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The new XML-based standard offers a vendor-neutral format for documents, spreadsheets, databases and presentations.

We have talked many times before on Open Sourcery about the pros and cons of the commercialization of Linux. This has included building a service and support system similar to open source's proprietary cousins (that the business world is used to), introducing benchmark ratings (already a growing movement) and methods for validating code to protect against both legitimate and rancorous legal action.

Oracle Corp. gained ground in the worldwide relational database market last year to draw roughly level with IBM, thanks in part to Oracle's strong performance in the fast-growing Linux segment, according to new figures from Gartner Inc.

Athenahealth Inc.'s sales management system, Salesforce.com, and Web-based customer portal, athenanet, couldn't talk to each other, and that communication gap often put customers on hold. That's why Bob Gatewood, CTO of the Waltham, Mass. physician revenue-cycle management services company, had to find a way to marry the two.

Redefines VxWorks- and Linux-based device development with announcement of new and enhanced products

Announces comprehensive services practices tailored to meet specific vertical market needs

Hardware and software partners evangelize the benefits of Wind River solutions as a way to address industry shift toward standardized, optimized device development

Wind River unveils upgrade to developer tools that lets programmers use them to configure MontaVista's Linux and embed it into devices.

On Demand Enterprise Search Provider to Participate in OSDL's Data Center Linux Working Group

With Linux pushing its fortunes, Oracle scales to the database peak, Gartner report says.

Popularity of Linux helps boost Oracle's database sales. Also: IBM takes steps to promote open source in academia.

Distance education is becoming more important in today's connected world. Universities and schools are supplementing traditional classroom-based learning with electronic learning management systems (LMS) -- software designed to deliver on-line education. You may know such software by other names, such as managed learning environments, virtual learning environments, or course management systems. Moodle is the definitive open source learning management system. Like most LMSes, it make extensive use of the Internet, with features such as discussion forums, chats, journals, automated testing and grading tools, and student tracking. Because it's open source, it's also broadly extensible by its large user community.

Over the course of 5 months, I've taken my wife who knew nothing of Linux and put her through a handful of desktop oriented distros to see if we could shake the Windows bug. The results are contained on Yet Another Linux Blog. If you want to know what a new user thinks about distros such as SimplyMEPIS, PCLinuxOS, Mandrake (Mandriva), Ubuntu, and Fedora Core... you may want to give the experiment a read:

"Linuxblog Introduction: We took an average windows user, gave her a handful of distributions of Linux, and forced her to use each distro for one week. We gave her alsaconf, email servers, and mounted her windows partition to the fresh install. Then, we faded away and quietly watched her in her new environment. You too can join us by reading on...

Freely Available Visual MainWin(R) for J2EE(TM) Developer Edition, Developer Zone Link Visual Studio .NET(R) Developers to Linux(R), Mono(TM)

Steven J Vaughn-Nichols calls it as he sees it: the MSFT-backed, Wipro study on patching has to contort its methodology in order to come to the pre-determined conclusion. Also patching a Linux box doesn't necessarily require a reboot, but patching a Windows box almost always does.

I've been a Linux server administrator for more than eight years, but I've always used Windows on the desktop. The thing that keeps me from moving my desktop to Linux isn't application lock-in or lack of applications (most apps I use are OSS anyway), but the ability to use hotkeys effectively for file management.

Despite some recent criticism -- which included a call to boycott standards based on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing fees -- the OASIS standards body is behind what many in the open source community view as a primary example of a truly open, industry-accepted standard: the new OpenDocument format.

Interact-TV, a digital media management company based in Westminster, Colo., uses a custom Linux operating system built on Fedora Core as the base for its digital television servers. As a result of his experiences with Linux and other open source software on the production floor, CEO Ken Fuhrman has fired his Web host, fired up some Red Hat servers, and created a custom Web-based engineering environment along with StarOffice and Linux for administrative desktops.

Sun Microsystems has expressed "serious doubts" about the usefulness of the latest Apache Foundation project to create an open source implementation of the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE).

Java technology and XML are arguably the most important programming developments of the last five years. The Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) lets you validate, parse, and transform XML using several different APIs.

This paper aims to show that the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) model is suitable not only to make good software. It might also work in other economic areas. Making a parallel with the collective FOSS property, the possibility and viability of a collective ownership over the knowledge of production is analyzed. The ideas here presented were born and developed in a FOSS community (Libervis) and written in its Wiki section.

Open Source Development Labs, group that employs Linux leader Linus Torvalds, lays off nearly a sixth of its staff.