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Big Data and open source software may be the next great unholy alliance in computing's current promised land, but open source is a broken business model that needs a better vehicle for supporting projects such as programming suites that build database applications. So argues Chris Wensel, founder an...

Does it make good business sense to migrate corporate database software from costly proprietary platforms to free open source solutions or low-cost commercial open source replacements? The answer is a no-brainer, said EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian. Founded in 2004, EnterpriseDB began on a quest to di...

Like Carrie, whose hand emerged from the grave to grab Sue by the ankle in Sue's nightmare, SCO has reemerged from its grave to revive its lawsuit against IBM, 10 years after the case was first filed. A court has granted SCO's motion for reconsideration and reopening the case. The case had several t...

Life is like a roller coaster, as the popular saying goes, filled with both ups and downs. Here in the Linux blogosphere we've certainly experienced our share of downs in recent months -- thanks in large part to a frustrating spate of FUD -- but lately the clouds have parted and the sun is shining o...

DevOps represents a dramatic change from the old siloed developers and script-heavy system administrators of yesterday. Any tools that can provide some common ground for developers and IT operations professionals can help, and it seems Chef and Puppet often do.

For the installed user base of the former Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris OS, questions about its continued support and development remain largely unanswered. When Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, it raised fees for its technical help and halted further development on OpenSolaris, replacing it with its...

A substantial number of apps available from Google Play had serious flaws in their Secure Sockets Layer implementations and thus were vulnerable to hack attacks, European researchers found. The team downloaded 13,500 popular free apps to study their use of the SSL or Transport Layer Security protoco...

The tide of software piracy in China may be ebbing. With the clear support of the Chinese government, several software organizations and computer firms based in Europe and the U.S. are conducting events focusing on growing open source in China. The push toward China's active participation in the ope...

Mention big data and the first thing that might come to mind is Hadoop. The open source software framework has recently enjoyed a great deal of popularity among vendors and enterprise users. However, if it is to really be useful to the enterprise, Hadoop may need to be taken out of open source, argu...

Samsung on Tuesday deepened its involvement in the Linux ecosystem, reportedly upgrading its silver membership in The Linux Foundation to platinum and forking over the $500,000 annual membership dues its new status requires. The move will give Samsung a seat on the Foundation's board alongside six o...

Microsoft may not have fully endeared itself into the FOSS rank and file with its recent attempt to hold hands with the open source community. Feelings are not unanimous regarding the commercial software giant's decision in April to front a company-owned subsidiary called "Microsoft Open Technologie...

Henry Chesbrough and Eric von Hippel promoted the idea of open innovation as a new paradigm for corporations to reach beyond their own walls as they develop and bring to market new products and services. The idea covered a number of channels for work and ideas, including customers, users and partner...

Microsoft has signed an agreement with Compal Electronics granting the device maker coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for its tablets, mobile phones, e-readers and other consumer devices running Android or Chrome.The deal comes hard on the heels of similar arrangements made with Wistron a...

The Kindle Fire, the Android-based tablet Amazon revealed in late September, could well be the next step in the ongoing metamorphosis of Google's Linux derivative into a proprietary operating system. Even if Amazon does not lock down its altered Android platform, it clearly has created a major fork ...