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Amid an enterprise environment that is now more receptive to utility computing and focused on service-based contracts, open source software adoption has grown over the past two years and entered the IT mainstream.

Mozilla has released a beta version of the MPL 2.0, the first update to its open source license in more than a decade. Mozilla chief lizard wrangler Mitchell Baker calls this a "feature complete" beta, saying it "addresses all major known issues". The license is shorter and simpler than the aging MPL 1.1. The beta draft drops the word count from 3,702 words to 2,289. But it's also designed to make the MPL more compatible with other licenses, including the Apache license and the GPL. Its patent language has been massaged to look more like that in other licenses. And it removes the "original software" and "original developer" concepts.

The kernel now includes some components for supporting operation as a Xen host (Dom0). Switching into and out of sleep mode should be accelerated by the use of LZO compression. Following years of work, almost all parts of the kernel are now able to run without using the big kernel lock (BKL).

Using Linux on a laptop has always been a hit and miss affair. With sometimes obscure proprietary hardware, many laptop manufacturers have showed no interest in supporting the free operating system. Nevertheless, through hard work by developers and support from some hardware manufacturers, Linux now supports a wide variety of laptops and netbooks.

OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt disclosed an e-mail earlier this month in which former NETSEC CTO Gregory Perry claimed that his company was paid by the FBI to plant a "backdoor" in the OpenBSD IPSEC stack. The allegations led to a thorough code review and historical analysis of the relevant code.

One of my biggest beefs with Gmail on my Droid (rooted, running Cyanogenmod 6.1.2) is that I could never reply with an address other than my gmail account. I have several accounts tied to gmail, and with the web client, you can choose which account to reply with. In fact, Gmail does a good job of replying with the address the email was sent to.

ZDNet Asia spoke to open source vendors and developers for their recommendations of open source enterprise software available in the market today, which they say can improve business processes including workflow and content management.

While we continue to be taken away by Unigine OilRush and other projects, for those without access to these new titles and not impressed by the recent Humble Indie Bundle #2 or Zero Ballistics 2, there is a new alternative: Warsow 0.6.

Last week, you tested your Ubuntu system for KVM compatibility, installed KVM on your host server and installed a guest operating system into a virtual machine. This week you’ll learn some KVM-oriented terminology and will continue your dive into KVM Ubuntu style by working with virtual machines via the virsh command.

KDE e.V. is pleased to announce that we have joined the Open Invention Network community as a licensee. Open Invention Network was founded as a way to help defend the Linux ecosystem, and by extension much of the Free and Open Source software world, from the risks associated with software patents. Patents owned by Open Invention Network are available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System, creating an umbrella of protection for its members.

Android phones may boast more features than you can shake a stick at, plus a wide range of exciting software, but they're still a serious investment. If you get one and subsequently find that you don't get on with the operating system, it could be a costly mistake. It would therefore be a good idea to experiment with and learn to use Android in a safe environment first, rather than messing up the configuration of an expensive smartphone. The solution is to run Android on your PC.

The nice people behind the popular WordPress blogging and publishing platform have released the 3.1 beta. Should you upgrade? Joe Brockmeier counsels caution.

O'Reilly has opened up a call for participation for its Open Source Convention (OSCON) 2011, to be held on July 25-29 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. Meanwhile, the Linux Foundation's Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) announced that its Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) will be held April 11-13 in San Francisco.

Packetfence is a very powerful Network Access Control tool. Using Packetfence you can control and block unwanted traffic on your network. Want to block P2P services like BitTorrent, or keep mobile devices like iPhones and Android phones off your wireless network? Packetfence gives you the kind of fine-grained control you're looking for.

Google will open source two of the Java Eclipse coding tools it acquired with its purchase of Java-obsessed outfit Instantiations. Less than five months after paying an undisclosed sum for Instantiations, Mountain View has announced that it will donate the source code and IP for Instantiations' WindowBuilder and CodePro Profiler tools to the open source community via the Eclipse Foundation. According to Google, the code and IP is worth more than $5m.

There’s a Linux distribution for every occasion and the main purpose of Jolicloud is to present a web enabled GUI for netbooks and similar devices. I’m going to take a look at a preview release of the forthcoming 1.1 version. Under the hood, it’s based on the Ubuntu long term service release (10.04), and the front end is handled by a combination of the Chromium web browser and a full screen user interface that eschews overlapping windows.

Where will KDE be in five years? To answer this question, we plan to bring together visionaries, strategists, planners, out-of-the-box-thinkers, realists, dreamers, doers, creators, leaders, coders from the KDE community and everybody else who is interested in discussing the future of KDE and picturing what it will be.

Linux gaming has a bright future ahead with the forthcoming Unigine games, successful indie campaigns, and many other Linux-native game titles being just out on the horizon. Right now though if you are a dedicated PC gamer looking to satisfy your entertainment appetite under Linux, more than likely you find yourself using the Wine program so that you can run many Windows programs under Linux. What is the performance impact though of using this method? In this article, we have a couple benchmarks comparing the performance of Wine, native Linux game binaries, and the native Microsoft Windows 7 Professional performance.

Linux offers multiple remote graphical desktop options for other Linux hosts, but what if you run a mixed Linux-Windows shop? Eric Geier shows how to run remote Windows desktops on Linux.

Ms. Carla Schroder shared a list of her "bestest distros" recently, so I thought I might follow suit. She called hers "not-usual" and looking at her list, I'd say my choices are probably a little more usual. In any case, here are my top five favorite Linux distributions for 2010, in no real order.