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Microsoft made good Tuesday on a promise it made months ago to the open source community that it would not sue software developers who use its EMCA C# programming language and Common Language Infrastructure, or CLI. This announcement aims to calm growing fears that Microsoft might restrict open sour...

Here's one of the many questions facing device makers targeting the mini notebook and netbook markets: When business users or consumers want to access the Web on the go, will they be willing to set aside a smartphone or cellphone and instead log on using a next-generation PDA? Dell may be wagering t...

I believe with the right approach, Linux can take a great chunk of the market; you just have to give the market what it needs and wants, while allaying its fears. What's needed is a true Linux SMB Edition, targeting specifically the needs and fears of those businesses that are using Windows -- espec...

Wind River on Tuesday announced the availability of a high-performance Type-1 hypervisor as the latest addition to its VxWorks product portfolio. The Wind River Hypervisor Multicore Software Solution for device development supports virtualization on single and multicore processors. The new hyperviso...

EnterpriseDB, which has commercialized the PostgreSQL open source database, announced on Tuesday the fifth version of its Postgres Plus Advanced Server. This latest version of EnterpriseDB's relational database management system is designed to let users easily migrate more Oracle applications in ord...

As the most dynamic and commercial industry on Earth -- which has grown its annual revenues from zero to $1 trillion in less than 25 years and today manages 4 billion consumer relationships -- mobile has propelled itself forward with a highly discriminating attitude toward openness within device tec...

Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer, which seems to be having an on-again, off-again relationship with netbooks running Android, is now reportedly working on one. Jim Wong, the firm's president of IT products, made the announcement Tuesday at Computex Taipei, Asia's largest computer exhibition. The...

There are clearly more reasons these days than ever before for companies to adopt free and open source More about open source software. Adopting it they are, too -- in droves, it seems. How else could vendor Red Hat, for example, surpass all expectations with its most recent earnings report? Yet the...

Palm will unveil its long-awaited Pre smartphone June 6, and Apple's next-generation iPhone is expected to hit the market shortly thereafter. So where are the smartphones based on Google's Android platform, which is considered a potentially serious threat to the iPhone? Rumors have it that AT&T ...

Mozilla on Monday announced the first alpha release of its Fennec mobile browser for the Windows Mobile 6 operating system. This alpha is available only on the HTC Touch Pro from Sprint. Versions for other smartphones will be unveiled later. While Microsoft continues to upgrade the sixth version of ...

A long time ago -- meaning, of course, three or four years in Internet time -- wikis came to represent the best of the true democratic, user-generated nature of the Web. The collaborative writing/editing of a wiki meant that all voices could be heard, but majority rule would prevail. This segment's ...

With the release of Ubuntu 9.04 last week, it's not too surprising that few other topics got much attention on the Linux blogs in the ensuing days. Yes, there was a rather intriguing discussion of porn and piracy over on DaniWeb and LXer; and yes, a moderately active conversation fired up the Slashd...

Email was born sometime between 1965 and 1970, depending on how you define its genesis, and by 1980 it was considered by many to be the killer app. It drove the proliferation of PCs in the workplace and allowed people all over the world to work together. SMS texting and tweeting can take some credit...

Application creators can get an early look at the software developer kit for Android 1.5, the next version of the mobile operating system, according to Google. Based on the "Cupcake" branch from the Android Open Source Project, the SDK has application programming interfaces for new features, includi...

Before we can delve into making a scalable application, it's worth spending some time to define just what scalability is and isn't. Contrary to what many novice developers think, scalability is not primarily about performance. Performance is virtually unrelated to the aggregate scalability of an app...

Good things come in small packages, as they say, and that's perhaps never been more true than it is today, thanks to the emergence of increasingly diminutive devices equipped with Linux. Perhaps most notable of late is the $99 Marvell SheevaPlug, a wall-wart-sized device that runs Linux on a 1.2-GHz...

The Linux desktop has traditionally been a very fragmented and niche market, and the mobile Linux space is no different. While choice can be a good thing, fragmentation can be a strong detractor against any one platform gaining traction. What fragmentation means to developers is one, that they have...

I wonder if Levi Strauss would have made billions selling his blue jeans if he had said that the zipper was "sold separately." I wonder if cell phones would be as ubiquitous as they are today if everyone had to learn to speak binary in order to communicate using them. I wonder how many people would ...

While potential customers and the technology press await T-Mobile's G2 smartphone later this year, the wireless carrier is reportedly already knee-deep into the development of the next level of devices powered by the open source Android operating system. The company will roll out a home phone and a ...

Open source healthcare IT solutions are just beginning to become acceptable alternatives to proprietary software systems. As is happening in other fields, open source medical projects are getting noticed as cost-saving alternatives to proprietary vendors. The battle for supremacy between the two mar...