See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

GPL Farm is a developers family with a very innovative idea. GPL Farm will collect Linux developers around the world throught our developers center, each developer subscribes in our site, then we will launch a software project with guidelines and a fixed timeline. Registered developers will subscribe to a project, then we'll select a programmer who will work on the project and will assign it. Then the programmer starts making the requested software, within the established time. The programmer submit his work to GPL Farm, then we'll test it with our Testers Staff. At this point we pay to the programmer the accorded ammount and the final step is that GPL Farm will release the software under the GPL license. Easy no?

Payment for projects will range from around US$500 to US$30,000 depending on the complexity of the project. Projects are categorized into groups of life forms such as insects, birds, reptiles, mammals and dinosaurs. Insect projects are small and easy to develop, whereas dinosaur projects are large and long term.

Developers will be required to sign a contract, and payment will be made when the project reaches beta testing status. Developers who don't complete projects will be ineligible for further work. Once finished, the project will belong to the GPL Farm, and will be released with a GPL license.

Beta testers will work for free, they will have access to the code in an early state, and presumably, will be able to add their direction to the project with feedback to the developer.

The documentation does not go into much detail about how the various projects will be selected, presumably, that will be done by the GPLFarm leaders. It does not appear that the sponsors will have a lot of power in choosing categories that their funds will support, although that does seem like a logical method for assuring more motivated sponsors.

The GPL Farm looks like a novel idea, and will hopefully succeed in focusing developer efforts onto useful new projects for Linux.

Audio

Linux Audio Mailing Lists. In the current Musings section of the Linux Sound Software site, Dave Philips mentions a new mailing list for Linux sound enthusiasts, the Linux Audio User list, which focuses on the user side of Linux audio software. Also, for the more development oriented people, the Linux Audio Developer list covers the software side of Linux sound.

Databases

Release 0.1 of myperl. Brian (A.K.A. Krow) discusses the embedding of Perl code in mySQL as a stored procedure, and introduces an experimental project called myperl for achieving this capability.

Education

GNU/Linux in education report #51 for August 24, 2001. The GNU/Linux in education report for August 24, 2001 is out and includes discussions on Linux in Australian schools, free software at the World Education Forum, and a new project that is assembling case studies of open source software in schools.

Electronics

New Icarus Verilog Snapshot. A new snapshot release of the Icarus Verilog compiler, dated August 26, 2001, is available. This version includes speed optimizations, and adds functionality for general bit selections.

Embedded Systems

Embedded Linux applications (IBM developerWorks). IBM's developerWorks explains the benefits of embedded Linux and offers some options in this arena. "Some real-time hardware and software Linux APIs to consider are RTLinux, RTAI, EL, and Linux-SRT. RTLinux is a hard real-time Linux API originally developed at the New Mexico Institute of Technology. RTAI (DIAPM) is a spin-off of the RTLinux real-time API that was developed by programmers at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Polytechnic Politecnico di Milano (DIAPM). EL/IX is a proposed POSIX-based hard real-time Linux API being promoted by Red Hat. And Linux-SRT is a soft real-time alternative to real-time APIs, which provides performance-enhancing capabilities to any Linux program without requiring that the program be modified or recompiled."

Embedded Linux Newsletter for August 23, 2001. The August 23, 2001 edition of the Embedded Linux Newsletter includes news of HP's expanded role in the embedded Linux market, the multivendor set top box project known as Linux4.tv, and Lineo's latest financing deal.

HP expands commitment to Linux in devices (LinuxDevices). LinuxDevices covers HP's upcoming LinuxWorld announcements, including the new Chai-LX. ``Bruce Perens, HP's senior strategist on Linux and Open Source, put HP's commitment to Embedded Linux this way: "Linux is now the standard operating system platform for embedded systems at HP."''

BusyBox 0.60.1 released. A new minor release of the BusyBox integrated toolkit is available. Version 0.60.1 fixes a few minor bugs that showed up in the recent 0.60 release.

Embedded Open Motif. ICS has announced the availability of their version of Open Motif and some accompanying applications for embedded Linux systems on the Compaq IPAQ and the Agenda VR3. The applications will be released with a GPL license.

MontaVista releases library optimizer tool. MontaVista has announced the open source release of its "Library Optimizer Tool," which trims down library code in order to produce smaller executable files for embedded applications.

Interoperability

Wine Snapshot for August 24, 2001. A new Wine snapshot, dated August 24, 2001, is available for download. The Wine Announcements page lists the following improvements:

• Inter-process SendMessage support.
• More DDE improvements.
• Preparation work for shared window handles.
• Several debugger improvements.
• Better GDI objects management.
• Lots of bug fixes.

IRC Software

Jabber Weekly News for August 29, 2001. The August 29, 2001 issue of a new newsletter, the Jabber Weekly News, has been published.

Network Management

OpenNMS Update for August 24, 2001. The latest update is available from the OpenNMS project. News includes a switch from JSDT to OpenJMS, dealing with the demise of ICMPD, the replacement of SCM, and new functionality for the Web UI. The OpenNMS people have also released some new documentation, see the new Quick Start doc and the OpenNMS Install Guide.

Science

Report on Open Source Initiatives in Bioinformatics (bioinformatics). Bioinformatics looks at a new report that examines the role of open source software in genetic studies. The report is in pdf format.

Web-site Development

The latest from Zope Newbies. This week, the Zope Newbies Site includes discussions on xml-rpc, optimizing PostgreSQL, paying for web services, and an Athlon 1.33 Ghz box that broke the 20,000 Pystones/sec speed limit.

SkunkWeb 3.0 released. Version 3.0 of the SkunkWeb Web Application Server has been released. This version follows several beta version and features fixes for a number of bugs.

Window Systems

FLTK 1.1.0b1 is available. Version 1.1.0b1 of FLTK, the Fast Light Tool Kit, has been announced. This release includes many new features. If you are not familiar with FLTK, the FLTK Home Page may be a good place to start.

GNOME 2.0 Accessibility Framework early release. The GNOME Foundation has announced the early access release of the GNOME 2.0 Accessibility Framework. The Framework assists users with disabilities as they work with GNOME applications. Much of this work has apparently been contributed by Sun.

Miscellaneous

Letter to SourceForge users. Here is a letter to SourceForge users (and that's all of us, in one way or another) on VA Linux's plans to sell a proprietary version of the SourceForge system. "By selling proprietary software together with Open Source software, VA is making it easier for its enterprise customers to purchase and deploy SourceForge software. VA Linux will be distributing SourceForge Enterprise Edition to its corporate customers under a combination of the Mozilla Public License (version 1.1) and a proprietary software license." The word is that nothing will change for SourceForge.net users.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

Application Links
GIMP
Mozilla
Galeon
High Availability
ht://Dig
mnoGoSearch
MagicPoint
Wine
Worldforge
Zope

Open Source Code Collections
Berlios
Freshmeat
OpenSourceDirectory
Savannah
Le Serveur Libre
SourceForge
Sweetcode

Programming Languages

Caml

Caml Weekly News for August 22 to 28, 2001. The latest Caml Weekl News is available. Topics include a Vim 6.0 OCaml indent file, a binding between OCaml 3 and OpenSLP 1.0.1, and the CamlZip library.

FORTRAN

Caldera Intel developing debugger for Fortran 95. Caldera seems to have decided that its customers want Fortran; the company has announced a joint venture with Intel to add Fortran 95 support to the gdb debugger on both the IA32 and Itanium architectures.

Java

The Go-ForIt Chronicles: Memoirs of eXtreme DragonSlayers, Part 5 (IBM developerWorks). Allison Pearce Wilson covers view beans in an IBM developerWorks article, the fifth in a series on Java. "This article discusses how view beans can solve a common design dilemma -- where to code presentation logic. Allison explains how to use view beans to cleanly separate components in a Web application while still providing a rich user interface."

Catching OutOfMemoryErrors to Preserve Monitoring and Server Processes (O'Reilly). Jack Shirazi gives some ideas on the best ways to deal with Java out of memory errors in an O'Reilly article. "Encountering an OutOfMemoryError means that the garbage collector has already tried its best to free memory by reclaiming space from any objects that are no longer strongly referenced."

Perl

New list for perl and open source in government (use Perl). There is a new mailing list for the discussion of perl and other open source software in use in government.

Perl 5 Porters for August 27, 2001. The August 27, 2001 edition of the Perl 5 Porters digest is out. This week's topics include tricks with vstrings, callbacks in the core, CvMETHOD and ->can(), coderefs in @INC, malloc madness, and more.

Perl 6 Porters for August 27, 2001. The August 27, 2001 edition of the Perl 6 Porters digest is also out. Topics include a debate on closures, method signatures, Perl 6 internals, and a module plan for Perl 6.

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary #51. The August 27, 2001 edition of the PHP Weekly Summary is available. Topics include an updated Universe CORBA extension, changes to rand(), new PDF functions, the Apache 2 module, DOMXML, API changes, and more.

PHP Review 0.9.0-rc2 available. Version 0.9.0-rc2 of the PHP Review book review project is available with a number of internal simplifications.

Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for August 23. This week's Python-URL! covers topics such as unit testing and GUIs, python IDEs, and a number of software announcements.

Python 2.2a2 released. The second alpha of Python 2.2 has been released. Python 2.2 has a number of new features; see Andrew Kuchling's writeup for the full list.

PySSH 0.1 released. Version 0.1 of PySSH, the Python module for controlling ssh and scp, has been announced. PySSH is released under the Python license.

Python Installer 4a3 released. Python Installer version 4a3 has been released. Python Installers allows you to build self extracting executables out of Python scripts. Python Installer is released under the Old Python Style license.

PyInline: Put C source code into Python. Ken Simpson has released PyInline, a module that allows source code from other languages to be installed into Python code.

Profiler for multi-threaded Python. Itamar Shtull-Trauring has released threaded_profile, a pofiler for multi-threaded Python programs.

Ruby

The latest from the Ruby Garden. This week, the Ruby Garden features articles on hidden per-method variables, compression of Ruby libraries, an extension to the Binding class to add reflection capabilities, and more.

Smalltalk

Report from Camp Smalltalk Essen ESUG 2001. John M. McIntosh writes about ESUG 2001, the Essen Camp Smalltalk conference. Check it out for the latest Smalltalk happenings.

Get Smalltalk News Updates Via Email. Monty Kamath has announced a new email list that you can sign up for to receive the latest Smalltalk news and event information.

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for August 25, 2001. Here is the latest Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!, which looks at Tcl as a part of an SDL-mediated solution to grab video from your QuickCam. Other video applications that use Tcl are discussed.

Integrated Development Environments

Build Better Java Apps (TechWeb). Here's a review of Lutris Enhydra, a Java application server and development environment that runs on a number of platforms, including several flavors of Linux. "An interesting note: Enhydra can be used on systems ranging from totally open source to completely commercial. Running it on a totally open-source system can save thousands of dollars in start-up costs. However, this assumes that an organization has the infrastructure to keep these systems up and running. This is especially important given the lack of formal tech support for most open-source programs."

Miscellaneous

Automake 1.5 is available. Version 1.5 of Automake has been announced, and is available for download. Automake is a tool for generating Makefiles. Version 1.5 brings several new conditional tests, support for Python and compiled Java, along with numerous bug fixes.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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