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Java vendors' growing captivation with Apache has resulted in expanded product and licensing support from BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems. Tomcat is a servlet container, not a server as stated in the article. - ed

It's an unlikely matter for the United States and other nations to lock horns over: the administration of names and numbers used to reach Internet sites. But this seemingly trivial function is occupying a lot of time among government representatives traveling from continent to continent. A United Nations body wants to wrest power over these things from their current master, the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The United States says that with ICANN in charge, things are running just fine (which they aren't). Many people condemn one side or the other for trying to carry out a power grab, or call the engagement a lot of hot air.

Editor's Notes: We believe Sun Microsystems qualifies for the job of recognizing poor governance since they have lived with it for so long. Now, Basheera Khan writes: "Sun Microsystem's chief open source officer Simon Phipps has issued a call for greater governance in the open source world."

Speaking at EuroOSCON, currently underway in Amsterdam, Phipps said: "It's become obvious to me what we are at a turning point in free and open source software, in terms of thinking about licensing, governance and standards."

"Phipps cited poor governance as the greatest vector for disease in open source projects, and described governance as a whole as the overlooked corner of the open source world."

Well Basheera, Simon should know, since his colleagues are experts at running a company into the ground."

VMWare released a new, free, as in beer, product today. The VMWare player can host VMWare machines created in the commercial VMWare products. Several sample "machines" are offered for download. This included a nice stack of business apps, assembled by SpikeSource, and based on your choice of SuSE 9.3 or Fedora Core 3.

Dan Mosedale has announced that nightly builds of Lightning are now available. Details of the builds, which are not yet suitable for day-to-day use, are on the Lightning nightly builds page of the Mozilla Wiki.

There are many kinds of Linux-related books. Some instruct readers on design philosophies and programming principles, others are "beginner" books written in layman's terms, and then there are administration and security guides. Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition is a desk reference -- not something you'd read cover-to-cover, and you wouldn't want it to be your only source of Linux-related information, but it's handy to have around if you use the GNU/Linux operating system on a regular basis.

You know how I always write that software is math, so allowing software patents is like patenting 2+2=4, and then telling the world they can't use 2+2 any more? Well, they've about done it now.

Linuxchix Africa and Kasi Open Source Software (KOSS) will conduct a "train-the-trainers" workshop in Johannesburg next week in an effort to reach out to women who have been previously sidelined in open source initiatives.

A new project has been launched by the Free Standards Group in order to promote standardization of desktop Linux distributions. The aim of the standardization is to widen the adoption of Linux as a desktop operating system. The group has launched the LSB Desktop Project, which has been adopted by all the major Linux distributors.

As well as distributors Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, Linspire, and Xandros, LSB Desktop Project members also include IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel on the hardware side, as well as Adobe Systems, RealNetworks, and Trolltech on the software side.

In the dark days before GUIs (way, way back in the '70s and earlier), command-line instructions were all a computer could understand from a human. Technically, it's still all they understand -- but the instructions have been obfiscated by the use of the point-and-click GUI interface.

However, there are still times when users find a need to drop down to a Linux shell prompt, and enter the strange and wondrous world of the CLI (command line interface). To that end, Linux developers Steve Campbell and Sunil Patel have put together a list of the "Newbie's Top Ten Commands." These are the most-often used -- thus the most important -- command-line instructions that exist, according to the authors.

IceWarp Software has released a Linux version of its Merak E-mail Server Suite, and according to the company's U.S. distributor, there was a high demand from customers for a Linux edition of the product.

The sparring match for developer mindshare between Borland Software and IBM/Rational has continued, as the companies focus on "process" instead of tools.

Inside a new program designed to tell entrepreneurs what they really need to know to make their great idea a great company.

OS community not horrified

Tom Krazit writes: "Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer believes the company has ironed out all of the security problems in its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system so that users can consider adopting it the first day it is released. For the most part."

Does anyone believe this yarn? - Ed.

India's Canara Bank has selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its OS of choice as it automates more than 1,000 of its branches, reports Infoworld/Netherlands. The move involves about 1,000 servers and 10,000 desktops. Canara is one of India's largest government-owned banks.

Today, we (Microsoft) are announcing the availability of three new template Shared Source licenses. In this way, all of Microsoft source code releases will be under consistent terms, and thus more easy to use and to understand. The licenses are each 1 page or shorter. They are written in simple terms that non-lawyers should be able to follow. They are also reflective of the most modern thinking regarding source code licenses within the legal community.

Comment We do not believe Microsoft understands open-source. -Ed.

Netscape on Wednesday released a new version of Netscape 8 to bring the Web browser up to date on security patches with the underlying Firefox software.

Novell and IBM are trying to make it easier for data-center hardware buyers to deploy Linux on blade servers. Companies can now buy a per-chassis license for Novell SuSE Linux running on IBM blade servers, as opposed to purchasing an individual support license for each blade in the box. The license would cover chassis with up to 14 Linux blade servers, with the choice of Intel, AMD or IBM's Power processors running on the hardware.

An open source embedded training and services company in the South of France has expanded its collection of freely licensed French- and English-language educational materials about embedded Linux. Free Electrons says the lectures, presentations, and practical labs can be useful for either corporate training or self-study.

Free Electrons develops corporate training programs about open source embedded development, which it says it delivers to clients around the world. It first began sharing its training materials under the GNU Free Documentation License a year ago.