Developers

What should the virtual world do when a neighborhood becomes a den of iniquity? The only appropriate response is to dive in and clean it up, according to Jesuit scholar Antonio Spadaro. In an article in a Catholic journal, Spadaro writes that Second Life and sites like it should be considered locati...

As part of its ongoing effort to develop an open search engine that will compete head-on with the likes of Google, Wikia has purchased the Grub Web crawler tool and released it under an open source license, the company announced Friday. Wikia, founded in 2004 by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales along w...

While the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public Licenses are used in nearly three-quarters of all free and open source software, GPL-based licenses not the only game in town. There are dozens of free and open source-focused software licenses, and while most aren't used -- or aren't even usef...

The continuing rise in popularity of Linux applications has become a boon to job opportunities for software programmers. However, the working culture of the open source industry is different from that of proprietary software developers. Code writers looking for a job as Linux developers need a uniqu...

Five years ago, the only engineering or computer science majors setting their sights on a career in writing software code for an open source company were the most hardcore of computer nerds. That was something done only by the true computer geeks, and it usually required an independent source of inc...

Intel announced Tuesday the release of Threading Building Blocks 2.0 as both an open source and commercial product. The company also launched a Web site that establishes an open source project around this product. Threading Building Blocks is a C++ runtime library that abstracts the low-level thread...

There's no doubt that the technologies have arrived to make it possible for individual citizens to participate in the legislative process. "We've already seen a shift in both software and the media where individual content is key and any one very talented coder or blogger can impact an industry," Am...

In a momentous move to end a long-standing rivalry, Intel and One Laptop per Child announced Friday that the chip giant has climbed on board the nonprofit group's effort to produce low-cost laptop computers for developing nations. OLPC aims to bring laptops and learning opportunities to the most rem...

The Federal Communications Commission is working out the rules for what could be the most important radio spectrum auction for years to come. At stake is the right to use spectrum in the coveted 700 MHz bands, which are characterized by the ability to travel long distances and go through the walls o...

Key kernel developers and more than 230 Linux leaders participated last week in the first Collaboration Summit hosted by the Linux Foundation to discuss solutions for the most pressing issues facing greater Linux adoption. The nonprofit Linux Foundation, dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux...

It's not Apple's release of a Windows version of its Safari Web browser that concerns Mozilla COO John Lilly. It's Apple founder Steve Jobs' apparent view of a Web browser market shared, for the most part, by two companies: Apple and Microsoft. In a "John's blog" entry published last Thursday, Lilly...

"Web 2.0" is one of those buzzwords that gets applied to practically every new technology and idea these days, with the inherent suggestion that they represent a new generation, a new way of thinking -- a paradigm shift. Most often the term refers to social networking and user communities that facil...

The Linux Phone Standards Forum announced Monday the publication of its first specifications aimed at fostering interoperability across the Linux-based mobile phone market. The first installment of LiPS Release 1.0 includes a reference model, address book and voice call enabler, as well as user inte...

Intel and Taiwan firm Asus have teamed up to produce a line of low-cost mobile PCs with at least one coming in at under $200. The two companies made the announcement this week during the 2007 Computex computer trade show held in Taipei, Taiwan. The new line of computers will focus on providing users...

Red Hat's Fedora Project has released the Fedora 7 version of the Linux operating system, which features a new build capacity allowing for the creation of custom appliances to meet individual needs. Fedora 7 offers users an appliance development platform that it says is 100 percent open source, with...