Archive

Much in the way that open source software projects are known to produce forks, or spinoffs, based on different objectives and personalities, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is creating an offshoot of his popular communal Internet encyclopedia. Citizendium is intended for named, expert contributor...

The technology that college students are going back to this year is increasingly connected to the open source Linux operating system, says Red Hat, which is highlighting the growing adoption of its open source software and network solutions at institutions of higher learning. Like large enterprises,...

Red Hat this week released its first JBoss product within a new open source stack that folds together Red Hat Linux, JBoss Application Server, JBoss Hibernate and either of two open source databases -- MySQL or PostgreSQL. The Red Hat Application Stack, available via subscription, is offered as an a...

Web hosting has always been a good place to find Linux servers -- often coupled with other popular open source software such as Apache Web servers -- but Spin Magazine's recent move to Rackspace Managed Hosting illustrates the upsurge in choices for Linux hosting support, which is at the heart of th...

New research by a pair of Harvard University academics suggests that Linux will never be able to displace Windows based on the simple economics of Microsoft's head start and its continuing ecosystem advantages. In a paper titled, "Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows," Harv...

Leading Linux vendor Red Hat is developing a new software vulnerability database with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The database will give vendors of both open source and proprietary software a place to post official statements and security related information pertaining to the...

Sun Microsystems last week open sourced another chunk of Java development code, but some are criticizing the company for not declaring all of Java open source at once and under the same open source license. Sun released source code for Java Mobile Edition development tools under the Common Developme...

One week after it issued a faulty update to its popular Linux distribution, the Ubuntu project is still the subject of scorn among users of its open source software. The Ubuntu update inadvertently broke users' interface functionality, forcing them into command line mode. Many downplayed the error, ...

The IT industry phrase "a single throat to choke" stems from the idea that it's beneficial to have a single, trusted provider of software support than several sharing that all-important responsibility. However, recent research indicates only a minority of organizations are looking to open source sta...

A legal test used to assess the validity of patents threatens the development of free and open source software, according to a civil liberties group. The test can be used to create legal obstacles to free and open source collaborations, according to a "friends of the court" brief filed Wednesday by ...

With multiple delays and dropped components for its next-generation Vista operating system, Microsoft has stirred up plenty of confusion and criticism among software developers. Now other software makers, such as Qt cross-platform development framework provider Trolltech, are trying to take advantag...

Microsoft is extending an olive branch of sorts to rival Mozilla. Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, has offered to help Mozilla make sure its Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client run smoothly on Windows Vista. Ramji posted the invitation to the Mozilla development...

Following last month's release of Lotus Notes collaboration software for Linux, IBM this week started supporting the open source platform on desktop and server computers with its enterprise instant messaging solution Lotus Sametime. Big Blue said the collaboration messaging solution would support in...

On the heels of its recent Suse Linux Enterprise 10 platform release, Novell said it would put its marketing money where its mouth is with a multimedia ad campaign for Linux. The campaign, dubbed "Your Linux is Ready," will be backed by the company's entire fourth quarter advertising budget, will co...

Virtualization -- the use of multiple instances of operating systems, applications, or other software running on single hardware devices -- comes in many different forms and flavors, but among the most often mentioned of late is XenSource and its open source Xen virtualization technology. While stil...