The feud between Minix inventor and operating system czar Andrew W. Tanenbaum and Linux Torvalds is legendary in the OS world. Before Linux there was Minix. Torvalds used to be a Minix user who set up his first Linux version in 1991 on Professor Tanenbaum’s operating system. Mr. Tanenbaum has now agreed to write a guest editorial for Linux Magazine. His opinion has not changed over the years: Linux (and Windows) are “unreliable.”
The FTP team at the Debian project have decided that the Affero GPL version 3 licensing (AGPLv3) is consistent enough with the guidelines of the Linux distro that software with the licensing can go into Debian's main archive.
Moonlight is the name of Novell's Linux implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight 1.0 technology. Moonlight is now available in a Beta version for 32 and 64 Bit Linux systems, albeit only for Firefox users.
Mandriva's financial situation appears to be none too rosy. At the end of the year, the distributor will terminate the employment of two of its freelance workers, Adam Williams, effectively the Community Manager, and Package Manager Oden Eriksson.
Market watcher Net Applications has found in their recent statistics that Microsoft's representation in operating systems has fallen to below 90% of the market. Meanwhile, Mozilla's Firefox is rising to a more than 20% share in the browser market.
