Business

Microsoft's push to get the free and open source software world to license its technology has ignited a firestorm of criticism and speculation. The software behemoth's actions have perhaps also generated a strong dose of fear, uncertainty and doubt -- aka FUD -- in the minds of open source developer...

Little by little, Microsoft is opening the door to the room that holds its free and open source software strategy. The latest sliver of light reveals the claim that FOSS violates 235 of Microsoft's patents. Microsoft is looking to take on the FOSS world by requiring royalties from distributors and u...

Sun Microsystems is considering the possibility of releasing OpenSolaris, the open source version of its Solaris operating system, under the latest version of the GNU GPL, the primary free software license. Up to now, OpenSolaris has been offered only under the Common Development and Distribution Li...

Dell has jumped on board the Microsoft-Novell collaboration to deliver Suse Linux to enterprise customers. The Microsoft-Novell agreement, announced last November, is designed to let the two companies jointly build, market and support solutions that improve interoperability between Microsoft Windows...

Dell took another step toward fulfilling its promise of brining preinstalled Linux operating systems to select consumer computers Tuesday when it announced it has selected Canonical's Ubuntu as its distribution of choice. While many Linux enthusiasts have hailed the announcement and look forward to ...

As Red Hat and its JBoss unit ramp up their SOA (service-oriented architectures) offerings and capabilities, they are re-emerging as a powerful mischief-maker to the established commercial vendors -- this time on the subject of data lifecycle in the age of SOA. However, there soon could be much more...

Red Hat continues to enhance its line of middleware products with its agreement to acquire information management software firm MetaMatrix. Once the transaction is complete in approximately 60 days, MetaMatrix will be folded into Red Hat's JBoss division, said Tim Yeaton, senior vice president of en...

Using the Hawaiian word "wiki" meaning "quick," Ward Cunningham coined the concept of WikiWikiWeb as a Web site for speedy interaction among targeted users. In its most basic form, a wiki Web site allows any user to create, add, remove or edit content and pages. Forrester Research recently surveyed ...

Sun's inability to allow for sufficiently open and inclusive governance over Java caused the eclipse of the Java tools and IDE action, which is now leading to an even larger purview for Eclipse at the ultimate expense of Java's future role. Buying NetBeans did not counter or blunt the Eclipse IDE fr...

Months after it planned to release the third discussion draft of the GNU General Public License Version 3, the Free Software Foundation has finally posted a draft on its Web site. GPLv3 is the first upgrade of the document in 16 years, when Version 2 was released. GPLv3 is a direct response to sever...

Yahoo has become Oracle's first big Linux client, Larry Ellison, chief executive officer of Oracle, announced this week during a conference call with analysts on the company's third-quarter financial results. Though his company is still in its early days with its Linux support offering, Ellison said...

Originally billed as the "$100 laptop," the novel notebooks designed for the One Laptop per Child effort are now going to cost about $140. Quanta Computer, a Chinese company that is building the devices, said it received an order last month for the first million, but it remains unclear which nation ...

Sun Microsystems on Monday named Ian Murdock -- the founder of the Debian version of Linux -- its new chief operating platforms officer in charge of working with Linux and the newly open source Solaris, according to a company blog. Murdock, who has held various posts involving the open source operat...

Sun Microsystems, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, announced it would open source its online game server platform, called "Project Darkstar," which is written entirely in Java technology. The source code for Project Darkstar will become available under a general public l...

Red Hat and Exadel announced a partnership on Monday that will bring Eclipse-based developer tools to Red Hat's JBoss suite of middleware. The tools, which are geared toward developing service-oriented architecture and Web 2.0 applications, will be made available as open source under the auspices of...