Archive

Firefox users had a recent rude awakening about a vulnerability in the way Apple's QuickTime plug-in interacts with their Web browser. Far from grumbling, however, Mozilla supporters say their patch for the vulnerability says more about Mozilla's strengths than its browser's weakness. "It seems that...

What's a poor, lonely Linux developer to do? Where are all the good support sites? How am I going to fix that troublesome bug? These are questions that even novice code writers no longer have to ask. The classic view of a lonely, isolated programmer writing code for some obscure open source project ...

The Mozilla Foundation is spinning off its open source e-mail client, Thunderbird, into an independent company. The new company, MailCo, plans to develop Internet communications software "based on the Thunderbird product, code and brand," Mozilla said. David Ascher, CTO of ActiveState, will lead th...

A proprietary behemoth like IBM giving away enterprise-rich office applications for free? That was the news from IBM this week, but Big Blue's motives aren't entirely altruistic. IBM is presenting a set of enterprise applications -- word processing, spreadsheet, presentation applications -- called "...

When entrepreneur and Second Life real estate mogul Ailin Graef sat down to an interview with a technology news Web site in December, she, no doubt, did not expect to be caught in a downpour of digital phallic symbols. Yet, considering the interview took place in the virtual world Second Life, perha...

Sun Microsystems is stepping up its rebranding mission as the Java company, throwing off its workstation cloak in exchange for an identity as the vendor of powerful systems and tools for developers. Sun on Monday announced the immediate availability of its GlassFish V2 application server, an open so...

In the aftermath of the SCO Group filing for bankruptcy on Friday, reactions from analyst and community quarters are less gleeful and more sober about lessons learned. There weren't any champagne corks popping at the headquarters of the Linux Foundation following Friday's announcement. "The lawsuit ...

In a busy two days of announcements last week, MySQL, the Sweden- and U.S. West Coast-based vendor of the open source MySQL database, said that business users can expect an enriched Enterprise Edition collection of software, service and support, called "MySQL Enterprise." The other leg of the announ...

When a Web surfer clicks on an icon to launch his or her favorite Web browser, only the geekiest of the geeky pay any thought to which engine layout is at work. The typical Web user has no clue that a different browser choice may also include a different browser layout engine. If anything, most Inte...

Canonical, the Europe-based commercial Ubuntu vendor, has released an optimized version of Ubuntu for VMware virtual appliances. It's called "Ubuntu JeOS edition" -- the JeOS refers to the VMware concept of Just Enough Operating System, a no-overhead, pared-down version of an OS ideal for virtual ap...

Siemens and BMW are the latest enterprise-scale customers stepping up to the Microsoft-Novell alliance plate. Under the Microsoft-Novell alliance, business customers pay Microsoft for certificates that get them Novell Suse Linux and services. Microsoft and Novell are teaming up to maximize interoper...

IBM has announced that it is moving closer than it has ever been to the OpenOffice.org community with stepped-up support in its Lotus product line of collaborative software and a commitment to contribute code. The announcement suggests a win-win for IBM and OpenOffice.org, a seven-year-old project c...

Power.Org will sponsor the first Power Architecture Developer Conference in the Austin Convention Center September 24-25. The vendor-neutral convention will gather Power.org's corporate members with developers, hardware and software solution providers, academics and designers to show how open collab...

Terra Soft Solutions, the developer of Yellow Dog Linux and the HPC Consortium, will hold Hack-a-Thon II in Austin, Texas, Sept. 22-25, two days prior to the start of its four-day Power Architecture Developer Conference. Hack-a-Thon participants will work on a six-node PlayStation3 cluster to test t...

A survey by the investment banking and securities firm UBS found that fewer CIOs will deploy Linux than in the past, but the results are being met with shrugs in the Linux community. According to UBS, more than 90 percent of CIOs who are not Linux users said they would not deploy Linux in the calend...