a KDE 4.3), bringing many improvements to the user experience and development platform. KDE 4.3 continues to refine the unique features brought in previous releases while bringing new innovations. With the 4.2 release aimed at the majority of end users, KDE 4.3 offers a more stable and complete product for the home and small office.

The KDE 4.3 Desktop

The KDE community has fixed over 10,000 bugs and implemented almost 2,000 feature requests in the last 6 months. Close to 63,000 changes were checked in by a little under 700 contributors. Read on for an overview of the changes in the KDE 4.3 Desktop Workspace, Application Suites and the KDE 4.3 Development Platform.

Desktop Improves Performance And Usability

The KDE Desktop Workspace provides a powerful and complete desktop experience that features excellent integration with Linux and UNIX operating systems. The key components that make up the KDE Desktop Workspace include:

• KWin, a powerful window manager that provides modern 3D graphical effects
• The Plasma Desktop Shell, a cutting-edge desktop and panels system that features productivity enhancements and online integration through customizable widgets
• Dolphin, a user-friendly, network- and content-aware file manager
• KRunner, a search and launch system for running commands and finding useful information
• easy access to desktop and system controls through SystemSettings.

• The Plasma Desktop Shell introduces a new default theme, Air. Air looks much lighter and fits better with the default application theme. Plasma also has seen large performance improvements. Memory usage has been reduced, and animations are smoother. Activities can now be tied to virtual desktops, allowing users to have different widgets on each of their desktops. Furthermore, Plasma has improved upon its job and notification management. Running jobs are grouped in a single progress bar to prevent the popup of too many dialogs. Animations are used to signify that jobs are still running by smoothly sliding dialogs into the systemtray and animating the notification icon. Smaller changes in Plasma include fully configurable keyboard shortcuts and more extensive keyboard navigation, the ability to create a plasma widget when you drag or copy content on the desktop and many new and improved Plasma widgets. The folderview widget now allows the user to peek into a folder by hovering it and the new Translatoid widget translates words and sentences right on your desktop using Google Translate. Furthermore, KRunner made its plugin features easier to discover by having a 'help' button showing the syntax of commands in the result area. Actions also have a small configuration allowing for example to start applications under another user account.
  
  

Web integration in KDE 4.3

• The file manager Dolphin shows small previews of files within a folder and video thumbnails to help the user identify items. The trash can now be configured from the Dolphin Settings menu, and various configurable limitations on the trash size help make sure the disk does not fill up with deleted files. The menu which is shown on a right mouseclick on a item is configurable and the configuration dialog in general has been redesigned to be easier to use. The new network:/ location shows other computers and services on the network (currently limited to those announced by DNS-SD/zeroconf protocols, more will be supported in future versions).
  
  
• Further refinements to the workspace tools make it easier to work with your computer. A faster SystemSettings introduces an optional treeview for the configuration and several improvements to settingsdialogs. New effects like 'Sheet' and "Slide Back" and better performance in KWin make window management more smooth, while integration with the Plasma themes creates a more consistent look. Klipper, a tool which keeps a history of things copied to the clipboard, can now act intelligently on the content. It automatically determines a list of applications which can handle a object copied to the clipboard and allows the user to start them right away.
  
  

Applications Leap Forward

A great number of sophisticated applications are provided by the KDE community which take full advantage of the powerful KDE Application Framework. A selection of these applications are included in the KDE Software Distribution, divided up by category into various Application Suites. These include:

• KDE Network Applications
• KDE Multimedia
• KDE Graphics Tools
• KDE PIM Suite (for personal information management and communication)
• KDE Educational Applications
• KDE Games
• KDE Utilities
• KDE Software Development Platform

Together they form a comprehensive set of desktop essentials that run on most modern operating systems. Below you will find a selection of improvements to some of these Application Suites.

• The KDE Utilities have seen many improvements. Among other things, KGpg, the privacy tool used for encryption and signing files and emails integrates Solid for detecting the availability of a network connection and has improved its key import dialog. Ark, a file compression and decompression application now supports LZMA/XZ, has improved support for zip, rar and 7zip and works better with drag'n'drop. KDELirc, a frontend for the Linux Infrared Remote Control system (LIRC), has been ported to KDE 4 and is included again. Okteta, the KDE hex editor gained a checksum tool, a filesystem browser sideview and a bookmarks sidebar. Lokalize, the KDE translation tool, introduces support for scripts, new fileformats and the translation of ODF documents.
  
  
• The KDE games now use a similar Egyptian-style theme in many of the games. KGoldrunner introduces a new game, "Curse of the Mummy" and improves gameplay with more accurate pause, resume and recording and replaying of games. KMahjongg introduces 70 new user-submitted levels and a new game, KTron, has been introduced. Some games introduced new features like the Vaporizer action in Killbots and a better AI in Bovo. Thanks to work on file loading and saving the state of scalable images many games start and run faster.
  
  
• The KDE Personal Information Management applications have seen improvements in various area's like performance and stability. Instant messenger Kopete introduces an improved contact list and KOrganizer can sync with Google Calendar. Kmail supports inserting inline images into email and the Alarm notifier gained export functionality, drag and drop and has an improved configuration.
  
  

Some Egyptian themes

• In case something goes wrong with a KDE application and it crashes, the new Bug Report Tool will make it easier for the user to contribute to the stability of KDE. The bug report tool provides a three-star rating of the quality of the data it gathered on the crash. It also gives hints on how to improve the quality of the crash data and the bug report itself while guiding the user through the process of reporting. During the Beta cycles for this release the new bug report tool has already proven itself by the increased quality of bug reports.
  

Platform Accelerates Development

The KDE community brings many innovations for application developers to the forefront in the KDE Application Development Framework. Building on the strengths of Nokia's Qt library, this integrated and consistent framework has been crafted in direct response to the needs of real-world application developers.

The KDE Application Development Framework helps developers create robust applications efficiently by streamlining the complexity and tedious tasks usually associated with application development. Its use by KDE applications provides a compelling showcase for its flexibility and utility.

Liberally licensed under the LGPL (allowing for both proprietary and open source development) and cross-platform (Linux, UNIX, Mac and MS Windows), it contains among other things a powerful component model (KParts), network transparent data access (KIO) and flexible configuration management. Dozens of useful widgets ranging from file dialogs to font selectors are provided and the framework also offers semantic search integration (Nepomuk), hardware awareness (Solid) and multimedia access (Phonon). Read on for a list of improvements to the KDE Application Development Framework.

• The KDE 4.3 Application Development Framework introduces the beginnings of Social Desktop integration, bringing the worldwide Free Software community to the desktop. Offering an open collaboration, sharing and communication platform, the Social Desktop initiative aims to allow people to share their knowledge withouth giving up control to an external organisation. The platform currently offers a DataEngine for plasma applets supporting aspects of Social Desktop.
  
  
• The new system tray protocol developed in collaboration with the Free Desktop initiative is a long-overdue overhaul of the old systray specification. The old systemtray using small embedded windows did not allow for any kind of control by the systemtray over its contents, limiting the flexibility for the user and application developer at the same time. While the new systemtray supports both the old and new standard, application developers are encouraged to upgrade their applications to the new specifications. For more information check this blog or find more information on TechBase.
  
  
• The Plasma Desktop Shell introduces a Geolocation DataEngine using libgps and HostIP which allows plasmoids to easily respond to the location of the user. Other new DataEngines provide access to Akonadi resources (including mail and calendar), Nepomuk metadata and keyboard state besides the various improvements to existing DataEngines. Read about using and discovering DataEngines on TechBase.
  
  
• The KDE Application Development Framework introduces a PolicyKit wrapper making it easy for developers who want their application to perform privileged actions in a secure, consistent and easy way. Provided are an authorization manager and an authentication agent, and an easy library for developers to use. Read here on TechBase for a tutorial!
  
  
• Akonadi, the Free Desktop PIM storage solution has been deemed ready for more widespread usage. Besides the availability of the DataEngine for plasma, application developers are encouraged to have a look at the TechBase page if their application needs access to or store chat logs, email, blogs, contacts, or any other kind of personal data. As a cross-desktop technology Akonadi can provide access to any kind of data and is designed to handle high volumes, thus allowing for a wide range of usecases.
  
  

Social desktop and other online services in action

More changes

As mentioned, the above is just a selection of the changes and improvements to the KDE Desktop Workspace, KDE Application Suites and KDE Application Development Framework. A more comprehensive yet still incomplete list can be found in the KDE 4.3 feature plan on TechBase. Information about applications developed by the KDE community outside of the KDE Application Suites can be found on KDE family webpage and on the kde-apps website. The Marble developers from the KDE Edu team have released Marble 0.8 with KDE 4.3 and compiled an extended visual changelog on their website.

Spread the Word and See What Happens

The KDE Community encourages everybody to spread the word on the Social Web. Submit stories to news sites, use channels like delicious, digg, reddit, twitter, identi.ca. Upload screenshots to services like Facebook, FlickR, ipernity and Picasa and post them to appropriate groups. Create screencasts and upload them to YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo and others. Do not forget to tag uploaded material with the tag kde so it is easier for everybody to find the material, and for the KDE team to compile reports of coverage for the KDE 4.3 announcement. Help us spreading the word, be part of it!

You can follow what is happening around the KDE 4.3 release on the social web live on the brand-new KDE Community livefeed. This site aggregates what happens on identi.ca, twitter, youtube, flickr, picasaweb, blogs and many other social networking sites in real-time. The livefeed can be found on buzz.kde.org.

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Installing KDE 4.3.0

KDE, including all its libraries and its applications, is available for free under Open Source licenses. KDE software runs on various hardware configurations, operating systems and works with any kind of windowmanager or desktop environment. Besides Linux and other UNIX based operating systems you can find Microsoft Windows versions of most KDE applications on the KDE on Windows site and Apple Mac OS X versions on the KDE on Mac site. Experimental builds of KDE applications for various mobile platforms like MS Windows Mobile and Symbian can be found on the web but are currently unsupported.
KDE can be obtained in source and various binary formats from http://download.kde.org and can also be obtained on CD-ROM or with any of the major GNU/Linux and UNIX systems shipping today.

Packagers. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KDE 4.3.0 for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so.
Some of these binary packages are available for free download from KDE's http://download.kde.org. Additional binary packages, as well as updates to the packages now available, will become available over the coming weeks.

Most performance problems with the NVidia binary graphics driver have been resolved in the latest releases of the driver available from NVidia. However due to recent changes in the graphics stack on linux, certain software and hardware configurations might still encounter issues with drawing speed and general slowness. Please contact your distribution vendor or driver developers if you encounter issues.

Package Locations. For a current list of available binary packages of which the KDE Project has been informed, please visit the KDE 4.3.0 Info Page.

Compiling KDE 4.3.0

The complete source code for KDE 4.3.0 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing KDE 4.3.0 are available from the KDE 4.3.0 Info Page.

* Operating systems and trademarks mentioned on this page are property of their respective owners.

About KDE

KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE's products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE4's full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X.

Typically, PC users do not give the low-level software on their computers a second thought. Known as the basic input-output system, or BIOS, this software plays an extremely important role in the way that computers work--checking and preparing hardware when a machine is switched on--but most people don't even know it's there.

California-based Phoenix Technologies--the largest provider of BIOS software to computer makers--has tired of being invisible. Building on the virtualization technology more common to high-power workstations and data centers, the company has revamped its BIOS software to offer features that people tend to associate with a full-blown operating system: the ability to access more peripherals, such as disks and mouses, and networking and wireless communications.

Earlier this year, Phoenix launched the slimmed-down operating system, dubbed HyperSpace, and in June, the company plans a major update, which will add e-mail capabilities and instant messaging. The goal is to allow people faster access to the core tasks for which they use their computers, says Woody Hobbs, CEO of the company.

"Our standard here, when we want to see how the PC should work, is to look at smart phones," he says. "Those are on almost all the time, they don't boot very often, and they are instant-on."

The core system software, as the company now calls its BIOS, builds on Linux operating system software and virtualization technology. Virtualization software started out as a way for users of one operating system, such as Windows XP, to run another operating system, such as Mac OS X or Linux, in a virtual environment. But as the technology has evolved, developers have recognized other advantages, aside from interoperability. By creating a virtualized layer of software, known as a hypervisor, between a computer's hardware and the operating system, for example, data can be transparently checked for viruses and other malicious software. In the business world, a single big server or a cluster of computers can run virtualized systems so that resources can be divvied up among customers.

Yet the technology has not found much use in consumer products. Now every PC and laptop shipped with Phoenix's core system software will also contain the necessary components to use the company's add-on HyperSpace. "It is going after a different audience," says Rob Enderle, a PC technology analyst. "It is trying to create a new market using the ideas of a fast-booting, safe platform that people can work in, but remain outside of Windows."

Office suite: The BIOS software runs a variety of common applications, including a Web browser, a media player, and office productivity software.

The most visible selling point for the slimmed-down operating system is speed. Because it does not carry the weight of numerous drivers, utility software, and add-ons, HyperSpace taxes the processor and memory far less than does Windows, Hobbs says. As time goes on, regular computers are typically slowed by legacy software too, he says. "Your system starts to get sluggish because of the registry, or drivers get out of date, or virus checking has to take place," Hobbs says. "A lot of people tell me that they got a new PC, and it starts up real fast. And I say one word: 'Wait.'"

Phoenix currently offers two versions of HyperSpace. The full-featured version allows PCs and laptops to hot-switch between the main operating system, such as Windows, and the HyperSpace environment. Computers that do not have enough processor power or memory to run both systems at the same time, such as the increasingly popular netbooks, can only boot into one mode at a time.

The software can be used in two other ways. As a nod to netbook manufacturers, Phoenix offers a mode called "dual resume," which allows the users to switch back and forth between the main operating system and HyperSpace completely, with some delay. In the fourth case, the core security software grabs input and output from the network and disk to check the data for security threats. In that case, "you won't even really know you are using hyperspace," Hobbs says.

The company has worked hard to get the technology right, and the CEO says that the user experience, and not the engineering, is the most important part. "If you don't get the experience right, the fact that you created the world's coolest technology doesn't matter," Hobbs says. "If you create instant-on garbage, no one will use it."

After Phoenix upgrades HyperSpace in June, it plans to focus on creating a better development platform to attract more application makers, says Hobbs. Part of this will mean opening an application store, much like Apple's iPhone app store.

Even with those ambitious plans, however, convincing consumers to adopt a new environment will be hard, says analyst Enderle. "This platform could be a native platform for the netbook, but I think it needs to mature a bit before many people will take it as it stands alone."