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VMware and a group of hardware, software and service providers on Monday announced the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance to build joint virtual desktop products together. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, NEC, and Sun are among the more than 20 companies that make up the new alliance. Virtualizat...

Popularity may be a menace as well as a benefit for the open source software movement, according to an analyst at Forrester Research in Boston, Mass. In a report titled "Vendors Refine Their Open Source Strategies/The Risk of Subverting Open Source Freedoms Mounts," Senior Analyst Michael Goulde cau...

Solid Information Technology on Monday announced an open source strategy to create a solidDB Storage Engine for MySQL. The high-end database company is adapting its proven online transaction processing (OLTP) storage engine to work with MySQL Server. Businesses can adopt open source relational datab...

Consolidation came to the Linux space Monday, with Red Hat saying it would acquire open source middleware maker JBoss in a stock-and-cash deal worth US$350 million. Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat said the deal would speed the development of more open source solutions for enterprises and accelerate a sh...

The market for open source and Linux development is deeply fragmented with no clear leader, according to a recent survey. When more than 400 open source developers were asked to name the company that provides the best open source software offerings, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, Sun and several others were ...

Intel and Red Hat on Tuesday announced a global program designed to help customers plan for, accelerate and optimize their deployments of Linux solutions. The firms said the program will initially focus on developing and disseminating tools for platform virtualization and grid computing. "The Red ...

Popularity may be a menace as well as a benefit for the open source software movement, according to an analyst at Forrester Research in Boston, Mass. In a report titled "Vendors Refine Their Open Source Strategies/The Risk of Subverting Open Source Freedoms Mounts," Senior Analyst Michael Goulde cau...

In a move to extend the growth of its Linux-based products, IBM on Thursday announced a new initiative designed to help customers migrate from Microsoft Exchange to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino on Linux. Big Blue will sink US$300 million into an ad campaign to woo customers away from its industry riva...

Novell's SuSE Linux CTO is leaving the company, marking the second departure from its open source group in the past few months. Novell has confirmed that Juergen Geck plans to depart at the end of the week. The departure was "mutually agreed upon and amicable," according to Novell spokesperson Bruce...

Red Hat on Tuesday announced details of its integrated virtualization strategy. The timing is a preemptive strike against rival Novell, which comes only a week before that company's annual Brainshare conference. Red Hat plans to work with AMD, Intel, Network Appliance and XenSource to make virtualiz...

How different would the IT world look if Sun and Hewlett-Packard joined forces in the operating system arena? Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy has already imagined such a scenario. The executive is urging its bitter rival to unite its HP-Unix operating system with Sun's Solaris Unix operating syst...

In the latest chapter of the Linux-versus-Microsoft total cost of ownership debate, Open Source Development Labs and Levanta this week released a new report to bolster the pro-Linux argument. A 17-page report based on an Enterprise Management Associates study called "Get the Truth on Linux Managemen...

Pushing forward with a plan to set aside Microsoft Office productivity and document management tools in favor of an open format, Massachusetts has hired a chief information officer to oversee the switch. Since the announcement halfway through 2005 that the commonwealth would favor software programs ...

Open-source license compliance is a sensitive topic. Lawyers and technicians have devoted endless hours, lengthy blog postings and much mental energy to questions like, "What is a derivative work?" and "What is distribution?" Very interesting stuff indeed, and grist for meaty discussions. However,...

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a decision to license all the Windows Server source code for technologies covered by the European Commission's legal decision of March 2004. The voluntary move is designed to address categorically all of the issues raised by the Commission's December 22, 2005, Statem...