I'm a little bit late posting today so by now just about everybody else has already reported this, but in case you missed it (or in case Thunq is your sole source for news), You-Review.net has posted an interview with Mark Tilden, the controversial roboticist who's responsible for the immensely popular line of WowWee robots including the Robosapien, the Robosapien V2, the Roboraptor, and the Robopet. The interview was conducted via Blackberry over the course of a week and covers Tilden's thoughts on robot building […]

In a post to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) last week, Linus Torvalds plainly stated that the Linux kernel would not be moving to the third revision of the General Public License (GPL). The reasons given in his post included the the requirement that developers publish their private keys and the amount of effort it would take to track down every kernel contributor to gain their permission to update the license of their code. Interestingly, he did not initially comment on the new, […]

Earlier this week, I wrote that ZDNet UK had recently spoken with Alan Cox about his opinion of the third revision of the General Public License (GPL). The original CNET News.com article was a little light on content, offering a few quotes from Cox but not much else. Today CNET News.com has published the full interview which took place last week after a Cox speech at the Trusted Computing conference in London. In addition to GPLv3 the interview covers OSS, DRM, software patents, and […]

After Linus Torvald's outright rejection of the third revision of the General Public License (GPL) last week, it appears that Alan Cox, the Linux kernel's unofficial number two man, remains open-minded, sticking by his wait-and-see approach to the revision which will be open to public discussion for most of 2006. Cox spoke recently with ZDNet UK, and his comments to them are similar to those he made in the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) thread that brought Linus's misgivings about the new version to […]

Even though the first discussion draft of the third version of the General Public License is only a little over a week old, Linus Torvalds, father of the Linux kernel, has made it clear that the kernel source code will remain under GPLv2. The revelation came in a message Linus posted to a thread in the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) yesterday. In addition to clearing up some confusion about the language the kernel's license was originally published under, Torvalds succinctly and definitively summarized […]

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) released the first draft of the General Public License (GPL) version 3 on Monday at the First International Conference on GPLv3, a two day conference held at MIT. As expected, the draft addresses patent litigation protection and digital rights management (DRM) systems among other issues. The new version, when finally adopted, will be the first major revision of the widely popular software license in the more than fifteen years since version 2 was adopted in 1991. […]

LinuxDevices.com has a posting about a newly launched website by one of its members that combines two of my favorite things: Linux and robots. The website, LinuxRobots.org, was created by Michael Shiloh, an electrical engineer, Linux buff, and robot builder for Survival Research Laboratories (SRL), the performance art group whose spectacularly noisy and destructive robot battles were the precursor to modern robot competitions like Robot Wars and BattleBots. Besides providing an online meeting place for Linux robot enthusiasts, Shiloh has built a small robot and […]

The first major overhaul of the General Public License (GPL) in almost 15 years is set to be released to the public by the Free Software Foundation at the First International Conference on GPLv3 at MIT on January 16th. Monday's draft, which will begin the public debate about the wording of version 3, is just the first of 2-3 "discussion drafts" planned for this year leading up to the final revision. The official version is scheduled to be completed one year to the day […]

I must admit that I am having a hard time keeping up with all of the reports coming out of IREX. Even though I am falling behind, there are still a handful of robots in my backlog that I feel are worthy of mention, the first being the HOAP-3. Fujitsu has been developing the HOAP (Humanoid for Open Architecture Platform) series of robots for several years. The latest incarnation, the HOAP-3, was first announced in July of 2005. It stands 60 cm tall, weighs almost […]

Popular Science has an article today about the Kegbot, a keg fridge crossed with a Linux computer. Developed by software engineer Mike Wakerly, the system is built around a microcontroller that manages a valve and flowmeter that's been integrated into the tap line of an ordinary keg fridge. The controller is interfaced to a Linux computer and software developed by Wakerly that manages user access, tracks pour totals and keg performance statistics, and publishes it all online. […]