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VMware continued its embrace of open source software with its recent acquisition of open source and virtual network provider Nicira. The move continued VMware's aggressive M&A strategy and its effort to transition from proprietary software and virtualization to a broader market and cloud compu...

Just when you thought it couldn't top itself -- having contributed Linux kernel code under the GPL, broadly supported Linux alongside Windows with its systems management and other software, and spun off a new subsidiary dedicated to openness, Microsoft showed yet more Linux and open source love rece...

With a ruling from United States District Judge William Alsup that application programming interfaces cannot be copyrighted, it appears Oracle's lost yet another battle against Google over Java. However, the war is not over. Oracle has indicated it will appeal, and the judge has indicated that Oracl...

Recent news that Microsoft and Barnes & Noble agreed to partner on the Nook e-reader line rather than keep fighting over intellectual property suggests the prospect of more settlement and fewer IP suits in the industry. However, the deal further obscures the blurry IP and patent landscape curren...

The recently released Who Writes Linux kernel contributor list reveals that some of the usual supporters of Linux -- Red Hat, SUSE, IBM, Intel, Oracle -- remain firmly behind the open source OS. There has also been a lot of attention on the other contributors, which now include Microsoft. What I fin...

The government of Iceland recently launched a one-year migration project for all its public institutions in what appears to be an acceleration of its movement toward free and open source software and away from proprietary systems, according to the European Commission blog Joinup. The project will ap...

Virtualization giant VMware has unveiled Spring Hadoop, which integrates its Spring Framework with the Apache Hadoop platform. Spring provides a comprehensive, lightweight framework that will make it easier for devs to build solutions around the Hadoop platform, according to the company. Spring Hado...

Well December is halfway over for another year, and that means 2011 is drawing to a close. It's been a tempestuous year, most would surely agree, and one that wrought momentous change in this already fast-paced industry of ours. Which were the biggest, most monumental events here in the world of FO...

Henry Chesbrough and Eric von Hippel promoted the idea of open innovation as a new paradigm for corporations to reach beyond their own walls as they develop and bring to market new products and services. The idea covered a number of channels for work and ideas, including customers, users and partner...

The Kindle Fire, the Android-based tablet Amazon revealed in late September, could well be the next step in the ongoing metamorphosis of Google's Linux derivative into a proprietary operating system. Even if Amazon does not lock down its altered Android platform, it clearly has created a major fork ...

In a move to expand its enterprise cloud storage capabilities, Red Hat will spend $136 million to acquire Gluster, a storage company that builds management tools for data centers and cloud services. The companies announced the deal Tuesday, and the deal is expected to close by the end of the month.

We recently saw what is being described as the ending of the seven-year-old SCO contract and intellectual property dispute that dragged Linux through the mud before it propelled the open source OS into much broader enterprise use and credibility. You'd think the lessons of SCO would be a shining exa...

The Mozilla Foundation is enhancing the tablet version of its Firefox browser. It's leveraging Android Honeycomb but retaining familiar visual elements of Firefox such as the signature big back button and distinctive tab shape, according to a blog post by Ian Barlow, who works on Mozilla's mobile us...

To say Android's popular among consumers is like saying Godzilla's a lizard. It's a question of degree. More than 500,000 new Android devices were being activated daily, and the number was growing at 4.4 percent week over week, Google's Andy Rubin tweeted in late June. comScore's figures show that f...

Members of the cloud computing industry this week announced the Open Cloud Initiative, a non-profit organization to advocate open standards in cloud computing, at the OSCON 2011 open source convention in Portland, Ore. The organization maintains a set of Open Cloud Principles, adherence to which wil...

Sometimes things that are supposedly free for the taking -- such as open source software -- can ultimately cost a wad of dough from the corporate coffers. That could well be the lesson Google learns from a lawsuit Oracle filed last year alleging that Google violated its intellectual property as well...

Adobe's recent decision to pull support away from Air for Linux might be the first in a series of market adjustments designed to throttle its bottom line with Android rather than the traditional Linux platform. But the move could cost the company a bank roll of good will. Adobe officials do not see ...

Customers are demanding open source characteristics such as flexibility, customization, cost and time efficiency, and scalabilty, while vendors are doing their best to deliver it -- often based on support for open source components, languages, frameworks, databases -- and hypervisors.

Constantly testing software and tinkering with a variety of Linux operating systems puts my multiple test-bench computers to constant use. Granted, Linux comes with a lot fewer security risks. But dealing with unknown factors and beta glitches can be time consuming to correct when they take down an ...

In a move designed to protect the free and open source software community, the U.S. Justice Department has intervened in an intellectual property case involving four dominant IT enterprises. The transaction involves software developer Novell and a consortium made up of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and E...