Archive

Pushing forward with a plan to set aside Microsoft Office productivity and document management tools in favor of an open format, Massachusetts has hired a chief information officer to oversee the switch. Since the announcement halfway through 2005 that the commonwealth would favor software programs ...

Open-source license compliance is a sensitive topic. Lawyers and technicians have devoted endless hours, lengthy blog postings and much mental energy to questions like, "What is a derivative work?" and "What is distribution?" Very interesting stuff indeed, and grist for meaty discussions. However,...

Imagine a world where you could run both Linux and Apple operating systems on the same high-performance Mac laptop. That day may be coming sooner than Mac fans think. Red Hat has confirmed it is pursuing the development of a Linux distribution for the new Intel-based Macs. Red Hat is no stranger to ...

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a decision to license all the Windows Server source code for technologies covered by the European Commission's legal decision of March 2004. The voluntary move is designed to address categorically all of the issues raised by the Commission's December 22, 2005, Statem...

Open-source database deployments rose dramatically in the last half of 2005, and as one might expect, as more IT pros get acquainted with these non-proprietary systems, security is a chief concern. Open-source database makers like MySQL and PostgreSQL simply must answer some of the most prevalent se...

The Free Standards Group announced this week the opening of a Linux certification lab in China. The lab will certify Linux distributions and applications to the Linux Standard Base and will be maintained by the FSG and the China Electronics Standardization Institute. It is the first certification au...

The Free Software Foundation released what many expected to be a controversial first draft of the GNU General Public License version 3.0 on Monday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Now it looks as though the draft may not actually be as controversial as some had speculated. ...

HP on Tuesday announced it has extended its agreement with JBoss to offer an expanded portfolio of open-source solutions and services customers can deploy within their existing data centers. HP will now provide worldwide support services for the entire JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS) of pro...

Linux has come a long way from its hobbyist roots. The open-source operating system has certainly gotten the attention of enterprises, governments -- and mighty Microsoft. This year saw the typical backbiting between proprietary and open software camps as Linux continued pushing its agenda. It also ...

The Free Software Foundation is releasing the long-awaited first draft of GNU General Public License Version 3 today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Legal experts are already wrangling over the possible revisions to the most popular open-source license in the world. ...

Mainsoft last week announced it is working with IBM to extend the Linux ecosystem. Specifically, the companies want to help Microsoft customers migrate to the open-source operating system. The program is designed to allow Windows Web and server applications to run on Linux across IBM's line of eServ...

The widespread adoption of open-source software by corporations and governments has raised some security concerns in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the agency is responding. It has funded a three-year grant reportedly worth US$1.24 million to -- among other things -- set up a daily au...

The much-anticipated first draft of GNU General Public License Version 3 will be released on Jan. 16 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. However, the draft may raise more questions than answers. In fact, the debate over the content and exact wording of the license has al...

In a move to reform the U.S. patent system, IBM is partnering with Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on an initiative to improve patent quality and accelerate innovation. The initiative has three elements: the Open Patent Review, Open-Source Softwar...

A fervent debate over which operating system is safest for users has been raging for years, and it looks like the next chapter has begun, thanks to a report issued this week by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). US-CERT's 2005 year-end index declared Unix/Linux logged mor...