Developers

Yahoo used its recent "Hack Day" to springboard its opening of substantial chunks of code to software developers, highlighted by the application programming interface of Yahoo's widely-used Web e-mail application. Yahoo said the Web application code release -- aimed at spurring new interfaces and ot...

The open source software development process will be going under the microscope as computer science researchers from the University of California Davis use a US$750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to find out how systems such as the Apache Web server, PostgreSQL database and Python sc...

Black Duck Software got its feet wet during the SCO uproar, when the Unix firm's legal onslaught against IBM and others sharpened concern over intellectual property rights connected to the use of software code. New issues have arisen since then, however, coinciding with the increased adoption of ope...

Linux creator Linus Torvalds' objections to GPLv3, the Free Software Foundation's draft of the next version of the popular GNU General Public License, have been reinforced by the rest of the open source operating system's top developers. They share Torvalds' concerns over digital rights management, ...

Much in the way that open source software projects are known to produce forks, or spinoffs, based on different objectives and personalities, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is creating an offshoot of his popular communal Internet encyclopedia. Citizendium is intended for named, expert contributor...

New research by a pair of Harvard University academics suggests that Linux will never be able to displace Windows based on the simple economics of Microsoft's head start and its continuing ecosystem advantages. In a paper titled, "Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows," Harv...

Sun Microsystems last week open sourced another chunk of Java development code, but some are criticizing the company for not declaring all of Java open source at once and under the same open source license. Sun released source code for Java Mobile Edition development tools under the Common Developme...

One week after it issued a faulty update to its popular Linux distribution, the Ubuntu project is still the subject of scorn among users of its open source software. The Ubuntu update inadvertently broke users' interface functionality, forcing them into command line mode. Many downplayed the error, ...

With multiple delays and dropped components for its next-generation Vista operating system, Microsoft has stirred up plenty of confusion and criticism among software developers. Now other software makers, such as Qt cross-platform development framework provider Trolltech, are trying to take advantag...

Microsoft is extending an olive branch of sorts to rival Mozilla. Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, has offered to help Mozilla make sure its Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client run smoothly on Windows Vista. Ramji posted the invitation to the Mozilla development...

In an effort to reach out to open source developers, Apple Computer this week said it will release buildable kernel source code for Intel-based Macs, beginning with code for Mac OS X, version 10.4.7. The firm previously released similar code for its PowerPC-based Macs. Apple quietly announced the o...

Virtualization continued to capture attention last week as open source system utilization software from OpenVZ won operating system-level support from Debian Linux. OpenVZ Project Manager Kir Kolyshkin told LinuxInsider the announcement was key for the open source project's larger objective of incor...

The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Law Center released a second working draft for the next iteration of the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 3, which updates digital rights management, patent and other provisions included in the most popular free and open source software lice...

Saying it may have some scratch for the open source software itch, search giant Google chose the O'Reilly Open Source Developers Conference (OSCON) in Portland, Ore., this week to unveil a free service hosting open source software projects. The service, Project Hosting, will give open source softwar...

The Rice University open publishing project Connexions scored an on-demand printing deal with Qoop, a content delivery company, aimed at making the educational site's materials more accessible and printable for educators and students. Inspired by the open source software movement, where software cod...