Developers

Adobe this week released its Flex Builder for Linux in alpha mode at the sold-out Adobe Max show in Chicago. "Judging by the applause in the auditorium when they announced it during the 'Sneak Peeks' session at Max, Adobe made a lot of developers happy campers," said Forrester analyst Jeffrey S. Ha...

A long-simmering debate among top Linux developers has boiled over recently, resulting in a flame war of sorts on a kernel forum. Linux creator Linus Torvalds and kernel developers working to harden Linux systems with security modules have been exchanging heated words over a security application sla...

What's a poor, lonely Linux developer to do? Where are all the good support sites? How am I going to fix that troublesome bug? These are questions that even novice code writers no longer have to ask. The classic view of a lonely, isolated programmer writing code for some obscure open source project ...

The Mozilla Foundation is spinning off its open source e-mail client, Thunderbird, into an independent company. The new company, MailCo, plans to develop Internet communications software "based on the Thunderbird product, code and brand," Mozilla said. David Ascher, CTO of ActiveState, will lead th...

When entrepreneur and Second Life real estate mogul Ailin Graef sat down to an interview with a technology news Web site in December, she, no doubt, did not expect to be caught in a downpour of digital phallic symbols. Yet, considering the interview took place in the virtual world Second Life, perha...

Sun Microsystems is stepping up its rebranding mission as the Java company, throwing off its workstation cloak in exchange for an identity as the vendor of powerful systems and tools for developers. Sun on Monday announced the immediate availability of its GlassFish V2 application server, an open so...

When a Web surfer clicks on an icon to launch his or her favorite Web browser, only the geekiest of the geeky pay any thought to which engine layout is at work. The typical Web user has no clue that a different browser choice may also include a different browser layout engine. If anything, most Inte...

Power.Org will sponsor the first Power Architecture Developer Conference in the Austin Convention Center September 24-25. The vendor-neutral convention will gather Power.org's corporate members with developers, hardware and software solution providers, academics and designers to show how open collab...

The IT industry appears to be in the thick of a number of interesting trends happening not only in technology, but in society at large. Cultural assumptions are changing about the nature of media and production, and consumers are being empowered as producers. The Web at large has embraced this shift...

Microsoft on Wednesday announced that its cross-browser plug-in, Silverlight, will eventually appear on Linux. Silverlight, a challenge to Adobe's Flash, means Microsoft will have to convince Web users they can really "light up the Web," with Silverlight, as the ad copy states, and view high-quality...

Yahoo, Google and MSN hold a huge lead in search engine technology over open source alternatives. These search giants are competing in a battle among themselves to be a computer user's default search site for search. Where can a computer user go to find an adequate open source alternative to mainstr...

Mobile devices are increasingly working their way into our everyday lives, and market research suggests that the operating systems driving these devices are often Linux-based. Technology research firm ABI Research forecasts that Linux will be the fastest growing smartphone operating system over the ...

In his new book, "The Cult of the Amateur," Andrew Keen publicly and pugnaciously says many of the things people were quietly thinking about Web 2.0. He refers to bloggers as a "pajama army" wreaking cultural havoc from their parents' basements. By penning his polemical book, Keen has brought to the...

Mozilla's Firefox now has a campus edition, according to a Tuesday announcement by the company. The Firefox Campus Edition gives students access to music, lyrics, cover art, videos, photos and more, with add-ons FoxyTunes, StumbleUpon and Zotero. The push is yet another chapter in the business of dr...

The open source model of developing software is making a significant impact, not only in the software development and broader high-tech community, but more generally within corporations, other types of businesses and organizations around the world, as Part 1 of this series describes. Whether it's on...