Mozilla, Inc.

So the Mozilla Foundation passes control of development over to a for-profit subsidiary, citing financial and tax reasons. Sounds a bit odd. I work for a non-profit and we would never turn development over to a for-profit, at least not directly. We would setup a for-profit subsidiary and license it the code to exploit commercially outside of the range of our non-profit charter. I’m thinking these boys either got bad advice or they aren’t explaining it very well. Either way, we’ll certainly be hearing more about this.

InformationWeek > Open Source, Mozilla > Mozilla Creates For-Profit Unit, But Insists It’s Not ‘Selling Out’ > August 3, 2005
The Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday launched a for-profit subsidiary that will take over the development of the popular Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client, but assured its supporters in the open-source development community that it wasn’t “selling out.”

Make WinXP Do The OSX Thing

I’m a big fan of modifying your XP desktop to make it work better. The OSX route is one way to go. I prefer a complete shell replacement.

MAKE: Blog: Seven Steps to turn your PC into a Mac
Instead of waiting for those Intel Macs to ship, you could just transform your XP PC in to a Mac, well- at least the look and feel. These are 7 steps to do just that. My pal Lenn did this awhile back, and people used to ask if his Sony laptop was some weird new Mac or something.

Compromise Windows With USB Device

Of interest to teknoids, especially with more and more schools handing out USB keys like candy.

USB Devices Can Crack Windows
Vulnerabilities in USB drivers for Windows could allow an attacker to take control of locked workstations using a specially programmed Universal Serial Bus device, according to an executive from SPI Dynamics, which discovered the security hole.

Yahoo! Snaps Up Konfabulator

Good move for Yahoo! as it gives them direct access to the desktop on windows and Mac platforms. Expect a lot of little Yahoo!Widgets in the near future.

Macworld: News: Yahoo! acquires Konfabulator
Yahoo! Inc. on Monday will announce the acquisition of Konfabulator, a Macintosh and Windows application that allows users to run mini files known as Widgets on their desktop — the same model used by Apple for its Dashboard application. Yahoo! company executives said they would also be giving Konfabulator away for free, completely doing away with the US$19.95 currently charged for the product.

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