Archive

International Business Machines announced today that it plans to provide free access to the information in 500 company patents to individuals and groups working on open-source software. The company said this could be the largest pledge of patents of any kind and applies to any individual, community ...

A developer of security software for Linux had some harsh words yesterday for what he sees as a lax attitude toward security in the operating system's community. "Linux is being presented by commercial vendors as a professional, enterprise-ready product," Brad Spengler, of grsecurity, said. "When it...

On the heels of a Windows product introduced two weeks ago, Opera Software on Friday released an unnamed beta version of its Linux browser with a range of new usability tools. The back-to-back releases illustrate the strategy of what some analysts said is perhaps the most diverse browser company in ...

Enrico Pesatori knows a thing or two about business strategy. He has been admired for his self-sustaining executive track record at Digital Equipment, Compaq and BlueArc. Now, as chairman and CEO of Penguin Computing, he's out to make the company a leader in high-performance computing servers, syste...

A vulnerability in Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser could be exploited, security experts have warned. Despite the hoopla about the superior security of Firefox, Secunia Research reported that the browser could be used by malicious people, know as phishers, to spoof the source URL displayed in t...

What began as an MIT group project in a Somerville, Massachusetts, garage four years ago has evolved into a unique and successful developer of RFID, sensing and embedded computing technologies. In August, 2000, the original five founders of ThingMagic, all armed with MIT Ph.D.s, came up with an idea...

In a move to gain market share in the corporate world, Mandrakesoft today announced two new products geared toward the enterprise. Its new "enterprise-ready" Corporate Server and Corporate Desktop take the company outside its main focus -- making Linux available to the largest number of users -- and...

It's a new rear, time for focusing on those New Year's resolutions. One of my resolutions was to spend more time outdoors, but it's the rainy season so I'm stuck indoors for now. In that case, I decided to put my cool new presents to good use. I took to the Web to research photo manipulation soft...

The year 2004 might someday be remembered as the year that venture capitalists got interested in open-source software -- interested enough to fund a number of new companies based on open source, especially Linux. The year saw a number of funding rounds for such companies as high-end Linux cluster fi...

In a move that illustrates an emerging trend in the mobile market, Japanese wireless operator NTT DoCoMo yesterday announced a US$3 million investment in MontaVista Software, a U.S. developer of Linux software for telecommunications equipment and mobile handsets. DoCoMo will obtain an equity stake i...

I've been rereading David Brin's first Uplift series -- as astonishingly self-consistent a vision of galactic life as any science fiction writer has ever offered and quite appropriate to the Christmas season. In Brin's imaginary universe, a mysterious and long-gone race known as the progenitors set ...

From sports to gossip to business, it is a time-honored New Year's tradition for columnists to prognosticate on what we can expect in the coming year. Tabloids tell us which celebrity marriages will break up, where aliens will appear next, and what famous personalities will dominate the news. Fort...

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation has placed a pricey ad in today's edition of the New York Times. The open-source advocacy organization is pleading its alternative case with a two-page spread that asks readers the direct question: "Are you fed up with your Web browser?" Spread Firefox, a voluntee...

A company that makes a tool for finding bugs in software code disclosed this week that the Linux kernel is far less flawed than many programs people pay money for. According to San Francisco-based Coverity, its source-code auditing tool found the Linux 2.6 kernel had 985 bugs in its 5.7 million line...

Until quite recently, Oracle's salespeople would recommend Sun hardware because SPARC offered the memory, processor speed and reliability needed to make the database product seem pretty good. Today, however, Oracle sees Lintel (Linux on Intel) as its route to a bigger share of the customer's budget....