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The OpenOffice.org community released version 2.2 on Friday, including updates to OpenOffice's word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and database software. OpenOffice.org claimed its free software package provides a "real alternative" to Microsoft's Office 2007 product — and an easier upgrade path for existing Microsoft Office users. The community claims to have addressed security issues in the upgrade, a number of vulnerabilities recently having been discovered in the suite. On 21 March the US Department of Homeland Security reported two critical vulnerabilities — a stack-based buffer overflow was reported in the StarCalc parser in OpenOffice.org, plus a vulnerability that would allow the...

Open Source != Communism > If we agreed on everything there would be no debate :) No need to oppose for the hell of it though > You did not provide a commercial/business answer to > who is going to continue funding the development of > free software, we all have to pay bills. Actually I did. I said that virtually all the Linux Kernel update code over the last few years has been supplied by paid for developers from the likes of Red Hat, Suse, IBM etc. This is quite common. I have seen several surveys that confirm that...

Shadow chancellor George Osbourne has estimated that the UK government could save in excess of £600 million a year if more open source software was deployed across various departments. He added that the need of the hour was a "culture change" as open source software could cut the IT bill by as much as 5 percent every year. "The problem is that the cultural change has not taken place in government," he said in a speech to the Royal Society of Arts yesterday. Mr Osbourne added that the government had chosen to neglect a 2004 report that said savings would...

Pre-Installed Linux Options It’s exciting to see the IdeaStorm community’s interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. Your feedback has been all about flexibility and we have seen a consistent request to provide platforms that allow people to install their operating system of choice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems. As this community knows, there is...

Eric Raymond, influential developer and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has delivered a public rebuke to Red Hat's Fedora project. In a message distributed to several high-profile Linux mailing lists and news organizations, Raymond said he is switching to the Ubuntu distribution after 13 years as a loyal Red Hat user, citing numerous technical and governance problems around Fedora. Fedora is Red Hat's freely distributed Linux distribution, and is closely linked to the company's commercial versions, serving as a testing ground for technologies that will eventually go into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It is also intended to form...

The latest release of Mono, an open source implementation of Microsoft's .Net platform, bundles a Visual Basic compiler authored by Rolf Bjarne. The compiler -- itself written in Visual Basic -- will ease development and deployment of applications written in one of the most popular programing languages. Visual Basic support in Mono isn't new. Past versions of Mono have bundled a VB runtime component that allows VB applications to run under Linux. Explaining the changes in the latest version, Mono 1.2.3, Miguel De Icaza, vice president of developer platforms at Novell and founder of the Mono project, says that "the...

RALEIGH, N.C. – In another sign of the approaching apocalypse, Red Hat is apparently preparing to announce a deal to work with Microsoft on interoperability. Yes, the dreaded Borg of the proprietary software world is talking cooperation with Linux leader Red Hat, reports London-based vnuet. In fact, vnunet described the potential relationship as a “partnership.” After a decade of strife and discord – and in some cases downright hateful words – it appears Bill Gates and company are moving to embrace their open source rivals just as they did recently with Novell. "We have had ongoing discussions with Red Hat...

After thirteen years as a loyal Red Hat and Fedora user, I reached my limit today, when an attempt to upgrade one (1) package pitched me into a four-hour marathon of dependency chasing, at the end of which an attempt to get around a trivial file conflict rendered my system unusable. The proximate causes of this failure were (1) incompetent repository maintenance, making any nontrivial upgrade certain to founder on a failed dependency, and (2) the fact that rpm is not statically linked -- so it's possible to inadvertently remove a shared library it depends on and be unrecoverably screwed....

Red Hat Inc's CEO has said the company is encouraging customers to adopt Microsoft Corp's offer of support vouchers for Novell's Inc's rival Linux operating system in order to get the issue over with. Microsoft announced in November 2006 that it would distribute 70,000 Linux support certificates a year for five years, at the cost of $240m as part of an interoperability and patent deal with Novell. Speaking at the Merrill Lynch internet, software and services conference, Red Hat's CEO, Matthew Szulik, dismissed the impact that deal has had on Raleigh North Carolina-based Red Hat's business. "I think that there...

JBoss founder to pursue personal interests, says he’s ‘done what I can’ to promote open source.JBoss founder Marc Fleury will leave Red Hat, the company said Friday, a month before the launch of the latest version of Red Hat’s commercial-use Linux operating system. Mr. Fleury became part of Red Hat after the latter bought JBoss, the open source support startup based in Atlanta, last year for $420 million. Red Hat now bundles its Linux for the enterprise with JBoss’ open-source application server. The news is bittersweet for fanatics who believe strongly in open software for all and idolize those who...

Brett Adams, vice president of development at rPath, sees 2007 as a pivotal year for virtualization. When you are looking at the future of virtualization, few companies are as well positioned to make observations as rPath. Billing itself as the "software appliance company," rPath was one of the first companies to focus on virtual appliances and simplifying their production. "It's not entirely clear whether we're going to see it gaining momentum in the first half of the year," Adams says, "But I think by the latter half of 2007, the virtual appliance concept will have taken root. That's based on...

FreeNAS is a small, powerful, full-featured implementation of FreeBSD as a network-attached storage device. (It also happens to be January's Project of the Month at SourceForge.net.) If you're a Linux user like me, the BSD-speak used for devices and such might give you pause, but other than that small caveat, installation and usage shouldn't be a problem. It's powerful enough to be used in the enterprise, but it's friendly enough so that even a typical home office user can take advantage of it. Here's how I created an easy-to-use NAS device for rsync backups and FTP server on my LAN.

The Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group will merge to form the Linux Foundation in an effort to build strength and increase their influence. Formed in 2000, the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) employs Linux founder Linus Torvalds. The move to combine forces could strengthen the hand of the open-source operating system against Windows. Red Hat and Novell distribute Linux for free but charge for tech support. Oracle and SAP have championed Linux as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Both groups already have a large list of members. Combined, the Linux Foundation will have 70 sponsors, such...

Red Hat said its acquisition of the JBoss open-source Java server software would mean $22 million to $27 million in new revenue from June 2, 2006, when the acquisition was completed, and February 27, 2007, when the Linux seller's quarter ends. The company's quarterly report, released Tuesday, indicates that the company will just make that goal. In the most recent quarter, JBoss generated $7.8 million for the company, an 11 percent increase over the $7 million from the first quarter in the Red Hat tent. "Extrapolating these numbers puts JBoss on track for about $22 million to $23 million in...

Around 25% of enterprises will be running mission-critical business application on Linux platforms by 2009. The prediction comes from analyst Saugatuck Technology, as a result of joint research with BusinessWeek Research Services. The researchers questioned over 130 firms and also found that 45% of enterprises will... Article Continues Below ... be using Linux to run critical applications by 2011. At the end of this year, 18% will be relying on Linux for critical applications. The analyst said Linux and other open source software take-up had now reached critical mass in the market place. It said recent open source announcements by...

From Slashdot "You can now get GPLed JVM sources from Sun. Everyone seemed to be expecting the desktop version (J2SE) but J2ME has been released first. It looks to be buildable for Linux x86, MIPS, and ARM platforms. Sun now calls it 'phoneME.' Enjoy." From Sun (https://phoneme.dev.java.net/downloads_page.html) "The phoneME project code is released under the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). Before downloading phoneME software, you should become familiar with the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). Please note: phoneME software may contain crypto binaries/source. Certain countries restrict the redistribution of high key-strength crypto. If you live in...

A recent deal between Microsoft and Novell has ignited the long-smouldering controversy about whether code can be owned. Is it the first step towards a two-tier software economy? ***************************************************** Free software is big business. This may come as a surprise to those whose understanding of open source software development ends at the caffeine-saturated hacker contributing code in the small hours from his (yes, his) bedroom. But between this image, and the fact that five of the ten most reliable web hosters run their sites on the open source operating system Linux, is the story of an industry of support and...

Excerpt - SUN MICROSYSTEMS will announce today that its Java language, contrary to the prediction of many pundits, will be offered as pure "Free Software" -as Richard Stallman would say "free as in freedom"- under a GPL version two licence. Ponytailed CEO Jonathan Schwartz will announce the ground-breaking move in a webcast to be held later at 9:30am Pacific Time. Both Java SE -used on desktops - and Java ME - used on mobile phones and PDAs- will be included. The server-side Java, or Java EE will be available both under the GPL version two licence and the same Common...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has issued an opinion in which Judge Easterbrook declares, "[t]he GPL and open-source have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws." The case is called Wallace v. IBM., No. 06-2454. [Download a copy of the opinion.] Internet Cases covered the lower court's decision from last December here. Plaintiff Wallace filed an antitrust suit against IBM, Red Hat and Novell, arguing that those companies had conspired to eliminate competition in the operating system market by making Linux available at an "unbeatable" price (free) under the General Public License ("GPL"). The U.S. District...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has issued an opinion in which Judge Easterbrook declares, "[t]he GPL and open-source have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws." The case is called Wallace v. IBM., No. 06-2454. [Download a copy of the opinion.] Internet Cases covered the lower court's decision from last December here. Plaintiff Wallace filed an antitrust suit against IBM, Red Hat and Novell, arguing that those companies had conspired to eliminate competition in the operating system market by making Linux available at an "unbeatable" price (free) under the General Public License ("GPL"). The U.S. District...