Spotlight Features

If you ask Ranga Rangachari what the future looks like, he'll tell you it's wide open -- for open source, that is. Rangachari took over as president and CEO of GroundWork Open Source Solutions in July and is prophesying massive change in the enterprise software market. Specifically, he envisions an ...

The battle between Microsoft- and Linux-based servers just got a new twist. It is spelled N-O-V-E-L-L. While many IT managers are still arguing about which platform is fundamentally better, Novell is hoping to generate a buzz around its new Open Enterprise Server system. Open Enterprise Server is a ...

People often ask me how likely it is that an open-source license like the GNU General Public License will ever be enforced. When they ask that, they usually mean: "If I violate it will I get caught?" It's a legitimate question, if one lays aside moral rhetoric, such as the idea that proprietary so...

EnterpriseDB made its official debut in May with the release of its EnterpriseDB 2005 public beta release. Built on the open-source PostgreSQL database, the company is touting it as the world's most advanced and mature open-source database. While MySQL, the open-source database leader, may have some...

In the mid 1990s, when I first began running into open source in my practice, I noticed that open source had a very strange effect on intellectual property lawyers. It was a Chicken Little situation, but instead of crying "the sky is falling" they were crying "the code is infringing." Nearly ten ye...

For open-source software developers, coding is the easy part. Trying to find the right open-source license is where things get painful. It's like standing in line at Starbucks trying to decide whether to buy latte or mocha. Soy milk or regular? Tall or grande? Don't even get me started on ice c...

It's good to be the king. Pack leaders get to set the pace, choose which trail to take and be the first in line when everyone arrives. Of course, it is important for pack leaders to constantly pay attention to the pack. Being in front often means being the last one to notice when the pack takes off...

Sun Microsystems is forging ahead with plans to build an open-source community around its Solaris operating system, and those plans have been met with both enthusiasm and skepticism. The latest development in Sun's open-source evolution is the creation of an OpenSolaris Advisory Board. The company a...

The European Parliament and European Commission are in the midst of deciding whether software patents will be permitted in the EU. The Commission recently informed the Parliament that it would not redraft the proposed Computer Implemented Inventions Directive (CIID). The European Parliament must n...

Sometimes you can't win for trying. Like when you politely ask the kid sitting next to you on the subway who is playing his music a little loud to please turn it down. Just to be contrary, he responds by cranking it up even more. In my March 15 column, Lowering the Volume in the Software Patent Deba...

The European Commission recently tolled the death knell for the EU Software Patent Directive, or more precisely, the "Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions." Like most Americans, I am fairly clueless about the EU political process, and I wouldn't presume to write about e...

Ellen Simonetti is a former Delta Airlines flight attendant who writes a Web log called the "Queen of the Sky." She is a "former" flight attendant because Delta fired her after she posted pictures of herself in uniform showing off her legs while lying across a row of seats in a Delta plane. Even th...

Some friends of mine are considering setting up a new company around an e-commerce idea and asked me to research the cost of the IT infrastructure needed. As part of that, I went Web shopping for a low end server to get them started, and found some surprises. Note that all pricing data shown below i...

Open source is undeniably on the march. Linux continues to grow at a torrid pace -- now forecast by IDC to represent a US$35 billion market by 2008 -- though it has yet to significantly breach the desktop market. Mozilla's Firefox browser debuted with much fanfare recently, with over ten million d...

Two weeks ago, I asked for reader aid in getting documentation on early 1990s System VR4 Unix to help understand what things can be done with Linux today but could not be done with AT&T System VR4. The question was naive and I need more help (and aspirin) in struggling toward a better answer tha...