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Its logo depicting a wily flame-colored fox encircling the globe suggests that nonprofit Mozilla aims to set the world on fire with every new version of its free, open source Web browser Firefox, released in its fourth incarnation Tuesday. Available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and Maemo, F...

Operating a small business or home office is always fraught with tasks based on creating and maintaining office documents. Often, entrepreneurs are stuck using different apps to handle each phase of record-keeping and pricing business proposals for each customer. Why stretch those tasks over multipl...

The Firefox Web browser is about to go where it has never gone before. Firefox makers are changing their developmental strategy. This new approach will warp Mozilla.org's flagship browser through several release generations in less time than it took to advance from Firefox 3.0 to the not-yet-release...

More than 70 percent of mobile applications containing open source code fail to comply with basic open source license requirements, OpenLogic claims. The company scanned compiled binaries and source code where available for the top paid and free Android and iOS apps in the business and consumer sect...

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...

One of the endearing traits of open source applications for Linux distros is that they rarely look the same, unlike on those other desktop computing platforms. That is especially the case with GTimelog Time Tracker, a tiny application that tracks what you do and when you do it during your work -- an...

As a bookmark manager, BookmarkBridge has potential but falls short of fully carrying out its mission, and that's a big disappointment. Anyone who uses multiple Web browsers can put a top-notch bookmark synchronizing tool to good use. Installing beta versions of software is usually less of a risk wi...

Now that Nokia has moved away from MeeGo, its mobile OS love child with Intel, will the development of this you operating system be stunted, or will it be able to carry on? MeeGo was formed by combining Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin platforms in February of 2010, and Nokia's announcement last wee...

Tracking files you open and edit day-by-day for quick retrieval is a computer feature that should be a built-in part of the Linux desktop but isn't yet. The GNOME Activity Journalattempts to fill that void. It has potential to improve productivity but needs more growth to be really useful. The Activ...

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is compiling information on the capabilities of vendors that can assist it with its Linux-based information system. NGA has asked vendors to provide a description of their capabilities by Feb. 11. In a quick-response "Sources Sought" notice issued Jan. 28,...

Canonical, which leads the Ubuntu project, has reportedly decided to switch from the OpenOffice productivity suite to LibreOffice in future versions of the popular Linux distribution. Version 11.04 of Ubuntu, also known as "Natty Narwhal," is expected to be the first release to incorporate LibreOffi...

As the economy continues to improve, allowing us to feel a sense of hope that the worst is behind us, it's still critical for business owners to make sure they're making smart decisions about technology. After all, if the recession taught us anything, it's that we must be cognizant of cash flow, and...

Mobile malware may grow as a security threat this year, but security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann says there's a worse threat lurking around -- the GSM baseband system. The threat from hacking GSM baseband systems has been largely ignored, Weinmann reportedly told the audience at a presentation ...

Google announced Tuesday that its Chrome browser will stop supporting the H.264 codec in a couple of months and will support its own WebM and Ogg Theora technologies instead. The announcement set off a firestorm. Some contended the move is a step backward for openness; others speculated that it migh...

CPTN, a consortium set up by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC to acquire hundreds of Novell patents, appears to have inadvertently faked out the open source community by withdrawing its proposal from the German Federal Cartel Office. News reports on Tuesday noted the event and alluded to possible su...

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....

What does the future of Java look like? Many say Java is reaching the end of its life, while others go so far as to say Java is dead. Will Java become Cobol, an antique enterprise platform too entrenched to get rid of, but no longer relevant? Will Oracle's takeover of Java prove to be the final n...

If anyone had doubts that Richard Stallman dislikes Google's new Chrome OS, he laid them to rest in an interview with the Guardian Tuesday. The Chrome OS will push people into careless computing by forcing them to store their data in the cloud, said Stallman, who's the founder and president o...

In protest over what it sees as excessive control over Java by Oracle, the Apache Software Foundation has resigned from the Java SE/EE Executive Committee on Thursday. Apache has served on the Java Executive Committee for more than 10 years. Apache's departure follows the EC's approval of the specif...