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Bangalore, 22 January 2007: - US based SpikeSource, a leading provider of business ready open source solutions with its 'centre of innovation- located at Bangalore, today announced that it has partnered with Noida based InfoAxon Technologies, a leading provider of Professional Open Source Business Productivity Solutions, as 'SpikeSource Solution Provider- for India. InfoAxon is the first company in India to be signed by SpikeSource as its Solution Provider

The Open Source Developer Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG), two groups trying to standardise and steer Linux, have merged in an effort to increase their influence.

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 two major forces behind driving the commercialization of Linux will merge to form an all embracing group. Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group will combine to form a new organization called Linux Foundation.

The Meraka Institute will be holding a three-day workshop in February focused on information and communications technology and its role in advancing development.

Building on the success of a pilot program at Texas Woman's University in 2006, Koha with Class provides library school classrooms with five hosted installations of Koha, free of charge. Koha is the first and most mature open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). The project is designed to give future librarians hands-on experience with library automation software and open source. Any college or university offering a program in Library and Information Studies/ Technology can participate.

When Damian Hickey set out to build an e-commerce system for reservations-based businesses, he was determined not to reinvent the wheel. By choosing to modify an existing open source e-retailing system he was able to accelerate the development process, but also took on board a score of additional problems.

Welcome to this year's fourth issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Continuing the post-release coverage of FreeBSD 6.2, this week's issue brings an exclusive interview with Matteo Riondato, a FreeBSD developer and the release engineer of the FreeSBIE live CD. The news section then delivers the usual round-up of miscellaneous news from the distribution world, including a story about the upcoming release of Mandriva "Metisse" edition with a new 3D-enabled desktop environment. Also in the same section, PCLinuxOS launches the first experimental release of the distribution's 2007 version, Fedora Unity announces new, up-to-date re-spins of Fedora Core 6, gNewSense prepares for the release of version 1.1 - now also with KDE, and the T2 project introduces a new minimalist rescue live CD with uClibc. Finally, we are pleased to present BOSS GNU/Linux, a new Indian distribution with the noble goal of providing complete support for India's 22 official languages. Happy reading!

Sun Microsystems Inc. unveiled a series of updates to the Solaris 10 (version 11/06) operating system (OS) designed to bolster Solaris' presence as a more strategic alternative to commercial Linux distributions. Sun officials say the company will make the effort to do so via the channel by offering higher margins and through Solaris support subscriptions priced at 20 to 50 per cent lower than those currently offered by Red Hat for its commercial Linux distribution.

The Free Standards Group (FSG) and Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), two of the major non-profit corporations dedicated to promoting open source software, are merging to form a new organization called The Linux Foundation. The new organization will be led by Jim Zemlin, the former FSG executive director, and for now will continue the work of both predecessors. The merger will be legally complete in early February, but work on the practical details will begin immediately.

It will take a few more years before the fate of the DRM patent applications filed by Red Hat's Alan Cox is known. Last week it came to light that Cox had applied for two patents, both to do with digital rights management.

PCLinuxOS 2007 Test release 1 is now available for download. Please note this is not the final release. PCLinuxOS 2007 final will be released at the end of the month. Features include: kernel 2.6.18.6; KDE 3.5.6; Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1; Flash 9; OpenOffice.org 2.1.0; Beryl, Compiz, AIGLX and Xgl for 3D graphics support; GCC 4.1.1 and updated glibc; updated bootsplash, icons, and more from the MyPCLinuxOS.com beautification project; Xdg menu system; rebuild and update of our entire repository against new GCC and glibc; simplified live CD boot options. - DistroWatch. Screenshots of PCLinuxOS 2007 Test 1 are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

OpenOffice.org includes dozens of options for how it behaves. Available from Tools> Options, they are divided into general settings for the entire office suite and settings particular to each application. General settings are available under the general headings of OpenOffice.org, Load/Save, and Language Settings.

Robert Day proposed a couple of new kernel code maturity configuration options for tagging code as either"deprecated" or"obsolete". He referenced earlier confusion around the attempt to remove devfs [story] in which it wasn't clear on the current state and future plans for the code. He explained,"using deprecated code is still technically fine, but using obsolete code should be something that raises a red flag of some kind." Aside from a little confusion between the differences in definition between these two words, general feedback was positive. H. Peter Anvin supported the patch,"if nothing else, it gives some middle-of-the-roadness to the continual'to remove or not to remove' debate." Robert also noted that the"deprecated" flag would be a useful sanity check when building a kernel,"this would seem to be a quick and dirty way to prune anything that is *supposed* to be obsolete from the build, to make sure you're not picking up dead code by accident.".

Sunday afternoon, the Free Standards Group (FSG) signed an agreement to combine forces with Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) to form a new organization – The Linux Foundation. The result of this consolidation will be to dedicate the resources of the combined membership to "accelerate the growth of Linux by providing a comprehensive set of services to compete effectively with closed platforms."

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: KHangman becomes the latest application to migrate to SVG-based scalable interface rendering. KOpenBabel is merged and the beginnings of a 3d navigation system in Kalzium. Work expands in the Umbrello/KPlato Student Mentoring program. Support for the ComicBook Archive and other improvements in okular. Work on Picture, Video and Krita "Flake" shapes in KOffice. Improvements in both the KDE 3.5 and 4.0 versions of Konsole. Language detection in Sonnet continues to mature. Import of concept code demos in Decibel. "Simple-search" user interface work, and support for indexing binary data fields in Strigi. "liveui" moves back into kdelibs. dbmodeler, a database schema modelling application (part of the Season of KDE), is renamed "grama".

Both mini-conferences to be held at the So Cal Linux Expo are ready.

EnterpriseDB, maker of the world’s leading enterprise-class database built on open source, announced today that it has expanded its Asia Pacific operations with the establishment of a regional headquarters in Hong Kong. The company also announced that it has hired industry veteran Roger Durn as the region’s general manager. More information about the company and free downloads of EnterpriseDB Advanced Server, the company’s flagship product, may be found at http://www.enterprisedb.com.

Hopling Technologies and Fujitsu announced in September 2006 that they would collaborate on a Linux-based Hopling Board Support Package designed to make it easier for equipment manufacturers to add innovative applications to the standards-based Fujitsu solution. The reference kit, which includes a reference board utilizing the highly integrated MB87M3550 WiMAX SoC, software package and operating manual, will be available from Fujitsu in 1Q-2007.

Open source Could be on the short-list when it comes to application-buying decisions in 2007. While open source applications for collaboration, content management and CRM may not have reached the maturity level of Linux or the Apache web server, they’re getting there.