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In his opening keynote speech at the 11th annual JavaOne developer conference, Sun Microsystems President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz outlined new Java solutions and open source plans in front of thousands of international attendees. "It's not a question of whether, but a question of how," Schwartz to...

Open source development has always been an international phenomenon. After all, the killer app of the movement -- Linux -- was born in Finland, and the quintessential dual licensing business was started in Sweden with mySQL. Companies like Red Flag have stepped up in Asia to take Linux into double...

The International Standards Organization on Wednesday approved the OpenDocument Format as an international standard. The approval could be a boon for companies that compete with Microsoft's proprietary Office software -- like Sun with its StarOffice. The ODF emerged from the open source OpenOffice.o...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's open source security audit program has identified the biggest X Window System security vulnerability in the last six years. The X Window System is used in Unix and Linux operating systems. It also ships as an optional GUI with Apple's Macintosh computers. C...

Richard Stallman is a free software pioneer. As president of the Free Software Foundation and founder of the GNU Project, he is also an evangelist of a free society in which people have inaliable rights to run, study, copy and distribute software. As such, Stallman is often grieved when he reads new...

Linspire on Monday announced plans to offer a no-cost version of the firm's operating system called Freespire. Kevin Carmony, Linspire's President and CEO, unveiled the Freespire project in his keynote address at the 4th Annual Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego. In his remarks, Carmony explained how...

VMware and a group of hardware, software and service providers on Monday announced the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance to build joint virtual desktop products together. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, NEC, and Sun are among the more than 20 companies that make up the new alliance. Virtualizat...

Popularity may be a menace as well as a benefit for the open source software movement, according to an analyst at Forrester Research in Boston, Mass. In a report titled "Vendors Refine Their Open Source Strategies/The Risk of Subverting Open Source Freedoms Mounts," Senior Analyst Michael Goulde cau...

Solid Information Technology on Monday announced an open source strategy to create a solidDB Storage Engine for MySQL. The high-end database company is adapting its proven online transaction processing (OLTP) storage engine to work with MySQL Server. Businesses can adopt open source relational datab...

Mozilla on Thursday made it easier for Mac users to browse the Web with Firefox. The open source software developer released a new version of its browser with more Mac support and several security fixes. Firefox 1.5.0.2 adds native support for Apple's Mac OS X running on Intel's processors, accordin...

Consolidation came to the Linux space Monday, with Red Hat saying it would acquire open source middleware maker JBoss in a stock-and-cash deal worth US$350 million. Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat said the deal would speed the development of more open source solutions for enterprises and accelerate a sh...

Intel and Red Hat on Tuesday announced a global program designed to help customers plan for, accelerate and optimize their deployments of Linux solutions. The firms said the program will initially focus on developing and disseminating tools for platform virtualization and grid computing. "The Red ...

Popularity may be a menace as well as a benefit for the open source software movement, according to an analyst at Forrester Research in Boston, Mass. In a report titled "Vendors Refine Their Open Source Strategies/The Risk of Subverting Open Source Freedoms Mounts," Senior Analyst Michael Goulde cau...

The concept of virtualization is set to take center stage at this week's LinuxWorld conference in Boston. Among the competitive players are industry veterans Red Hat and Novell and startups XenSource and Virtual Iron. Virtualization is a technique for deploying technologies. It allows multiple virtu...

In a move to extend the growth of its Linux-based products, IBM on Thursday announced a new initiative designed to help customers migrate from Microsoft Exchange to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino on Linux. Big Blue will sink US$300 million into an ad campaign to woo customers away from its industry riva...