Business

Much of the focus and fight over the next draft of the GNU general public license Version 3 has centered on digital rights management and patent provisions. However, GPLv3, which is slated for final release next year, also tries to address another challenge for the free and open source software comm...

Open source is thriving, with over 1.4 million registered users on SourceForge.net and with startups sprouting around every part of the software stack. The big question is, can companies really make enough money when the software is often downloaded for free? If Red Hat is any indication, the answer...

Microsoft and Novell announced this week a deal to promote and support Novell's Suse Linux alongside Windows. That's right, Microsoft will promote and support Linux -- but only as long as it's from Novell. Following last week's big news of an Oracle-Linux play, Microsoft and Novell said that they wo...

Microsoft announced Tuesday a close technical collaboration with Zend, the programming language vendor that currently dominates Web-based scripting with the open source PHP language. Microsoft and Zend said their collaboration would provide a production-level PHP runtime environment for the next rev...

Sourcefire, provider of open source security software Snort and other intrusion detection and prevention solutions, filed this week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering. The IPO is a rarity in that it involves a security company, as well as a company that r...

The open source market is decidely hot right now, from software to support and services. Recently, venture capital firms have upped the ante, investing millions in open source-focused companies with the hopes of cashing in like JBoss did, when Red Hat scooped it up for a tidy US$350 million in June....

Amid an enormous amount of buzz, software giant Oracle laid out its plans for Linux at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this week, indicating that it will use Red Hat Linux as the foundation for an Oracle-branded "Unbreakable Linux." During his keynote Wednesday, Oracle chief Larry Ellison ...

Fresh off its deal with PC manufacturer Lenovo for Suse Linux-based ThinkPad mobile workstations, Novell trumpeted deals with four, smaller "whitebox" PC makers to pre-install Suse Linux on their desktop and notebook computers. The Linux vendor has inked agreements with European vendors ETegro Techn...

Linux leader Red Hat has unveiled an aggressive effort to expand its reach in the telecommunications industry, leveraging its acquired JBoss middleware and open source technology in the space and joining a European community project aimed at fostering an open service telecom infrastructure. Red Hat ...

Novell is bundling more and more software with its Suse Linux distribution, this week announcing a partnership with IBM that puts Big Blue's proprietary WebSphere and DB2-Express C database technologies alongside open source Suse Linux. The Integrated Stack for Suse Linux Enterprise will combine Lin...

Massachusetts' embrace of open technology, open standards and open source software was simply routine strategic planning, the way Tim Vaverchack tells it. However, the state's stance to strongly consider alternatives to proprietary solutions -- such as the Open Document Format -- has fueled one of t...

SiCortex, which bills itself as the first company to engineer a cluster computer from the silicon up, announced that it has closed a US$21 million round of funding, led by Chevron Technology Ventures through its venture capital arm, CTTV Investments. Boston, Mass.-based SiCortex, which is gearing up...

Agilysys and Red Hat announced Thursday that they have signed an enterprise reseller agreement to deliver Red Hat open source solutions to Agilysys customers. The agreement authorizes Agilysys Enterprise Solutions Group as a Red Hat Advanced Business Partner, and will enable the two organizations to...

SpikeSource this week announced that it has sealed a deal with Japan's NEC to bundle its certified open source solutions with NEC servers. This is the first time NEC has incorporated open source software into its products, SpikeSource noted. The Tokyo-based firm plans to deliver SpikeSource infrast...

Black Duck Software got its feet wet during the SCO uproar, when the Unix firm's legal onslaught against IBM and others sharpened concern over intellectual property rights connected to the use of software code. New issues have arisen since then, however, coinciding with the increased adoption of ope...