File-sharing fills the nation's MP3 players

Almost one-fifth of the music on portable players in the UK was obtained from file sharing networks, according to research published by British Music Rights (BMR), an umbrella organisation representing a number of composers', songwriters' and music publishers' bodies. P2P downloads made up 18 per cent of the digital tunes, with a further 11 per cent copied from friends' CDs'; 65 per cent were ripped from purchased CDs with the remaining six per cent from paid-for download. BMR has published the figures to garner support for a music industry call for a change in copyright law. ...more

Next-gen Palm platform split on devices

PalmSource has hinted that the next version of its operating system may have separate interfaces for smartphones and PDAs. Palm OS is currently being rebuilt using Linux and codenamed the Access Linux Platform (ALP) after PalmSource's new owner, Japan-based Access. It will feature a new system for handling the user interface known as MAX. ...more

Linux body pools patents for open source

An international Linux advocacy body has announced a new initiative aimed at providing a central repository for software patents and patent pledges relating to open source software. The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) patent commons project, which has the backing of Linux founder Linus Torvalds, will make it easier for open source developers to make their patents available to share. It will also contain patents that are owned by the likes of IBM, Nokia, Novell, Red Hat and Sun but are pledged to the open source community. ...more

Leopard is the next OS X big cat

The next version of OS X will be codenamed Leopard and released either late 2006 or early 2007 to coincide with the debut of Microsoft's Longhorn. OS X 10.5 will be the first upgrade after the first Intel-based Macs start to become available, although a tweaked version of 10. ...more

Novell unveils Linux Small Business Suite 9

Novell is hoping that local channel partners' woes with dealing with Microsoft products will quickly drive uptake of its new Linux Small Business Suite 9 (SBS 9), announced at the company's BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City. Traditionally a Microsoft domain, the small business sector should be far from easy for open-source companies to crack. In-house skills are Microsoft; despite a notorious reputation for security, there's little momentum to improve it; and access to source code holds few attractions for many small businesses. ...more