This is a good interview with Marc Miller, AMD's open source evangelist and all around good guy. He talks about open source development, and generally the whole idea of why a software company would give their "property" away to the world. I think he could have gotten a little bit more into the idea of the GPL and how it protects copyrights - the interviewers lead him down the path that open source basically releases companies from protecting their property, and Marc said nothing to refute that. Its unfortunate that the impression in the software world that open source equals abandonment. The truth is that having open source code in the world demands even more vigilance enforcement.

What gets missed is that the GPL protects the copyright by providing specific conditions for use in exchange for giving up various rights in terms of distribution. Nothing about the GPL says that the company cannot aggressively protect their copyright if they need to. In fact, the success of the GPL as a whole demands that all copyright holders (both corporate and personal) actively defend their code against abuses. Its an interesting juxtaposition that the same companies who fight tooth and nail to protect their closed source software IP seem to be the ones who most often ignore abuses once it gets open sourced.

From time to time, I fall utterly in love with a open source project. Sometimes its because the project solves a specific problem I have, other times because it makes my life way easier, and other times just because it rates high on the cool scale. Today, its a project that does all three. Read on to hear about a project that does all three: bluetooth-alsa.

More fun Geode news today:

Its probably bad for to post two Geode in the Wild features one after another, but this came across my desk, and I think its post worthy: Introducing the Linutop. That should look familiar enough to Geode enthusiasts - its basically our good friend Mambo with a LX instead of a GX. The whole thing is about 4 inches square on both sides, and has plenty of USB ports, and a ethernet dongle and VGA connector out the back. If you've been thinking that you should get a tiny general purpose computer for giggles (web server, audio player, etc, etc) - this is the board to get.

We love it when we see Geode processors out in the wild, doing useful things. And we love to tell you about them, so you can run out, buy them, and keep us employed and caffeinated.

Today's edition is this slick car computer. At $750 bucks for a 7" touchscreen and built in GPS, its a real bargain. I doubt it would run Linux, but if it did, I think I probably couldn't resist buying one.

My new home workstation is finally up and running, and I couldn't be happier. The star of this show is a brand new AMD Athlon X2 4800+ - that is one newer 65 nm parts meaning this bad boy runs cool and silent. It can crank up to 2.5Ghz on both cores, but right now its just quietly ticking along at 1Ghz, thanks to cpufreq. The core temperature sensor (new to linux 2.6.19 - a big shout out to Ruik from #linux-sensors on freenode.net for a most excellent k8temp driver), shows that the core is currently at 53.6 degrees (which is the highest I've seen yet). If that was the temperature outside, it wouldn't even be shorts weather. So, all in all - a big thank you to the good folks at Outside Loop computers. If you need a computer - give them a ring, they'll treat you well.
Like the recently installed web server blade in the basement, this boxen is running Ubuntu, which means that I've officially put Gentoo in my rearview mirror as my distro of choice. I'm still happily using XFCE (its really the best window manager - it gets out of my way and lets me do what I want). Ubuntu goes for broke on the graphics front, so this is easily the best looking desktop I've ever had, especially since the Nvidia chipset is running well, so the graphics are pretty seamless. If you're willing to put your head down, and do a bit of configuration, Linux can make a pretty nice little desktop.
The only problem is that Fritz lost his sleeping spot in favor of a new LCD, so he's been roaming around lately giving me lots of dirty looks. I guess thats the price you pay for being at the leading edge of the technology revolution.