Well the ink had barely dried on our recent Linux Blog Safari column about security when news came out last week that a new Linux kernel vulnerability had been discovered. D'oh! Affecting all 2.4 and 2.6 kernels since 2001 on all architectures, the flaw was found and then described Thursday on the cr0 blog by Julien Tinnes and Tavis Ormandy. "Since it leads to the kernel executing code at NULL, the vulnerability is as trivial as it can get to exploit," wrote Tinnes.

In 2004, KnowledgeTree CEO Daniel Chalef had no idea his interest in developing an open source document management product would thrust his South African company into prominence. That's the time a government agency there approached him to help the Medical Research Council retain control of its documents and track shared access. That South African council is an agency much like the U.S. NIH. Being summoned to help such an influential group was an unexpected boost in growing his business.

The days of summer may be coming to an end, but that's no reason to be downhearted. Indeed, just consider the news that in its recent annual filing to the SEC, Microsoft for the first time listed Red Hat and Canonical as official competitors! The company "faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market," the filing reads. "Competing commercial software products, including variants of Unix, are supplied by competitors such as Apple, Canonical, and Red Hat."

LiMo Foundation, a Linux mobile operating system consortium, announced that two of its members -- NEC and Panasonic -- are shipping the latest round of LiMo-compliant devices. NTT Docomo plans to use the new handsets in its Prime and Style series of phones, marketed primarily in Japan. The eight new phones are purported to have advanced features, including an enhanced 8-megapixel camera and better integration capabilities, but not everyone is impressed with the new releases.

VMware is acquiring SpringSource, an enterprise and Web application development and management company, to eventually build out a Platform as a Service offering. Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will pay approximately $362 million in cash and equity, and it will assume approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options. The deal has already been approved by SpringSource's stockholders and is expected to close in Q3. At bottom, this is a play to expand VMware's virtualization bona fides, as well as to broaden its expertise and offerings in the cloud.

Motorola's long-awaited Android phones are about to hit the market at last -- one will reportedly go to Verizon, the other to T-Mobile. None of the three companies will comment on the devices, but the blog "Android and Me" has posted what it says are tech specs on both devices. The Verizon device, called the "Sholes," will focus on gaming, according to the site, while the T-Mobile phone, called the "Morrison," will have GPS, a compass, email support and several other iPhone-like features.

Among all the reasons geeks choose Linux, security is often near the top of the list. And no wonder -- personal preferences aside on all the other many relevant issues, there's plenty of evidence to suggest our favorite operating system really is more impervious. A study a few years back, for example, not only concluded that Linux security then was even better than had been thought compared to Windows security, but also went on to label as "myths" and "logical errors" many of the most common arguments to the contrary.

Code hunters are spotting with greater frequency defective coding that could open security holes in open source software. The Open Source Report 2008 and the Architecture Library Report, conducted by Coverity for the U.S. Department Homeland Security Cybersecurity Open Source Hardening Project, shows more than 10,000 defects fixed since project launch in March 2006. The report, delivered in July at the OSCON 2009gathering, used the same analysis tools and configurations as the Scan Benchmark 2006.

There's a rumor that honor exists among thieves, but outside of Robin Hood, no one considers them a bunch of do-gooders. Yet there may be a bright side to their shadowy work, at least in terms of enterprise software. Why has Microsoft, a company known to be almost brutal in its license-protection practices, softened its approach to piracy? For several reasons: Chief among them is the rise in popularity of open source and the ever-shrinking cost of programmers.

There are many reasons to love Linux, as geeks around the world already know, but recent news adds yet another to the already long list of glorious virtues: It has now been named the No. 2 hottest IT job skill. Yes, Linux has claimed the second spot on research firm Foote Partners' list of hottest noncertified IT skills, behind only Java EE/SE/ME. Rounding out the top five are virtualization, Microsoft .Net and NetWeaver. The Hot List rankings are based on the growth in value of the various skills over time, along with premium pay levels and IT spending trends.

Google apparently wants its Android mobile device platform to compete in the enterprise arena. Future versions of the open source operating system will include more support for business users, suggested Andy Rubin, vice president of engineering at Google. Android currently does not support many enterprise applications, Rubin acknowledged, but he indicated that development of the OS could refocus on the enterprise before the year is out. If Google aims to succeed in that endeavor, though, Android will have to catch up in two critical areas.

Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia, recently attempted to pressure ECT News Network into killing or drastically revising an article that was not to his liking. In an illuminating series of no fewer than 17 email messages, Wales demanded, threatened, wheedled and implored in a dogged effort to accomplish one thing: to get us to change our story. Ironically, the story happens to be about his involvement in an incident that spurred debate over censorship.

Less than a year after T-Mobile and HTC released the first smartphone using Google's Android operating system, the wireless operator and the handset maker are back with a sleeker device that takes advantage of recent software updates. The myTouch 3G has plenty of hardware and software kinks -- and a $200 price tag that's $50 higher than the predecessor, the G1, both with a two-year contract. However, advances to the operating system may draw a smattering of cheers. The myTouch, which goes on sale Aug. 5, looks similar to the G1.

As the month of July petered out, so did the patience of Alan Cox, who ended his long tenure as maintainer of the Linux kernel's tty subsystem. Following what seemed to be a fairly bitter argument between Cox and Linus Torvalds over a particularly controversial bug, Cox announced that he would not remain in the role any longer. "I've had enough," Cox wrote in a frustrated email on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, announcing his decision. "If you think that problem is easy to fix you fix it. Have fun."