Archive

Linden Lab, the creator of the massive Second Life online virtual world, is facing heat from its customers after this week's decision to ban gambling from the pseudo-reality realm. The comments filed by members on the Second Life blog, where the gambling ban was announced, range from concerned to ma...

While the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public Licenses are used in nearly three-quarters of all free and open source software, GPL-based licenses not the only game in town. There are dozens of free and open source-focused software licenses, and while most aren't used -- or aren't even usef...

The continuing rise in popularity of Linux applications has become a boon to job opportunities for software programmers. However, the working culture of the open source industry is different from that of proprietary software developers. Code writers looking for a job as Linux developers need a uniqu...

Five years ago, the only engineering or computer science majors setting their sights on a career in writing software code for an open source company were the most hardcore of computer nerds. That was something done only by the true computer geeks, and it usually required an independent source of inc...

In the search for a new chief technology officer, The Linux Foundation has nabbed Markus Rex, a long-time Linux executive from Suse Linux and, more recently, Novell. While Rex will be working for The Linux Foundation, technically he's only on loan to the non-profit organization that's dedicated to a...

Intel announced Tuesday the release of Threading Building Blocks 2.0 as both an open source and commercial product. The company also launched a Web site that establishes an open source project around this product. Threading Building Blocks is a C++ runtime library that abstracts the low-level thread...

Trick question: When taking a look at an open source content management application, companies chose to test that application using which operating system? If you guessed Microsoft Windows, you're right. That's according to the findings of a recent survey conducted by Alfresco Software. The company,...

Eyeing an October release, OLPC announced that it has authorized the mass production of the final beta version of its rugged XO laptop aimed at children in developing countries. Featuring the AMD Geode LX processor, OLPC's XO B4 laptops are designed to withstand even the harshest environmental condi...

The free software movement's most important license -- version three of the GNU General Public License was unveiled by the Free Software Foundation late last month. It comes roughly 16 years after its wildly successful predecessor, GPLv2, became one of the most used software licenses ever. Today, ap...

Wal-Mart is among the retailers now carrying a new $298 PC from Everex featuring OpenOffice productivity software, Everex announced Friday. Billed as a "back-to-school" offering aimed at students, the Everex Impact GC3502 is powered by the energy-efficient 1.5 GHz VIA C7-D processor and comes preloa...

Mozilla, maker of open source Web browser application Firefox, released a new version of the program that fixes a security issue stemming from an interaction between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Firefox. Version 2.0.0.5 of Firefox was made available for download on Wednesday. The problem -- fir...

London-based Openads, the developer of a free, open source adserver used by more than 20,000 publishers in 140 countries, announced on July 5 the appointment of James Bilefield as CEO. Bilefield brings more than 15 years of entrepreneurial, management and media experience to Openads from his work at...

Firefox is gaining ground in Europe, according to a report released Monday by French Web analytics firm XiTi Monitor, and at least some of that progress seems to be coming at the expense of Internet Explorer. Mozilla's Firefox accounted for nearly 28 percent of the browser market in Europe in the fi...

There's no doubt that the technologies have arrived to make it possible for individual citizens to participate in the legislative process. "We've already seen a shift in both software and the media where individual content is key and any one very talented coder or blogger can impact an industry," Am...

Sun Microsystems is facing a mixed bag of challenge and opportunity with its OpenSolaris and Project Indiana open source efforts. At the bottom of the so-called mixed bag, Sun sees an opportunity to leverage a community of enthusiasts to develop, test and help deliver new solutions for enterprise-le...