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Although it's struggling against both giant rivals like Google and smaller ones like Microsoft's new search venture Bing, Yahoo is handing over the source code for its version of Hadoop to the community. Hadoop, a top-level Apache project, is an open source distributed file system and parallel execu...

The Fedora Project on Tuesday announced Fedora 11, the latest version of its free open source operating system. Code named "Leonidas," Fedora 11 takes another whack at virtualization, a technology market in which its sponsor, Red Hat, is working hard to carve out a niche. It also has several feature...

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's call to developers to participate in its Jetpack project on Wednesday is the latest onslaught in the ongoing war of the Web browsers. Jetpack is an open source application programming interface that will let users create add-ons for Mozilla's Firefox browser using the Web technologies they...

Though it's struggled when it comes to kicking in doors in the consumer market, Linux has clearly found a welcome home in the enterprise, and it appears to be making itself more comfortable with each passing day. "It's the fastest-growing server-side operating system of any of them that are out ther...

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 ...

Google's right to use the word "Android" for its mobile phone operating system is being challenged by Erich Specht, who acquired a trademark for the name "Android Data" in 2002. Google attempted to gain the right to use "Android" for its OS last year, as it happens, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark...

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...

Crowdsourcing may be killing a lot of jobs. True, it's still a nascent business strategy that works well only in certain scenarios, and it can't be lumped in with outsourcing as the cause of mass layoffs. As is the case with outsourcing, though, it can be particularly difficult to quantify crowdsour...

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...

Is software truly open source if you pay for additional features? Your answer may depend on whether you side with the purists or the, ah, not-so-pure. A recent trend entering the debate involves the marketing of so-called open core software. This morphed business model is not what many open source s...