BusyBox developers agreed to end the GPL lawsuit against Verizon, which was filed by the Software Freedom Law Center. Verizon distributes BusyBox in devices that are provided to Verizon by Actiontec Electronics, Inc.. Under the agreement, "
Actiontec has agreed to appoint an Open Source Compliance Officer within its organization to monitor and ensure GPL compliance, to publish the source code for the version of BusyBox it previously distributed on its Web site, and to undertake substantial efforts to notify previous recipients of BusyBox from Actiontec and its customers, including Verizon, of their rights to the software under the GPL".

As read on The 451 Group

With version 3.0 of its suite, OpenOffice will make the switch to the GPLv3. There's also the move from the Joint Copyright Assignment (JCA) to the Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA), easing the hosting of source code of extensions. Let's hope it will help solve some problems of the past.

As seen reported by The 451 Group.

Matthew Aslett, from The 452 Group, brings a short analysis of the power of the GPL and BSD licenses for software makers. The reasoning is that the fact that BSD allows anyone to add proprietary bits makes it easier for competitors to overtake the main developer of the project. Worth reading if you plan to publish your software under an open source license.

Jet Multimedia has decided to publish Huria, their Content Management System for mobile websites, under the GPL. It is based on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP) stack.

All the website and documentation is currently only available in french.

The installation process is surprising: download one PHP script, put it on your webserver and access it. All this will then be done through your browser, even the download of the software.

As seen on Toolinux.

Palo is an Multi-dimensional OLAP server developed for use with MS Excel, but still available to integrate with other applications thanks to multiple language APIs. It is described by its maker Jedox as "a cell-based database that is multidimensional, hierarchical and memory-based". Version 2.0 is available for download, but the 300 page manual, still at version 1.5, has to be ordered, and costs about 20$. Palo-Server is available under the GPL and a commercial license for proprietary developments.

India based Zyxware has released, under the GPL, a web-based software developed to track epidemics, mixing data reported by hospitals, geographical data and Google Maps. Source code will soon be posted on Sourceforge, but can already be requested online.

A demo is also available, with all info in the announcement.

Free and Open Source Software is indeed a perfect match for this kind of software.

SugarCRM has announced that they're switching to the GPL v3 for the Sugar Community Edition 5.0, due to be released in september. Earlier version are available under the Sugar Public License (based on the Mozilla Public License), and a FAQ is available about the change.