The Dirty Little Secret About Google Android (ZD Net) — By some reports, the Open Handset Alliance is in now shambles. Members such as HTC have gone off and added lots of their own software and customizations to their Android devices without contributing any code back to the Alliance. Motorola and Samsung have begun taking the same approach. The collaborative spirit is gone — if it ever existed at all. And, Google is proving to be a poor shepherd for the wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing that make up the telecoms and the handset makers in the Alliance. The mobile phone industry is as messed up as enterprise Unix was in the 80s. (via Hacker News)
MilOSS Working Group 2 Wrap Up — A challenge was issued at the barcamp lunch in response to the need for a canonical set of briefing charts detailing the value of open source software for the military, from security to basic definitions to legal issues. All-in-all, about 100 briefing charts were created and will soon be made available to the community to use/modify/tweak as needed. (via johnmscott on Twitter)
Russian Cybercrime: Geeks not Gangsters — “Basically, from what we’ve seen on the forums much of what goes on with the sales of services is much more petty criminal activity, or crimes of opportunity,” Grugq said. “Often poor students who like to hack for fun will sell access to a server they’ve owned. Many don’t even realise that this is an illegal activity. This sale will be for $20 or $30 (£!3 or £19), which is a lot of money for a poor student in Russia, but for a hardened criminal mastermind bent on destroying Western civilization — not so much.” We need to launch a distributed denial of students attack on Russia. (via jasonwryan on Twitter)
