Archive

Second Life may be a virtual world, but six entrepreneurs operating there have filed a real-life lawsuit against Second Life users who allegedly copied their products. The suit was filed last week in Brooklyn federal court against New York resident Thomas Simon, who reportedly goes by the name "Rase...

Consumers are becoming more conversant with the use of the Linux OS embedded in many of their products, such as auto accessories, remote controls and cell phones. An even bigger secret is the extensive use of Power Architecture to run most everything else consumers and gamers touch. For instance, re...

For some time there has been a drive to smooth the process of building applications over existing call platforms. Also, more and more PBX operators have been moving platforms to open source -- Cisco Call Manager 5.0, for instance, is Linux based. Now the next step in developing robust open source un...

AlterPoint is a network configuration management provider that recently joined the open source ranks with the launch of its ZipTie community and are now members of the Open Management Consortium. The goal of ZipTie is to create a community that will advance network management beyond the limitations ...

Open source database developer MySQL has launched an attack on the enterprise database business. The company on Tuesday revealed a new enterprise subscription pricing strategy that lets organizations deploy an unlimited number of MySQL databases in their environment and still get enterprise-class le...

Chances are that one or more of your consumer products uses the Linux operating system. In order to find out, you'll have to look at the fine print. Manufacturers do not openly advertise with labels announcing "Linux Inside." Linux has steadily become the operating system of choice by manufacturers ...

People often ask me how likely it is that an open-source license like the GNU General Public License will ever be enforced. When they ask that, they usually mean: "If I violate it will I get caught?" It's a legitimate question, if one lays aside moral rhetoric, such as the idea that proprietary so...

Sleepycat Software opened the doors of its first European office today in the United Kingdom. The office marks the company's official expansion into European markets and will provide sales, marketing and support of Sleepycat's Berkeley DB, Berkeley DB XML and Berkeley DB Java Edition database system...

Open source in general, and Unix in particular, appears to be far buggier and less secure than is Microsoft's code in general and Windows XP in particular. You might not believe that, but any count of security vulnerabilities reported since about mid-2001 will lead you to the same conclusion. Mentio...

IBM today announced it is contributing proprietary voice-recognition software to two different open-source software groups. The Apache Software Foundation will receive Reusable Dialog Components (RDCs), used for handling simple words for dates, times and locations. In addition, IBM is proposing a pr...

Cisco Systems of San Jose, California, Monday acquired privately held P-Cube of Sunnyvale, California.

Cisco Systems is to acquire the assets of Procket Networks in a cash deal valued at US$89 million. Procket Networks was a start-up that raised US$272 million in venture capital thanks to its development of routers it claimed could offer 30 percent to 65 percent savings over more traditional ones. Ci...

In going through a stack of resumes last week, I came across one from a person, certified as expert by both Microsoft and Cisco, who claimed to have "architected secure network solutions" at a previous employer. When I recovered from the consequent daydream about flying lead balloons, I decided to s...