Free Republic

A federal probe into campaign spending and two publicly funded nonprofits led Wednesday to raids on the offices of State Rep. William F. Keller (D., Phila.), the home of city Traffic Court Judge Robert Mulgrew, and the suburban office of a prominent political consultant. The FBI and the IRS are looking at whether money from Keller's political action committee was used for noncampaign purposes, according to two sources familiar with the investigation. Authorities are also scrutinizing finances related to two nonprofits: the South Philadelphia Area Revitalization Corp. (SPARC), a taxpayer-funded nonprofit established by Keller, and Friends of Dickinson Square Community...

Sun Microsystems plans to release on Tuesday the underlying design of its UltraSparc T1 "Niagara" processor under the terms of the General Public License. The move fulfills a commitment to employ the widely used open-source license that Sun President Jonathan Schwartz made at the Open Source Business Conference in January. David Yen, executive vice president of Sun's Sparc server group, is expected to discuss the move at the MultiCore Expo, which runs Tuesday through Thursday in Santa Clara, Calif., where Sun also has its headquarters. Sun's UltraSparc T1 has eight processing engines, called cores, each able to run four simultaneous...

Sun Microsystems' ambitions have grown another size larger. The server and software company launched its servers based on its own UltraSparc T1 "Niagara" chips in December, a major part of a drive to restore its lost luster and financial strength. But alongside the hardware launch came a more quiet software push: an attempt to make the Linux and BSD Unix open-source operating systems a serious option for buyers of Sparc-based computers. To promote the technology combination, Sun is trying to coax an accompanying software business into existence. Sun has had some experience building such software "ecosystems." For example, it's in...