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Some think MySQL could be the next acquisition target as open source spreads.As the world of software consolidates and open-source programs become more popular, some observers think MySQL is the company most likely to be acquired by a software giant. Cupertino, California-based MySQL is a provider of open-source database software that is becoming a cheap and viable alternative to proprietary software companies like IBM and Oracle. Because MySQL’s code base is open-sourced—meaning acquired through a community of developers worldwide—it does not require expensive license fees like proprietary software. Speaking at the Red Herring Spring Conference in Monterey, California, on Thursday,...

The Curious Incident of Sun in the Night-Time ~ by Richard Stallman Our community has been abuzz with the rumor that Sun has made its implementation Java free software (or "open source"). Community leaders even publicly thanked Sun for its contribution. What is Sun's new contribution to the FLOSS community? Nothing. Absolutely nothing--and that's what makes the response to this non-incident so curious. Sun's Java implementation remains proprietary software, just as before. It doesn't come close to meeting the criteria for free software, or the similar but slightly looser criteria for open source. Its source code is available only under...

And so I'm falling a little bit in love with Linux. This is very much a grounded affair and I wouldn't describe myself as giddy with it, but I've changed my opinions about that whole murky side of computing life. A lot of people ask me about my opinion of that operating system with the penguin logo. It happens with such regularity that I've come up with a stock phrase I immediately fire back: life's too short for Linux. This is a bit flippant, but it's also a distillation of what I've believed, which is that Linux is great and...

IBM has just given Microsoft another 125 million reasons to worry about the future of its one of its two biggest money spinners, Microsoft Office. Big Blue has announced that the next version of its Groupware suite Lotus Notes will include the three main applications of the MS Office suite, a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation program. What's more, IBM has stated that not only will the office productivity applications be compatible with Microsoft Office as well as the ISO standard Open Document Format (ODF), but the existing 125 million Lotus Notes users will be able to upgrade...

Apple tells hacks to stay out of its kernel Since before its release, Apple's OS X for the Intel platform had been circulating the Internet in many places, and many had been running the operating system for months ahead of Apple's own release schedules. Thanks to cunning hackery by famed OS X hacker Maxxuss, many were able to install the protected operating system on generic machines. Apple had implemented a check for a trusted platform module (TPM) chip that was integrated on specific Intel motherboards, which when detected, allowed the installation of OS X. When Apple had finally released a...

The Mozilla browser is attracting more users every day, but some experts feel it may have reached its peak The Firefox and Safari Web browsers are gradually becoming more popular, while Internet Explorer (IE) may be starting to lose some of its lead, according to experts. Web analysis firm OneStat.com on Monday released statistics showing that while IE continues to dominate Web browser use with 85.17 percent of total global usage in May, the browser has fallen in popularity by 0.65 percent since January. In contrast, Firefox use has increased by 0.56 percent since January, and now stands at 11.79...

A group of open source software vendors has teamed up with the hopes of ending the systems management dominance enjoyed by the likes of IBM, HP, BMC and CA. The companies today have formed the Open Management Consortium (OMC), hoping to get out the message that open source management tools have matured to the point where they can compete with proprietary packages. The names of the OMC founding members could have come straight out of J.R.R. Tolkien's brain. There's Ayamon, Symbiot, Zenoss and then the slightly more traditional Qlusters and Emu Software. Each one of these organizations brings a different...

Coverity Inc. of San Francisco has released the results of a Homeland Security Department-funded bug hunt that ranged across 40 popular open-source programs. The company found less than one-half of one bug per thousand lines of code on average, and found even fewer defects in the most widely used code, such as the Linux kernel and the Apache Web server. ... Most of the 40 programs tested averaged less than one defect per thousand lines of code. The cleanest program was XMMS, a Unix-based multimedia application. It had only six bugs in its 116,899 lines of code, or .51 bugs...

Andrew Tridgell, creator of the Samba server software used by free and open-source software developers alike, made an important contribution to the European Commission’s defence of its 2004 Microsoft antitrust ruling at the Court of First Instance last week. Tridgell’s testimony was compelling not only because it seemed to so effectively refute Microsoft’s arguments, but also because of the way he characterised the world of software development and Microsoft’s role in it. Judge John Cooke, by far the most technology literate of the 13 judges hearing Microsoft's appeal of the antitrust ruling, asked Tridgell if he ever tests his server...

In various studies, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft and some analysts have claimed Linux has a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) than Windows. They attributed the difference mainly to higher system management Latest News about system management costs, and concluded that the higher TCO outweighed the lower license and acquisition costs for Linux. In a new study of more than 200 Linux enterprises conducted for Levanta, however, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) found that this perception is no longer accurate. Sophisticated management tools now allow Linux management to be fast, effective and inexpensive. With lower acquisition costs, Linux...

(IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Oracle Corp. customers are intrigued by recent comments by Larry Ellison, the company's CEO, suggesting that Oracle might offer its own Linux distribution (see "Update: Oracle eyes launching its own Linux version"). Users would welcome the tighter integration offered by a complete Oracle software stack of operating system, database, middleware and applications, they said in interviews this week. "An Oracle-hatched version of Linux would undoubtedly be the most optimal when running Oracle [databases]," said Tony Jedlinski, vice president of administration and warehouse operations at Roman Inc., a wholesale giftware distributor in Addison, Ill. "I don't know...

NEW YORK - In a move to make the freely distributed Linux operating system a stronger alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, a group of major Linux distributors announced Friday they have united on a standard set of components for desktop versions of Linux. The standard created by the Free Standards Group should make it easier for developers to write applications that will work on Linux versions from different distributors. Linux has a firm foothold as an operating system for servers - it's popular for hosting Web sites, for instance - but has only a few percent of the desktop market....

Open source software advocate Eric S. Raymond is reporting that his name and copyright information for a bit of MIT-licensed code called the GIFLIB library are included in the end user license agreement of a Microsoft application called Expression 3.3. Expression is a vector and pixel-based image manipulation application originally created by Creature House, a software production company acquired by Microsoft in 2003. The newest release of Expression runs only on Windows XP, whereas previous versions were also compatible with the Macintosh platform. Raymond says GIFLIB was originally written by Gershon Elber, whose name is also mentioned in the EULA,...

Last November I described the Free Software's Surprising Affinity with Catholic Doctrine. Since then, several important things happened, from feedback by Stallman and other Free SW users to the birth, or acceleration, of some projects specifically based on the concept that Christians have even more reasons than others to adopt Free Software.

Oracle is studying whether to launch its own version of the Linux operating system and has looked at buying one of the two companies currently dominating the Linux world, according to Larry Ellison, the software company’s chief executive officer. Such a move would redraw the software landscape and open a new front in Oracle’s long rivalry with US rival Microsoft. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Ellison said that Oracle wanted to sell a full “stack” of software that, like Microsoft, included both operating system and applications. “I’d like to have a complete stack,” he said. “We’re missing...

Most conversations about the cost of free software deal with its effects on the software industry. Microsoft people often talk about how much money the proprietary software industry can add to a developing country's economy. At the same time, proprietary software vendors tell us the total cost of ownership (TCO) for their products is often less than cost of running competing open source products, even though in developing countries the cost of labor is almost always low enough that license fees for proprietary software are huge by comparison. All these conflicting numbers get wearisome. Perhaps we need to look beyond...

The KOffice team is proud to announce KOffice version 1.5. With this release, KOffice starts its ascent into the office suite hall of fame. This version sports OpenDocument as the default file format, accessibility, a new project planning tool KPlato, professional color support and adjustment layers in Krita and the long awaited Kexi 1.0. You can read more about it in the press release and the full announcement. Packages are available for Kubuntu and SUSE. KOffice was the first to support, and now with 1.5 the second office suite to announce full support for OpenDocument (ODF) as the default file...

Red Hat Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire JBoss Open source leaders agree to join to drive down the cost of developing and deploying web-enabled applications RALEIGH, NC - April 10, 2006 - Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire JBoss, the global leader in open source middleware. By acquiring JBoss, Red Hat expects to accelerate the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA), by enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, open source platform. "It is at Red...

A review of the 10 major Linux distributions out there, giving the pros and cons of each and every one of them Introduction The Microsoft Windows operating system is developed and released by a single company. It comes with a minimal set of applications (a calculator, a few games, some networking tools, an Internet browser.. etc). Other software can be obtained by users from various sources and installed on the operating system. GNU/Linux is different. A GNU/Linux operating system is made of a Linux kernel, a set of GNU tools, an installation program, a package management system and a lot...

Over the next five years, Oracle is predicting annual growth of 12 percent for the open source OS Linux adoptions are to grow in the next three to five years at nearly triple the rate of Windows, according to Oracle. In an interview at the LinuxWorld conference in Sydney, the database company suggested Linux deployments had grown beyond an adoption phase, and were now becoming ubiquitous in small and large businesses alike. Monica Kumar, director of Oracle's Linux programme office, pointed to the open source operating system becoming mainstream as "businesses are looking to Linux as a way to save...