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In cooperation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others, the free-software organization calls on the W3C to keep DRM out of Web standards.

An illustration used by opponents to digital rights management technology moving to Web standards

The Free Software Foundation, never a friend to digital rights management, has taken issue with its arrival in the Web standards world.

In a letter from the FSF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and other allied groups yesterday, the group called on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to keep DRM out of the standards it defines.

"We write to implore the World Wide Web Consortium and its member organizations to reject the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) proposal," the groups said. "DRM restricts the public's freedom, even beyond what overzealous copyright law requires, to the perceived benefit of this privileged, powerful few."

It's not clear how much effect the letter and an accompanying anti-DRM petition will have, since the technology is already in use though not formally standardized. And even if the W3C balks at standardization -- after it opened up to entertainment-industry involvement in 2011 -- DRM would likely live on through other channels.

A key HTML standardization figure and outspoken DRM opponent, Ian Hickson, sees the DRM-blocking effort as unlikely to succeed in practice. In a Google+ comment, he said:

The reality is that whether the W3C publishes this or not will have no effect. If the W3C doesn't publish it, the browser vendors will just work on the spec elsewhere. Asking the W3C to do it or not is pointless. The W3C knows this, and as far as I can tell, they figure that if it's gonna happen anyway, they might as well be the venue where it happens, since that way they get to claim new members.

FSF founder Richard Stallman has long called DRM "digital restrictions management," because it limits what people can do with their computers and the data on them. Despite any number of successful circumventions of DRM, though, it remains popular in the entertainment industry as a way to try to keep people from copying TV shows, movies, books, and sometimes music.

Adobe Systems' Flash Player long has been used to encrypt streaming video, but with its fading into the sunset, allies including Microsoft, Google, and Neflix have been working on DRM-friendly Web standards.

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Free Software Foundation attacks DRM in HTML video

ORLANDO, FL--(Marketwired - Apr 24, 2013) - WSWA Annual Convention & Exposition --OnTrak Software, the only provider of Web-based software to help wine and spirits wholesalers and suppliers track, measure and manage all of their point-of-sale (POS) marketing communications materials such as menus, samples and signs, today announced a partnership with Menu Designs, a leading provider of wine list and menu covers and other POS products.

Under the agreement, Menu Designs customers have the option of implementing OnTrak's software to increase speed to market and consistently manage co-op reimbursements when using Menu Designs products. A referral by Menu Designs provides special benefits and pricing on an installation of any OnTrak solution.

As a paperless, Web-based software tool, OnTrak's MenuTrak solution enables wine and spirits wholesalers to automate the order workflow, including configuration, approval and production of custom beverage menus and printed signs. MenuTrak also helps eliminate errors and reproofs and reduces time-to-market while also tracking and managing costs and improving supplier bill-back recovery.

Both companies are highlighting their new partnership April 28-30 during the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) 70th Annual Convention & Exposition, and will be presenting their solutions in The Boardroom lower level suite at The Ritz Carlton Grande Lakes in Orlando.

"Throughout our 30 plus years of serving the wine and spirits industry, we've gained first-hand experience with how important order management and bill back recovery procedures are for our beverage distributor customers," said David Dobbs, CEO at Menu Designs. "OnTrak is the only system we have seen which gives the customer such complete control over their wine and drink list POS marketing process -- reducing time-to-market, increasing market share, and improving recovery billing.

"We're pleased to work with an industry-leading menu cover and wine list manufacturer such as Menu Designs," said Denis Clark, executive vice president at OnTrak. "Our technology works hand-in-hand to provide the most efficient and error-free processes for managing the ordering and production of custom beverage menus. By working alongside Menu Designs, OnTrak adds significant value and cost savings."

About Menu Designs Menu Designs, a division of David Dobbs Enterprises, Inc., has been manufacturing and delivering high quality wine list and menu covers, and other presentation products to the beverage alcohol, restaurant and hospitality market for more than 30 years. Menu Designs offers the production and design of products to enhance the marketing and sales of food and beverage items. Based in St. Augustine, Florida, Menu Designs is privately held. Visit http://www.menudesigns.com

About OnTrak SoftwareOnTrak Software is a technology company that develops software solutions for the beverage distribution industry. OnTrak's software products drive growth and value for beer, wine and spirits distributors and help them track, measure and manage their graphics and POS/marketing communication materials, including custom beverage menus, beverage samples, and custom and permanent point-of-sale signs. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, OnTrak Software is privately held. Visit http://www.ontraksoftware.com

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OnTrak Software Announces Partnership With Menu Designs

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 23, 2013) -

Serena Software, the leader in Orchestrated IT solutions, today announced new change and release management capabilities for its award-winning Orchestrated IT solution set. Serena's newly enhanced solutions provide essential tooling for IT shops that are embracing the DevOps movement, as well as those that are simply looking to increase their change and release cadence.

DevOps has become a primary driver for IT organizations that are delivering Revenue Applications (RevApps), software applications that directly transact customer activity and bring in considerable revenue to the enterprise. The speed and frequency with which RevApps get enhanced directly impacts how quickly the business can respond to customer requests, competitive moves and changing market conditions.

Serena's response is a series of enhancements that provide developers with self-service provisioning of environments (to go with previously available self-service application deployment), more cloud and virtualized infrastructure deployment targets, improved resource management and demand planning, as well as other enhancements that significantly reduce development and operations hassles.

The new capabilities available in version 4.5 of Serena's Orchestrated IT solutions include:

Self-Service Provisioning of Environments

Release Automation Targets Now include Windows Azure and VMware ESX/ESXi

Hassle-Free Capturing Of Change Request Actuals

Pricing and AvailabilityThe new Serena 4.5 Orchestrated IT solutions will be generally available on May 15, 2013. Pricing starts at $12,500 for 250 users.

Supporting Quotes"DevOps allows IT to become truly agile," commented Greg Hughes, president and CEO of Serena Software. "Serena's enhanced change and release management capabilities allow Dev to exploit more self-service functions and Ops to release at the rapid cadence required of today's Revenue Applications."

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Serena Software Advances Change & Release Capabilities for DevOps

Is Canonical Corrupt? Best Distros, Linux Gaming Phones
I don #39;t usually do the #39;ask Nixie #39; type thing.. but here are some of your most commonly asked linux / FOSS questions and my replies because I luv you! || Add...

By: Nixie Pixel

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Is Canonical Corrupt? Best Distros, Linux Gaming

Alan Pelz-Sharpe is a Research Director at 451 Research. He has over 20 years of experience in the information management industry, working with a wide variety of end-user organizations and suppliers around the world.

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It has always amused me that we work in an industry that has built up such a bad reputation for overselling that we actually coined the phrase "Shelfware".

To be fair and accurate about it, buyers are just as guilty as sellers here, and they often bulk-buy licences for software and services with little consideration, seldom stopping for a moment to count the real cost or purpose until it's too late.

Over the years buyers have invested heavily in future enterprise rollouts of big business applications, often to find a year or two on that only a very small number (in some cases zero) of the huge volume of licences they paid for ever actually get used. True, the recession brought some long overdue belt buckling, and this chilly economic climate has made a few enterprises look a little more closely at where their budget is going, but overall spending remains profligate.

Indeed the viral growth of seemingly low-cost cloud services is currently driving another surge in reckless spending, and it really is time to put the brakes on and get some control back. I mean, let's be serious: when an enterprise tells me that they have 20,000 SharePoint installations or that they think (they never actually know) that large parts of their organisation have Dropbox I have no reason to doubt them. What I do have reason to doubt though is whether many of those instances are actually in use - and of those that are in use, how many of them serve a useful purpose?

End users can so easily provision their own software instances today that many get a bit carried away. It usually starts with good intentions - a new project for example but once the initial enthusiasm is gone, so too is the use of the new service.

Of course IT carries on paying for it one way or another, they always do, and usually for a very long time indeed. Its a problem most IT departments are acutely aware of, and feel they can do little to resolve, but I believe that will start to change.

(Note: It's worth remembering that when an industry analyst like me says things are just about to change and indicates that they will do so in a year or two it's probably going to take many more years than that in reality.)

But change is on the horizon no matter how distant, and I believe that the coming change will offer the channel some very interesting growth opportunities.

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The software industry: So efficient, we invented shelfware