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In what promises to be a precedent-setting case, the Software Freedom Law Center announced Thursday that it has filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public License. The case was filed on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox against...

Anonymous Wikipedia editors who seek to alter articles there for less-than-honorable purposes can no longer hide behind their cloak of anonymity: A new scanner tool now makes it relatively easy to figure out where they came from. WikiScanner, developed by California Institute of Technology graduate ...

As part of its ongoing Project Big Green initiative, IBM announced Wednesday that it is replacing 3,900 computer servers in its datacenters with 30 System z mainframes running Linux, for an expected energy reduction of 80 percent over the next five years. The move represents one of the most signific...

As part of its ongoing effort to develop an open search engine that will compete head-on with the likes of Google, Wikia has purchased the Grub Web crawler tool and released it under an open source license, the company announced Friday. Wikia, founded in 2004 by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales along w...

Eyeing an October release, OLPC announced that it has authorized the mass production of the final beta version of its rugged XO laptop aimed at children in developing countries. Featuring the AMD Geode LX processor, OLPC's XO B4 laptops are designed to withstand even the harshest environmental condi...

Wal-Mart is among the retailers now carrying a new $298 PC from Everex featuring OpenOffice productivity software, Everex announced Friday. Billed as a "back-to-school" offering aimed at students, the Everex Impact GC3502 is powered by the energy-efficient 1.5 GHz VIA C7-D processor and comes preloa...

Firefox is gaining ground in Europe, according to a report released Monday by French Web analytics firm XiTi Monitor, and at least some of that progress seems to be coming at the expense of Internet Explorer. Mozilla's Firefox accounted for nearly 28 percent of the browser market in Europe in the fi...

There's no doubt that the technologies have arrived to make it possible for individual citizens to participate in the legislative process. "We've already seen a shift in both software and the media where individual content is key and any one very talented coder or blogger can impact an industry," Am...

In a momentous move to end a long-standing rivalry, Intel and One Laptop per Child announced Friday that the chip giant has climbed on board the nonprofit group's effort to produce low-cost laptop computers for developing nations. OLPC aims to bring laptops and learning opportunities to the most rem...

It's probably safe to say that most Americans, at one time or another, have felt they could do a better job of governing the nation than their elected officials. It may even be safe, in fact, to say that that has never been more true than it is today. "Bush's approval ratings are as low as it's poss...

"Web 2.0" is one of those buzzwords that gets applied to practically every new technology and idea these days, with the inherent suggestion that they represent a new generation, a new way of thinking -- a paradigm shift. Most often the term refers to social networking and user communities that facil...

The Linux Phone Standards Forum announced Monday the publication of its first specifications aimed at fostering interoperability across the Linux-based mobile phone market. The first installment of LiPS Release 1.0 includes a reference model, address book and voice call enabler, as well as user inte...

Is there a hybrid approach to e-mail messaging that allows you to choose the best from both the open standards community and your legacy proprietary systems technology? An emphatic yes! Today a majority of enterprises work in a Microsoft Exchange environment. Microsoft has been able to monopolize th...

Following Wednesday's announcement of the formation of the Open Solutions Alliance by a group of 10 vendors, Unisys said it would join the nonprofit consortium. The OSA, which was announced at the LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit in New York, is dedicated to promoting comprehensive open source busine...

Microsoft's self-proclaimed commitment to open standards became more tangible Thursday when it released the first Open XML translator for Word. Version 1.0 of the translator, which is a free, downloadable add-on to the word processor, allows users to convert Office Open XML documents into the OpenDo...

At the request of the Software Freedom Law Center, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced Thursday that it will re-examine a patent held by e-learning software company Blackboard. The Software Freedom Law Center, an open source software group, made its request in November on behalf of three...

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...

Open-source license compliance is a sensitive topic. Lawyers and technicians have devoted endless hours, lengthy blog postings and much mental energy to questions like, "What is a derivative work?" and "What is distribution?" Very interesting stuff indeed, and grist for meaty discussions. However,...

Our system of law in the United States is what is called a "common law" system. When judges make decisions in such a system, they rely on what is called case law -- the written opinions on matters of law that are previously published by other judges. The other legal principal that lucky non-lawyer...

People often ask me how likely it is that an open-source license like the GNU General Public License will ever be enforced. When they ask that, they usually mean: "If I violate it will I get caught?" It's a legitimate question, if one lays aside moral rhetoric, such as the idea that proprietary so...