4Front Technologies is proud to announce the release of the source code to Open Sound System (OSS) v4.0. The software currently runs on Linux, SolarisTM, SCO UnixWareTM and FreeBSD platforms.

While I've known about the free, open-source desktop publishing application Scribus, until I happened across this article today I didn't know that Scribus is a cross-platform program that runs not just in Linux/Unix but also on computers using the Macintosh OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. That raises my opinion of Scribus immediately.

The FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, Solaris, and Windows operating systems have kernels that provide comparable facilities. Interestingly, their code bases share almost no common parts, while their development processes vary dramatically.

Operating systems seem to have received more attention these days than they have ever before, and while there are numerous available discussion points, in relation to new versions of these operating systems, one of the biggest trends that has been fascinating to watch is how people are switching operating systems like crazy.

In an unforseen move Microsoft has announced the release of the Windows 95, 98, Me and MS-DOS source code for today only. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that "by releasing the code for these operating systems we are allowing software developers worldwide to create better applications for these systems".

What's the point of GPLv2 libraries? What's the purpose of libraries associated with licenses anyway? Do they provide useful guidance or impose annoying restrictions? Who wants to puzzle out the legalese of licenses and their appurtenances when working with code and systems that are supposed to be open?

Alien Arena, Wormux and Crack Attack and a lot of other free cross-platform games will be found in this comprehensive list. Some games may not work on all operating systems but most of them surely will. There are also games in my list that aren’t true Open Source software, but most of them are and all the games are at least completely free to download and play.

I love python for a number of reasons. Brevity is one of them. Readability is another. However writing readable concise code can take some time to getting used to. This post discusses some code snippets especially in the context of some of the comparisons done between python and clojure.

a library for retrieving facts from operating systems.A cross-platform Ruby library for retrieving facts from operating systems. Supports multiple resolution mechanisms, any of which can be restricted to working only on certain operating systems or environments. Facter is especially useful for retrieving things like operating system names, IP addresses, MAC addresses, and SSH keys.