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Programmers released version 2 of OpenOffice.org on Thursday, a major overhaul to an open-source software suite that has recently become a more serious rival to Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation creator and--with version 2.0--a database. Project organizers had hoped to release the upgrade last week, on the fifth anniversary of the creation of the open-source project, but a last-minute bug derailed the plan. Advocates have ambitious hopes for the software. "OpenOffice.org is on a path toward being the most popular office suite the world has ever seen," Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz said in a statement....

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 18, 2005--Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT - News), the world's leading provider of open source to the enterprise, announced today that Bob Young, co-founder and former executive of Red Hat, has decided to resign from the Red Hat Board of Directors. Young, who founded the company in 1993, served as an executive at Red Hat until 1999. Since then he has been a member of Red Hat's Board of Directors. Young plans to focus on the growth of Lulu.com, an online independent publishing marketplace started in 2002. "In a funny way, my resignation is perhaps the finest compliment...

Several pieces of SCO v. IBM news. First, IBM has dropped it's patent counterclaims. According to IBM: While IBM continues to believe that SCO infringed IBM's valid patents, IBM agreed to withdraw its patent counterclaims to simplify and focus the issues in this case and to expedite their resolution. The little discovery that SCO has produced regarding IBM's patent claims makes clear that there is insufficient economic reason to pursue these claims. Since SCO's sales have been, and are, limited, a finding of infringement would yield only the most modest royalty or award of damages and would not justify the...

For the second time in three months, a security breach has shut down the marketing website used to promote the Firefox browser. Late Monday, members of the Spread Firefox community were notified that their Spread Firefox site had been hit by attackers looking to exploit a bug in the TWiki collaboration software, which had been running on the server. The Mozilla Foundation does not believe that any sensitive information was compromised in the attack, but it is encouraging the approximately 100,000 Spread Firefox members to reset their passwords. "With these things it's hard to determine the exact nature of what...

GOOGLE & SUN OFFICE: THE WORLD CHANGES THIS WEEK [Oct 4, 2005] Google & Sun are to announce an Office Suite based on OpenOffice, and accesible via webbrowser, according to Jonathan Schwartz --President and COO of Sun Microsystems-- (the original title of his post was "The World changes this week"). It's probably the beginning of the WebOS, an Operating System based on the Web. UPDATED: Some interesting links: :: Sun president: PCs are so yesterday :: Google Office wishlist: seamless Web storage, great built-in search, integration with other Google tools, a truly better user interface, true browser-based operation :: Some...

Three Novell OpenSUSE community web site were defaced on Sunday by politically motivated hackers. Defacement archive Zone-H reports that a group called IHS Iran Hackers Sabotage broke into OpenSUSE.org, wiki.novell.com and forge.novell.com to post a message stating that it was Iran's right to develop nuclear power. All three sites were defaced in the same way.

When will Microsoft stake some of its resources on open-source software? When the product in question helps Windows sales and takes market share from IBM. That was the impetus behind a technical deal struck last week in which Microsoft will fly engineers from software company JBoss Inc. to Redmond, Wash., to make sure JBoss' open-source, Java-based middleware runs well on Windows, SQL Server, and other Microsoft products. JBoss sells its products under an open-source GNU Public License that Microsoft has criticized as a threat to intellectual-property ownership, and its technology is based on the Java 2 Enterprise standard that competes...

No matter what strides the new generation of open-source companies make, they all owe a big debt to Linus Torvalds. In 1991 the Finnish programmer started Linux as a project at the University of Helsinki. Fourteen years later the reverberations are still being felt. Thanks to support from giant companies such as Dell Computer (DELL ) and IBM (IBM ), Linux is now commonplace on big corporate servers -- posting 11 consecutive quarters of growth, according to market researcher IDC.

The NSW Office of State Revenue (OSR) is taking a tough stance against Microsoft's decision to make an enterprise edition of Windows Vista only available to companies that have signed on to its Software Assurance program. The tax collection agency has declared it would rather switch desktop operating systems than lock itself into Microsoft's licensing regime. Delivering a presentation at the South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC 05) in Sydney yesterday, OSR chief information officer Mike Kennedy and the agency's manager of client services Pravash Babhoota confirmed they would start scoping for a move to a Linux desktop within...

The broader media usually take little interest in public policy debates about technology, but they’re missing a big story in Massachusetts. The technology trades, blogs and industry are buzzing about a monumental policy shift in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats. Such a policy might seem like something that should concern only a small group of technology professionals, but in fact the implications are staggering and far-reaching. The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to...

David Berlind over at ZDNet wrote a remarkable article called Did Microsoft send the wrong guy to Massachusetts' ODF hearing?. If you missed this article, you'll have missed the equivalent of what Intel's Andy Grove called an inflection point. This one has the potential to have more impact than the release of the first Pentium processor. ... Microsoft has essentially alienated the rest of the IT industry. I can't remember a single company that had so many people working in harmony against it, including IBM at the height of its arrogance. The Java Community Process provides just one example of...

SEPTEMBER 28, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - A company server that some workers at Novell Inc. apparently used for gaming purposes was hacked into and then used to scan for vulnerable ports on potentially millions of computers worldwide, according to an Internet security consultant. The scans, which have been going on since Sept. 21, are targeted at TCP Port 22 -- the default port for Secure Shell (SSH) services. SSH programs are used to log into other computers over a network or to execute remote commands and move files between machines in a secure fashion. Scans against the port are often an...

The activist group, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), released a statement yesterday strongly criticizing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for its recent decision to switch all government computer systems to open-source format. The new policy would require all state agencies to acquire open standard software, like Open Document Format (ODF), by January 2007. "It is bad procurement policy for any state to unilaterally lock itself into one set of technologies," CAGW President Tom Schatz said.

IBM (NYSE: IBM - news) and Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT - news) have announced a joint initiative aimed at accelerating the development and adoption of Linux-based products in emerging markets like China, India, Russia and Korea. The two companies will provide software developers with implementation services, expertise and technical resources to help them certify new applications for IBM and Red Hat software. According to IBM, the program will give developers greater ability to build standards-based products that will not lock customers into proprietary operating environments. Penguin March In unveiling the initiative, IBM noted that a shift is occurring in emerging...

Infected binary or source code files aren't anything new. And sometimes they are found on public servers. Mozilla.org is the latest example. Korean distributives for mozilla and thunderbird for linux turned out to be infected - mozilla-installer-bin from mozilla-1.7.6.ko-KR.linux-i686.installer.tar.gz and mozilla-xremote-client from thunderbird-1.0.2.tar.gz were infected with Virus.Linux.RST.b This virus searches for executable ELF files in the current and /bin directories and infects them. When infecting files, it writes itself to the middle of the file, at the end of a section of code, which pushes the other sections lower down. It also contains a backdoor, which downloads scripts from another...

The following is, verbatim, a letter I received a few minutes ago from a Microsoft recruiter. From: “Mike Walters (Search Wizards)” To: Eric, I am a member of the Microsoft Central Sourcing Team. Microsoft is seeking world class engineers to help create products that help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. Your name and contact info was brought to my attention as someone who could potentially be a contributor at Microsoft. I would love an opportunity to speak with you in detail about your interest in a career at Microsoft, along with your experience, background and...

BRUSSELS, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Microsoft said on Wednesday it sued the European Commission in an EU court to gain quick resolution of a question surrounding sanctions imposed by the Commission on the company. The Commission has required Microsoft to share communications protocols -- or software rules of the road -- with rival makers of computer servers, ruling that it abused its dominance of the Windows operating system. Microsoft does not want to share that information with "open source" publishers who might make public what it says is confidential information. "This filing is the result of the agreement reached...

There are many faces of Linux, a term which has come to mean many things. Underneath all the things that Linux is, it is an operating system kernel. Under the Linux Faces The term Linux also is applied to the popular GNU operating system (OS) built on top of the Linux kernel, often simply called the Linux OS. Then on top of that are the Linux-based distributions that usually and simply are called Linux distributions, such as Mandriva Linux, Red Hat Linux, or SUSE Linux. Please see Figure 1 in the right sidebar There are lots of Linux-based, operating system,...

Kerala, a tiny coastal state in south India, is a site of significant popularity of free software and GNU/Linux. What lessons can Kerala teach other areas about using free and open source software? Kerala, as a state, is strongly grounded in principles of socialism. Most of the educated middle class is leftist, at least in principle. The state is credited with a near 100% literacy rate and better social statistics than most of the rest of the country. And all this is reflected in a spirit among the people to question any decision imposed on them. They resent lack of...

A major reorganization is in the works for China's open-source software industry, with discussions under way over how local Linux vendors and industry organizations can cooperate more closely -- including the possibility of a merger between several of the country's top Linux companies. If the discussions result in a merger, it would be one that involves some of the biggest names in China's Linux industry, including Turbolinux China Software, Red Flag Software, and Beijing Co-Create Open Source Software, according to executives involved with the discussions. Closer cooperation among Chinese Linux vendors and industry organizations is essential if the country's software...