Uncategorized

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...

Oracle has joined the board of the Eclipse Foundation, an open source consortium, and says it will donate its Java persistence framework, Oracle TopLink, to help grow the new Eclipse Persistence Platform Project. The Eclipse software is already widely used for writing applications in Java and other ...

Users of Wikipedia trust that anonymous contributors will only add true and accurate knowledge to the free online encyclopedia. However, not everyone is trustworthy. Contributors have made mistakes, of course, and then there's the widely-reported inconsistencies and outright vandalism of entries. So...

Billed as a "mini-Y2K," this weekend could produce myriad horrors, if you believe broadcasters' reports. Hospitals could incorrectly dispense medications. On Monday, conference rooms could be overrun by workers arriving for a meeting scheduled an hour earlier. Financial transactions could be delayed...

One of the editors in charge of monitoring Wikipedia's content has been discovered to be a fraud. EssJay, whom the site had assumed was working under a false name for privacy, had presented himself as a tenured professor of religion with expertise in canon law. However, it has been revealed that Ess...

Consumers and network administrators often become complacent about security, trusting their anti-intrusion efforts to security product self-updates and older security technology. RSS reader software can heighten the potential for intrusion, warn some security experts. IT managers often fail to ensur...

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...

In its relatively short life online, reference Web site Wikipedia has endured numerous shots from corners ranging from the generally staid Encyclopedia Britannica to a former aide of the late Robert F. Kennedy. Now it's lined up in the sites of a new foe -- a group of high school students with a con...

Enterprise and consumer computer buyers will have to speak louder if they want to influence manufacturers to offer Linux and open source applications preinstalled on new computers. Without stronger guarantees of consumer and enterprise interest, computer makers have no financial incentive to offer n...

Open source database vendor MySQL and business intelligence software provider JasperSoft are teaming up in a joint reselling agreement to deliver solutions for the burgeoning ISV/OEM market. The two companies announced the availability of Jasper for MySQL: OEM Edition, a suite of operational reporti...

One of the most common security challenges Linux and Unix IT administrators face is how to effectively manage the root or super-user account. In an age of regulatory compliance and data privacy laws -- and as more and more organizations elect to run mission-critical financial, customer relationship ...

Dell's new IdeaStorm Web site, which invites the public to post ideas and product suggestions to Dell, has exploded with interest in desktop Linux. Thousands of site community members have asked Dell to preinstall several different versions of Linux on desktop and laptop computers, prompting Dell to...

IBM is offering no guarantees that its Linux-based applications are compatible with Oracle's new version of the Linux operating system. As a result, users of the recently released Oracle Enterprise Linux OS who have problems integrating IBM applications will have to call on Oracle -- or sort out the...

Japan's Turbolinux began shipping its Wizpy digital media devices on Friday. The Flash-based, USB device includes a version of the Linux operating system that can be used to run the open source OS on nearly any computer. According to Turbolinux, the idea behind the device is "to turn all the world's...

Eric Raymond, a key figure behind the Red Hat Linux distribution, has sparked a storm of controversy by shifting his allegiance to the rival open source platform Ubuntu. The influential developer and cofounder of the Open Source Initiative used a popular Linux mailing list as his platform this week ...