Archive

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 ...

We recently saw what is being described as the ending of the seven-year-old SCO contract and intellectual property dispute that dragged Linux through the mud before it propelled the open source OS into much broader enterprise use and credibility. You'd think the lessons of SCO would be a shining exa...

Members of the cloud computing industry this week announced the Open Cloud Initiative, a non-profit organization to advocate open standards in cloud computing, at the OSCON 2011 open source convention in Portland, Ore. The organization maintains a set of Open Cloud Principles, adherence to which wil...

Less than a month after Mozilla evangelist Aza Dotzler blew off enterprise users of the company's Firefox Web browser, triggering an avalanche of angry responses, the Mozilla Foundation is seeking to make nice with corporate America. The Foundation has announced that it's re-establishing the Mozilla...

There have been many changes in the market and technology since Citrix acquired XenSource and a major stewardship stake in the Xen open source hypervisor four years ago. Red Hat's 2008 Qumranet acquisition and subsequent push behind the Linux-integrated Kernel-based Virtual Machine hypervisor has ad...

Constantly testing software and tinkering with a variety of Linux operating systems puts my multiple test-bench computers to constant use. Granted, Linux comes with a lot fewer security risks. But dealing with unknown factors and beta glitches can be time consuming to correct when they take down an ...

"Data" -- it's the new buzzword in the open source world, according to Tuesday's keynote speakers at the Open Source Business Conference, being held in San Francisco. "The kind of data we're collecting today is way harder to store and process than it used to be," said Mike Olson, president and CEO o...

A battle to set the model for cloud infrastructure is raging, according to Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Red Hat. "We're at a fork in the road," Whitehurst told a packed room of more than 200 people at the Open Source Business Conference Monday. "Now is the time that we're going to choose the...

Groklaw will stop publishing new articles May 16 -- exactly eight years to the day after it was launched. This is because its reason for existence is gone, according to founder Pamela Jones. "In a simple sentence, the reason is this: The crisis SCO initiated over Linux is over, and Linux won," Jones...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0, which was released last November, packs a hidden punch: The latest version of the operating system pre-bundles patches with the kernel. The disguised fixes have shaken up some controversy, but Red Hat contends that the move is aimed at making it more difficult for rival...

Enterprises are grappling with the skyrocketing amount of data they have to handle as that data proliferates into the terabyte and petabyte stage. Datasets that large are known as "big data" to IT practitioners. Relational databases and desktop statistics or visualization packages can't handle big d...

Modern data centers with large number of Linux servers and heavy use of virtualization often don't have the tools they need to handle system version control and modeling. "Twenty years ago, most companies had tens of servers to manage," said Erik Troan, founder and chief technology officer of rPath....

High-performance computing applications such as numerical simulation -- whether for forecasting, mechanical and structure simulation, or computational chemistry -- require a large number of CPUs for processing. To meet these needs, customers must buy a large-scale system that enables parallel proce...

The founders of Lustre software technology company Whamcloud opened for business in June with a lot of potential and years of experience working with high-performance computing. What they lacked from their first day was any signed contracts. Whamcloud Cofounder and CEO Brent Gorda still is waiting t...

Open source software is poised for rapid growth in enterprises over the next 12 months, but cost is no longer the primary driver behind open source adoption. That's according to a new study from global consultancy Accenture, which based its findings on interviews with 300 executives at organizations...