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As part of its ongoing effort to develop an open search engine that will compete head-on with the likes of Google, Wikia has purchased the Grub Web crawler tool and released it under an open source license, the company announced Friday. Wikia, founded in 2004 by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales along w...

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...

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...

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...

It's probably safe to say that most Americans, at one time or another, have felt they could do a better job of governing the nation than their elected officials. It may even be safe, in fact, to say that that has never been more true than it is today. "Bush's approval ratings are as low as it's poss...

Information security firm OpenLogic on Wednesday began letting users download its Discovery application, a free software tool that scans Windows, Linux and Solaris machines for all installed open source software. OpenLogic Discovery identifies more than 5,000 versions of the top 900 open source pack...

Remember back when the primary use for the VCR was recording television shows playing at one time to watch them at a more convenient hour? Time-shifting has long been a technique of gadget lovers, and open source software advocates are no exception. "Open source participants are spread around the wo...

Microsoft has issued a statement about its position in regard to the Free Software Foundation's version 3 of the GNU General Public License, which was crafted in part to protect users from possible Microsoft patent infringement lawsuits. Microsoft's stance? The company, in four paragraphs of text, e...

Sure, you can walk into any big-box bookstore and see several shelves full of volumes about open source software. Likewise, the Web sites of Linux-related companies and organizations are chock-full of white papers and articles analyzing one or another's position on open source hot topics. However, t...

PHP developer Zend Technologies announced July 2 the release of version 1.0 of Zend Framework, an open source application framework for PHP. Zend Framework 1.0, pre-released in beta versions since last year, is the result of collaboration from 230 contributors comprised of individual developers and ...

In what could be a victory for Microsoft and a blow to the open source community, the state of Massachusetts has added Microsoft's Office Open XML standard to its list of potential standards it will allow for government use. The inclusion of Office Open XML came in the latest version of Massachusett...

After an unprecedented development process that brought four drafts in eighteen months, the Free Software Foundation has released the third version of the GNU General Public License, the world's most popular free software license. "Since we founded the free software movement over 23 years ago, the f...