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The Free Standards Group announced this week the opening of a Linux certification lab in China. The lab will certify Linux distributions and applications to the Linux Standard Base and will be maintained by the FSG and the China Electronics Standardization Institute. It is the first certification au...

The Free Software Foundation released what many expected to be a controversial first draft of the GNU General Public License version 3.0 on Monday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Now it looks as though the draft may not actually be as controversial as some had speculated.

Linux has come a long way from its hobbyist roots. The open-source operating system has certainly gotten the attention of enterprises, governments -- and mighty Microsoft. This year saw the typical backbiting between proprietary and open software camps as Linux continued pushing its agenda. It also ...

The Free Software Foundation is releasing the long-awaited first draft of GNU General Public License Version 3 today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Legal experts are already wrangling over the possible revisions to the most popular open-source license in the world.

The much-anticipated first draft of GNU General Public License Version 3 will be released on Jan. 16 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. However, the draft may raise more questions than answers. In fact, the debate over the content and exact wording of the license has al...

In a move to reform the U.S. patent system, IBM is partnering with Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on an initiative to improve patent quality and accelerate innovation. The initiative has three elements: the Open Patent Review, Open-Source Softwar...

Mozilla is calling on independent filmmakers looking for their first big break. The open-source software maker yesterday launched the Firefox Flicks Ad Contest, which calls for submissions of 30-second ads from anyone and everyone. Mozilla has seen over 10 million Web users adopt Firefox 1.5 in less...

Nessus, maker of one of the most popular open-source vulnerability scanner programs available, changed its licensing agreement with the release of version 3.0.0 on December 12, causing a bit of a stir among security industry players that rely on the code as a component of their commercial solutions....

Red Hat this week announced a new service to provide full certification and production support for key open-source software stacks. Starting in early 2006, Red Hat will offer three new stacks aimed at simplifying and standardizing open-source application stacks. The company said its goal is to allow...

JBoss today said it has acquired distributed transaction monitor and Web services technologies from Arjuna Technologies and HP. JBoss plans to open-source these offerings for its Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS). JBoss executives believe the strategic move will propel JEMS further into the high-en...

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) this week released a document specifying the process and guidelines for revising the GNU General Public License (GPL). The FSF will release the first discussion draft of the GNU General Public License (GPL) revision in January 2006. The GNU GPL is the most widely u...

Several recent software and service offerings indicate there is a market for users of open-source software worried about the intellectual property and related legal repercussions of that use, but how big of an issue, and how big of of a market, is it? Legal observers and those who provide the servic...

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) today launched an online patent commons reference library, the foundation of its Patent Commons Project. The Project's goal is to provide greater confidence for developers and customers of open-source software. PatentCommons.org hosts searchable databases cont...

Commercial and open-source titans are banding together to promote Linux and spur global innovation through access to key patents. The Open Invention Network (OIN) launched yesterday with financial support from IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony. The company, believed to be the first of its kind,...

Novell is undergoing a massive personnel shakeup that continues to unfold. The latest change in corporate management is SuSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel's resignation. Mantel reportedly announced his resignation on Tuesday via an e-mail to a SuSE mailing list. The chief maintainer of the SuSE Linux ...