Business

GroundWork Open Source develops open source systems and network management software. The company melds together over 180 open source projects, including Cacti, Ganglia, NeDi and Nagios, into a comprehensive, fully supported IT infrastructure and networking monitoring solution. Datacenters want to ge...

A group founded to develop and distribute ultra low-cost computers to children in developing countries is mulling possible commercial outlets for their machines, including using eBay as an inexpensive sales channel. The One Laptop Per Child project, the brain child of Nicholas Negroponte, hopes to s...

Telecommunications industry analysts have been evangelizing the arrival of cell phones running on the Linux operating system for the last few years. The sermonizing has recently reached a fevered pitch in some quarters. The Linux operating system, they say, is on its way as a full-powered alternativ...

Jeremy Allison, a prominent open source software developer and Samba project cofounder, announced last week that he would be leaving Suse Linux vendor Novell over the company's patent pact with Microsoft. The November interoperability and patent agreement between Novell and Microsoft has upset a num...

Financial heavyweights are among the first IT customers to take up Microsoft's offer for Linux -- delivered to its Windows customers through Redmond's recent deal with Novell, which signed up its Suse Linux for the interoperability and patent partnership last month. AIG Technologies, Credit Suisse a...

Microsoft and Novell this week touted results of a recent survey -- sponsored by both companies -- indicating that nearly all IT customers at large organizations overwhelmingly approved of their Windows-Linux interoperability and patent protection deal. Of 201 survey respondents whose organizations ...

Web site operators and bloggers will get free Web hosting, including all advertising revenue from their sites, with a new service called "OpenServing" from the Wikipedia for-profit company Wikia. OpenServing will "extend the essence of the open source model," delivering not only free software and co...

With reported fiscal fourth quarter 2006 revenue of US$245 million, Novell missed Wall Street estimates and expectations this week, causing the software and services company stock price to slip more than 9 percent. Novell, which went through major leadership changes this year, also indicated that it...

The One Laptop Per Child Project, an effort spearheaded by MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte aimed at delivering functional, educational laptop computers to children in developing nations, is looking to wealthier nations to buy its computers for those in need. The project, which looks to rely on ine...

The French parliament this week announced that its 1,000-plus desktops will be running Linux and open source applications beginning in June 2007, ending the governmental body's reliance on Microsoft Windows. Although the adoption of Linux and other open source software -- as well as open standards s...

Taking advantage of open source developer dissatisfaction with Novell's recent partnership and patent deal with Microsoft, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth invited Novell's OpenSuse community members to defect to the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Ubuntu was created by Shuttleworth. The Microsoft-Nov...

Microsoft and Novell, participants in a recent historic Windows-Linux technology- and patent-sharing pact, are having some differences of opinion over the existence of Microsoft technology in the Linux operating system. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer fired up Linux and open source supporters by claimin...

Without fanfare -- in fact, there was no official announcement made at all -- China decided to stop blocking its citizens' access to Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia. The move hints that China may be loosening its control of public access to the Internet and other forms of media. Th...

The distaste and distrust of the Microsoft-Novell partnership announced last week among some free and open source software supporters has grown to include allegations the deal may violate the GNU General Public License, which governs Novell's Suse Linux operating system. The free and open source sof...

The last three weeks have provided the biggest news stories to hit Linux in a long time, raising many questions and stirring speculation. What does Oracle have in mind -- cutting into Red Hat's revenue for its own profit, or weakening the enterprise Linux leader for acquisition? What will its partne...