While Egypt is amid protests, London is also facing another round of protests by students angry by their Government’s recent announcement of a rise in tuition fees. However, it appears modern technology will be taking a more active role, with a new mobile app designed to help them avoid trouble.
If you remember back in October, Oracle launched a huge lawsuit against Google, claiming that the Android OS was lifting code produced by them. While Google has disagreed with that fact, a little investigation by a blogger does reveal that Oracle was right after all.
It appears, according to FOSSpatents’ Florian Mueller, that the lifted code was decompiled from Java 2 Standard Edition and redistributed under the Apache open source licence without Oracle’s permission, and 37 of those files are Android source files marked wither “PROPRIETARY / CONFIDENTIAL” and “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE” by Oracle, and their new owners Sun Microsystems.
There are, according to Mueller, six more files showing more copying from Google that form part of Android 2.2 Froyo and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
We don’t like to regurgitate content, as much as the next person, so we invite you to read Muller’s analysis about this entire lawsuit and his recent findings. While, below, we will leave you with a document that proves one case of infringement, after the jump.
Welcome to the Morning Briefing for Tuesday 28 December, where we highlight the tech stories from across the web and what we are watching here at TECHGEEK.com.au.
Here’s what we are watching:
A Dutch research facility has found a way to send organ status updates with a new wireless technology called a Body Area Network (BAN) so that they can be forwarded to doctors via a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. Yes, this means that your liver is getting its own IP address – not that IP addresses are scarce.
IMEC, the organisation, has used its own ultra-low-powered electrocardiogram sensors to perform the demonstration, but it isn’t the first. However, it’s the first that integrates better with gadgets, such as phones. It simply needs a dongle that can fit in an SD memory card slot in order to stream data. And for open source hippies, it runs on Android.
To make matters a bit more complicated, it isn’t using Bluetooth to transmit data, according to New Scientist. Instead, it is using a specially designed nRF24L01+ radio because Bluetooth uses too much power and would make the sensor last barely a day. This radio is said to allow the sensors last about a week.
Video of the demonstration is below, after the jump.
We sent some more questions before we published our interview with Nokia’s Purnima Kochikar, Vice President of Forum Nokia; but we didn’t get them answered before today. So, here is (what we deem) Part Two of the e-mail interview with her.
Q. The Qt UI framework makes it easier for applications to be built for both mobile and desktop computers. What do you see are the benefits of this, and do you think or see applications for desktops using Qt porting their products for mobile devices?
As Qt on top of MeeGo will run on multiple device types, people can keep their favorite apps whenever they change device or upgrade; they are not locked in to one kind of device or manufacturer.For developers, they not only get the cross-platform benefit with Qt across Symbian and Maemo, but in the future also to wide range of devices built using this new merged software platform.
This week saw Nokia hold a developer day in Sydney; and before the event took place, TECHGEEK.com.au managed to get an e-mail interview with Purnima Kochikar, the Vice President of Forum Nokia – the developer community. We talked about Ovi and Nokia’s embrace of open source technology – as well as Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo.
So, hope you enjoy this little interview.
Editor’s Note: The questions were sent before MeeGo’s announcement; the answers, however, arrived after the announcement.
Q: Nokia is currently embracing the open source community – like contributing to Linux in terms of Bluetooth. What does Nokia see in open source in helping its development?
Nokia is making significant use of open source software, as well as contributing to the open source community. Our open source approach is key to engaging a broad community – developers, operators, chipset vendors, OEMs etc. We believe that the larger the ecosystem, the greater the innovation and thus the richer the user experience. We also see that the greater the scale, the greater the opportunity for value creation.
Intel and Nokia have decided to announce during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that they will be merging their not-yet-finished, Linux-based mobile OSs into one – and they have called it the MeeGo. While we don’t know which parts of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo will be dropped or present in MeeGo, expect this to be (according to the press release anyways) a variety of devices, “including pocketable mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle information systems”.
“Through open innovation, MeeGo will create an ecosystem that is second to none, drawing in players from different industries. It will support a range of business models across the value chain, building on the experience and expertise of Nokia, Intel and all those who will join us. Simply put, MeeGo heralds a new era of mobile computing,” CEO for Nokia Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in a statement.
“This is a foundational step in our evolving relationship with Nokia. The merging of these two important assets into an open source platform is critical toward providing a terrific experience across a variety of devices and gaining cross- industry support,” CEO and President of Intel Paul Otellini said.
Expect to see Nokia’s Ovi store on phones; while the AppUpSM Center from Intel won’t be disappearing – it will just be present on devices using Intel’s Atom Processor. And, if you are still worried about this no longer going to be open sourced – it still will be.
Full PR is after the jump.
VMware will buy Zimbra from Yahoo for an undisclosed sum of cash. The open-source email suite provides email, contacts, calendar, search, document collaboration and authoring and VoIP tools for corporations and businesses, including Digg, H&R Block and Comcast.
Microsoft will release a Windows 7 tool under the open-source license GPL after it had violated the terms of the license by not making it open source after modifying the code. The tool in question, the ImageMaster USB/DVD, allows users to create a bootable USB version of the Windows 7 DVD, or a DVD backup, from the electronic version of Windows 7, which can be found at the Microsoft Store online.
Microsoft has announced that it will ship popular ASP and PHP open-source projects, among other components, for its Web Platform for developers – for free. Basically this installs your choice of the projects, .NET Framework 3.5, IIS7.0 and Extensions, IIS FastCGI, Visual Web Developer 2008, SQL Server 2008 Express, SQL Server Management Studio, ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight Tools.
The International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) has rejected appeals by four countries to reject Microsoft’s Office Open XML formats as an international standard, and since no further appeals can be made against the decision – the OOXML format can start to be re-worked to operate with Open XML, a file format used with OpenOffice.org.
Reddit has made a big announcement today, as of Thursday (or Wednesday in America) the site’s code is open source, under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL).
The social news site, acquired by Conde Nast in 2006, will allow users work on the site themselves, than petitioning for changes. It now counts 4.5 unique visitors monthly, and though smaller than Digg and Yahoo’s Buzz, it has grown 1,000 percent since Conde Nast bought the site and merged it with its Wired Digitial operations.
However, not all will be released under CPAL. The codes that will remain locked away are related to preventing cheating, ‘gaming’ the system and fighting spam. However, the algorithm that chooses which stories be on the front page will be made to the public.
CPAL is also the same license that Facebook used when it open sourced its platform.
The BBC is set to release their iPlayer in the coming weeks, and their service will be compatible only on Windows. Now complaints by the Open Source Consortium, the BBC have now agreed to address the concerns.