We’re not all about Linux here at FOSSwire - in fact I personally love trying out any alternative and wacky platform you can give me, so today we’re going to stray from our usual Linux territory a bit and take a look at another free and open source operating system, SyllableOS.

SyllableOS bills itself as:

The goal of Syllable is to create a reliable and easy-to-use open source operating system for the home and small office user. We also want to encourage developers to create an operating system that is intuitive, easy to use, and powerful.

It’s still under quite heavy development, but for the little time it has been around, it’s already got:

• Booting usually takes less than ten seconds
• A full GUI is built into the OS
• Support for a wide range of common hardware devices, including video, network, and sound cards from manufacturers such as Intel, AMD, 3Com, nVidia, and Creative (see Syllable Hardware for a complete list)
• Internet access through an Ethernet network (though PPP and PPPoE are not yet supported)
• A graphical web browser (ABrowse) and e-mail client (Whisper), and hundreds of other native applications (see Kamidake for a complete list)
• A journalled file system, modelled on the BeOS file system
• An application launcher (like the Windows Start button)
• 99% POSIX compliance
• GUI-based preferences tools for networking, display preferences, user administration, etc.
• The entire source is available via the GPL
• An object-oriented programming API

I thought I’d take a quick look at the 0.6 release, so I grabbed the 0.6.3 Live CD and booted it.

Read the rest of SyllableOS 0.6.3

Firefox is probably the single free software project that is used by the most people and it’s a browser I personally love. Today I’m going to look at the issue of how to use a master password to protect your saved passwords.

In this tutorial, I’ll be referring to Firefox, but you’ll probably also be able to do this on other browsers based on Firefox (like IceWeasel or Flock). Screenshots are taken from my Fedora Core 6 Linux machine, but should look similar on other platforms.

A master password is exactly as it sounds - a password that you have to enter before you can use any of the other ones you’ve saved in your Firefox profile. You do lose a little convienience if you set one up, as the first time in a browsing session you need to use one of your passwords, you’ll have to enter the master password, but once you’ve done it that one time, you won’t have to reenter it unless you close down Firefox and reopen it.

It does provide a security bonus, however, so it’s completely up to you whether or not you use it.

Read the rest of Firefox tip - use a master password

The Free Software Foundation have just released their third draft of the next version of the most popular free/open source software licence, the GNU General Public Licence.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today released the third discussion draft for version 3 of the most widely used free software license, the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).

Today’s draft incorporates the feedback received from the general public, official discussion committees, and two international conferences held in India and Japan. Many significant changes have been made since the previous draft, released in July 2006. In recognition of this fact, the FSF now plans to publish one additional draft before the final text of GPL version 3.

Apparently, the changes since draft 2 include:

• First-time violators can have their license automatically restored if
  they remedy the problem within thirty days.
• License compatibility terms have been simplified, with the goal of
  making them easier to understand and administer.
• Manufacturers who include the software in consumer products must also
  provide installation information for the software along with the
  source. This change provides more narrow focus for requirements that
  were proposed in previous drafts.
• New patent requirements have been added to prevent distributors from
  colluding with patent holders to provide discriminatory protection
  from patents.

All of the drafting is being done in the open, and you can take a look at or join in the discussion on the FSF’s GPLv3 website.

What becomes GPLv3 will have repercussions for the whole computing industry and judging by this press release, it looks like Stallman and friends are looking to prevent another MS-Novell deal.

It’s certainly interesting stuff.