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NewsForge.com regrets to report that our freelance contributor Michael M. Murphree, 41, died Monday, October 17, as a result of a heart attack. Michael worked as a system administrator and held Level 2 certification from the Linux Professional Institute. A devoted family man, he also enjoyed writing children's fiction, woodworking, and building computer systems for the less fortunate.

This year's Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), being held in Boston next month, is different from past years in that there is now a track for CIOs. Why? According to Matt Asay, conference director and director of Novell's Linux Business Office and Open Source Review Board, it's because open source has arrived -- in the executive suites.

.. Ballmer knows he's got a long roe to hoe. 'The day I come in front of the Gartner audience and say we have a better Unix than Linux, that'll be a good day.'"

When Goodwill first selected Liferay, Bergman admitted he was the one who had the most reservations about going with an open source software (OSS) product.

"I was the person who was the most concerned, and it was my IT team that really tried to allay some of those fears," Bergman said.

SAN DIEGO — The Norwegian who became a hacker hero at age 15 will have to adjust to warmer winters.

Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD Jon" for his work with software to crack copy-protection in DVDs, began work in San Diego this week at MP3tunes, the digital music service started in February by Michael Robertson, an iconoclast in his own right.

Dave Rosenberg writes about Monday's National Association of State CIOs’ (NASCIO) annual conference writes: At what point does Microsoft's PR team stop Alan Yates from speaking publicly? Yates, GM, information worker business strategy is hell-bent on making disparaging remarks about open source without facts or statistics to back them up.

"Clearly, it's changing the landscape of the technology industry for better and worse,"

Some groups want to remove intellectual property completely, but Yates said commercial companies such as Linspire produce operating systems based on Linux, the most widely used example of open-source programs. He said such companies stand by their products and provide a balance between the open-source and proprietary sides, a middle ground of sorts

But Yates said government agencies and organizations need to understand the benefits of using open source and balance that against implementation costs. He said they need to understand licensing privileges, indemnification issues and an ecosystem of service providers, among other considerations.

After a series of acquisitions and mergers, auction house Bonhams needed to reconcile four different business management systems. To achieve this, it selected an IBM eServer xSeries solution running Linux, offering reduced administration and maintenance activities and a scalable architecture.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years.

Note: Downloads available below -Ed.

http://download.openoffice.org/2.0.0/index.html

A vulnerability has been identified in VERITAS NetBackup servers and clients, which could be exploited by remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands. This flaw is due to a format string error in the Java authentication service "bpjava-msvc" that does not properly handle a specially crafted "COMMAND_LOGON_TO_MSERVER" command (port 13722), which could be exploited by remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands with root/SYSTEM privileges.

The Apple Power Mac G5 Quad features two 2.5GHz, dual-core PowerPC G5 processors to increase the power at the top of its business range

Last week the OpenOffice.org project turned five. Today the team release the long-awaited OpenOffice.org 2.0 office. For South African users the good news is that this release is immediately available in seven of the country's official 11 languages with the remaining four planned for November.

Last month I spent an intense five days learning the ins and outs of the PostgreSQL database management system at the Big Nerd Ranch, a teaching and consulting company based in Atlanta which specializes in Mac OS X and Unix. The "Big Nerd Ranch Way" removes you from your normal environment to Historic Banning Mills, a beautiful resort southwest of Atlanta, where your only concern is learning. Founder and alpha nerd Aaron Hillegass and his staff offer a series of innovative courses taught by world-class professionals.

GNU Bayonne 2 offers a GNU GPL licensed scalable, media independent software environment for development and deployment of telephony solutions for use both with current, and next generation VOIP telephone networks.

In this installment of his FAQ, Mark covers the thinking behind the default Ubuntu brown, and the secret of the naming convention, and other quirks that make Ubuntu what it is.

O'Reilly has published a book for software developers and managers who have started, or are considering starting, an open source project. Producing Open Source Software, by Karl Fogel, aims to help projects avoid failure by outlining best -- and worst -- practices.

The Inland Revenue Department has signed an all-of-government license agreement with Novell that will give government agencies greater freedom in their choice of software and provide a framework for those that opt for Open Source

Yes, yet another Ubuntu release -- this time for the server. But don't expect Ubuntu's track record of runaway success to sway server administrators, though.

Black Duck Software Inc. is making its protexIP/OnDemand software-compliance assessment service available free of charge from Tuesday through year's end, according to a company executive. The service analyzes software projects to determine whether they contain any pieces of open-source code and ensure that the code meets licensing obligations

A vulnerability has been identified in XMail, which may be exploited by malicious users to obtain elevated privileges. This issue is due to a stack overflow error in the "AddressFromAtPtr" function that does not properly handle an overly long hostname portion of an e-mail address passed to the "-t" command line option, which could be exploited by local attackers to execute arbitrary commands with "root" or "mail" privileges.

Software industry group Open Source Victoria has teamed up with technology company Phase N to develop a plug-in for Microsoft Office users to view documents in the Open Document Format.