Developers

Novell has released a new version of Mono -- an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .Net framework -- and some early adopters are already singing its praises. "Mono makes Novell extremely relevant now," said Kingsley Idehen, president and CEO of OpenLink, which has just released Virtuoso 3.5, ...

A papoose named Geronimo is venturing out of the teepee this week, and the Apache Software Foundation says it might be ready for its rite of passage later this summer. The organization's effort to develop an open-source version of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) became a full-fledged project this w...

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux in the enterprise, today announced its support for enhancements to the Linux kernel submission process to improve the tracking of contributions to the kernel and ensure developers receive credit for...

Renowned computer scientist Andrew "Andy" Tanenbaum said he doesn't believe the conclusions of a draft report on the origins and legality of open-source software, particularly the allegation that Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux, as is commonly believed, but copied much of it from Minix, a Unix-lik...

The author of a study accusing Linus Torvalds and others in the open-source movement of "stealing code" and of taking credit where it wasn't due nevertheless says he is pro-open source and is calling for a $5 billion government initiative to develop more of it. The study, written by Kenneth Brown, p...

Tokyo-based VA Linux Systems last week launched a collaborative development project with NTT Data to develop a crash-analysis tool for Linux. According to the companies, this tool will provide crash-related data and crash analysis for IT departments. The project aims to have the tool in circulation ...

Developers this week have released the new Linux Kernel 2.6.6 -- a development that observers and participants in the open-source process are calling good news. "The 2.6.6 release is a very good maintenance release, which takes in a lot of the maintenance that has come in from the 2.6.1 kernel all t...

In my recent commentary on the role dishonest and incompetent IT textbooks play in education, I used the acronym PHB (pointy-haired boss) to refer to people who just don't get it with respect to systems. Unfortunately, that also demonstrated that I don't get the global nature of the LinuxInsider rea...

A Philippines-based software developer this week released software that enables Windows-based programs to run on computers using archrival Linux. In a statement, Peter Valdes, CTO of SpecOps Labs, said the software ultimately will help users migrate from Windows machines to the open-source Linux pla...

The developer of one of the world's most high-profile, open-source databases, Sweden's MySQL AB, this week launched MySQL Cluster, a new open-source database clustering technology for applications that need continuous availability. The MySQL Cluster combines a clustering architecture with the MySQL ...

Microsoft this week released a portion of its source code through an open-source license, posting the code on SourceForge, an online source-code repository, in its most high-profile code disclosure ever. The move is designed to help the company improve the toolset's documentation and to allow the op...

Online music store Napster announced this week a new cache-management technology that uses Linux, open standards and IBM services to provide its music service for universities, ISPs and businesses without impacting bandwidth or introducing security threats. The application, dubbed "Super Peer," will...

Waiting for a PC to boot up can be quite boring. Who wants to sit there and watch the Microsoft Windows hourglass graphic for a seemingly interminable amount of time? This problem has plagued the PC industry for years. But a solution could be at hand, at least for entertainment PCs -- those PCs buil...

A few years ago, the only IT system I wasn't responsible for at a multimillion-dollar company consisted of a SCO server with an ancient accounting application maintained by the remaining representative of the company that had originally sold it. At the time, I thought old Vitki (not his real name) w...

Didn't Netscape lose the browser war? Mozilla, the technology that lies underneath Netscape products and a slew of its own products, just gets better and better. Netscape is effectively dead, but Mozilla keeps on keeping on. In 2010 we'll look back and say 2003 was the year that Mozilla really began...