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The idealism behind the Mozilla Foundation -- established in 2003 as a non-profit corporation to promote open-source software -- is giving way this week to financial realism: The company plans to hold a news conference later this afternoon, at 5 p.m. Pacific time at the trade show OSCON 2005, to ann...

Because open-source software is written by individual developers or groups of developers on their own time and with their own resources, the quality of the product is an unknown. To combat that problem, Carnegie Mellon West Center for Open Source Investigation; Intel; O'Reilly CodeZoo, a repository ...

A 2002 e-mail claims a SCO Group investigation failed to uncover any evidence that Linux contained copyrighted Unix code. Groklaw last week posted an e-mail dated August 2002 penned by SCO Group engineer Michael Davidson. The message allegedly made its way to one of the company's senior vice preside...

A 2002 e-mail claims a SCO Group investigation failed to uncover any evidence that Linux contained copyrighted Unix code. Groklaw yesterday posted an e-mail dated August 2002 penned by SCO Group engineer Michael Davidson. The message allegedly made its way to one of the company's senior vice preside...

Sun Microsystems earlier this week announced plans to open source its Web site authentication and Web single sign-on (SSO) technologies through the Open Source Web Single Sign-On (OpenSSO) project. The company's goal is to empower Java technology developers to participate in the evolution of these s...

The battle between Microsoft- and Linux-based servers just got a new twist. It is spelled N-O-V-E-L-L. While many IT managers are still arguing about which platform is fundamentally better, Novell is hoping to generate a buzz around its new Open Enterprise Server system. Open Enterprise Server is a ...

The adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA) is accelerating, as collaborative efforts like the Celtix Project gain momentum, experts said. Dublin, Ireland-based Iona Technologies last month disclosed that it is planning to contribute proprietary technologies for Celtix, a Java-based open-sou...

The monitoring and management of open-source software is becoming a significant market opportunity as users seek ways to mitigate risk and developers pursue revenue streams for their "free" software offerings, experts said. A 2004 Forrester Research survey of 140 large North American companies revea...

People often ask me how likely it is that an open-source license like the GNU General Public License will ever be enforced. When they ask that, they usually mean: "If I violate it will I get caught?" It's a legitimate question, if one lays aside moral rhetoric, such as the idea that proprietary so...

EnterpriseDB made its official debut in May with the release of its EnterpriseDB 2005 public beta release. Built on the open-source PostgreSQL database, the company is touting it as the world's most advanced and mature open-source database. While MySQL, the open-source database leader, may have some...

Seattle-based open-source software developer SourceLabs today announced that Bruce Perens has joined the company as its vice president of developer relations and policy. Perens, a high-profile figure in the open-source software community, is the original author of the "Open Source Definition," now ...

Black Duck Software announced yesterday that it has secured US$12 million in Series B funding from a group of investors lead by Fidelity Ventures. Intel Capital and SAP Ventures, a division of SAP AG, also participated in the round. The funding round adds to the Waltham, Mass.-based software company...

When it comes to open-source technology, there are three camps. Some companies are fully dedicated to open-source software. Others wouldn't dare stray from the commercial applications they know and trust. Still others are interested in integrating open source at some level -- so long as it doesn't r...

In a move to extend its open-source portfolio, Red Hat announced plans to release the Red Hat Directory Server yesterday. The announcement came alongside the launch of its Red Hat Certificate Management System at the first annual Red Hat Summit in New Orleans and officially moves the company into th...

Novell yesterday reported a US$16 million quarterly loss. Executives blamed restructuring costs for the losses. For the second quarter, Novell reported revenues of $297 million, compared to revenues of $294 million for the second fiscal quarter of 2004. This quarter's $16 million loss compares to a...

There's been a lot of coming and going at the Open Source Development Labs lately. In the past month two new companies have joined the organization and, more recently, nine staff members have departed. OSDL has cut nearly a sixth of its 57-person staff and contractor positions, the group revealed. S...

Everyone has heard the expression, "You get what you pay for." It suggests that the functionality of something is directly proportional to its price. But that rule of thumb is being turned on its head by open-source software. Open-source software is free, but it differs from "freeware" in some major...

IBM today announced it has acquired privately held Gluecode Software, an open-source software and support services provider whose product compliments Big Blue's WebSphere application integration middleware portfolio. Based on core open-source technology from the Apache Geronimo application server, G...

Security firm Secunia is reporting two "extremely critical" flaws in Mozilla's Firefox. The vulnerabilities can be exploited by malicious people who wish to take control of victims' computers. The Mozilla Foundation is aware of the two flaws. The organization said there are currently no known active...

In the mid 1990s, when I first began running into open source in my practice, I noticed that open source had a very strange effect on intellectual property lawyers. It was a Chicken Little situation, but instead of crying "the sky is falling" they were crying "the code is infringing." Nearly ten ye...