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Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a fan of the term “intellectual property”, and that I prefer the more technically correct term “intellectual monopolies”. Despite that, I strongly recommend a new book from someone who not only approves of the term “intellectual property”, but of its fundamental ideas. I do so, however, because this avowed fan also has serious reservations:

The Eclipse Foundation has published a roadmap putting a strong emphasis on Web 2.0, cloud computing, and rivalry with Windows — particularly Vista. New projects must be consistent with the roadmap, Eclipse said. "This does not mean that every new project must be explicitly envisaged by the roadmap," it said, but "It does mean that new projects cannot be inconsistent with the stated directions of Eclipse."

The market share of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer dropped under the 70% mark last month for the first time since Web metrics vendor Net Applications Inc. started keeping tabs on browsers, the company said today. IE slipped to a 69.8% share, down from October's 71.3% and off 7.6 percentage points in the past year. Rival browsers from Mozilla Corp., Apple Inc. and Google Inc., meanwhile, cashed in on IE's slide and posted gains for the month, according to Net Applications' data, which is culled from visitors to the thousands of Web sites the company monitors for clients. Mozilla's Firefox, which briefly popped above the 20% share bar during October, solidified that surge in November to end the month at 20.8%, an increase of 0.8 percentage points, the largest one-month increase since March 2007.

Mobile phone operating systems and a reheated web browser war: that's how we'll recall the year 2008 when it comes to software. From brand new to revamped browsers and mobile platforms and apps, 2008's been good to technophiles who like their data in the cloud and accessible wherever they are. Let's take a look back at this year in software, and some of the best new and improved applications, web services, and mobile platforms that were born in 2008. Looking back at the last 12 months, these are the apps that get a gold foil-wrapped chocolate coin from us this year.

Corporate austerity is reaching one of the most extravagant spenders of the boom years. Google Inc. has begun to tighten its belt. For much of its 10-year history, Google spent money at a pace that was the marvel of Silicon Valley. It hired by the thousands and dished out generous perks, including three free meals a day, free doctors, ski trips and laundry facilities, and subsidized personal trainers. It let engineers spend 20% of their time pursuing pet projects. The company's goal was to develop new products that would reduce its nearly total reliance on selling ads connected to Internet searches.

One of the most exciting aspects of the PlayStation 3 Latest News about PlayStation 3 is that it allows users to install an alternative operating system. You can't overwrite Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Latest News about Sony GameOS or access privileged resources, but you can run your own applications on the new Cell Broadband Engine processor (called the "CBE processor" or the "Cell" for short). The Cell is the mighty brain of the PlayStation 3, and this article explains how to access it by installing Linux Linux MPS Pro.

Database maker Oracle and host bus adapter maker Emulex today announced that they have contributed code to eliminate silent data corruption to the open source Linux operating system. The two also said this code has been accepted in the 2.6.27 kernel, which is the latest stable release. Back in April 2007, Oracle, Emulex, disk maker Seagate, and disk array maker LSI Logic announced that they would be extending a standard called T10 Data Integrity Field (DIF) so it would reach from software applications through storage arrays and their related file systems down to the disk drive. The data integrity effort, says Oracle, is about making sure that data does not become corrupted as it moves from the application servers to the database and then from the Linux operating system into the disk storage attached to it.

Nanchang, the capital of China's eastern Jiangxi province, has required Internet cafe operators to replace pirated server software with licensed versions. Cafes that don't will lose their license to operate, but some are grumbling about the cost of installing legitimate software. "What has the world come to, when no leaders will come forward to speak out on behalf of Internet owners like us," wrote one user on a Jiangxi discussion forum (in Chinese). "When you talk to officials from the Culture Department, they tell you, 'If you're willing to pay, pay; if not, you have the option not to pay.' Hearing words like that turns your heart cold. We really can't make a living," the user said.

Linux game programmer Ryan "Icculus" Gordon has released a native Linux client for Prey, a two-year-old first-person shooter (FPS) game from Human Head Studios. The client requires users to purchase a copy of the title for Windows PCs. Gordon first posted a "demo" of his Prey client for Linux back in October, inviting users to send feedback. Then, last week, he announced an initial release on his website, here. He appears to have subsequently released an updated installer said to fix "all known issues."

UNIX is being attacked by Linux from the top and bottom ends of the market. The signs are that it is losing the battle on both fronts. A couple of weeks back I wrote that Linux is becoming increasingly capable of doing the less-demanding tasks that UNIX has historically been asked to do, so there is less and less need for UNIX. That explains its falling share of the server market.

For programmers on big projects, a version control system for managing source code is vital, but working on files in a large project from one of these programs' command-line interfaces is cumbersome. Worse, the results of the commands lack highlighting to show the differences between files and revisions. ViewVC is a handy browser-based code viewer that allows users to browse a source code tree managed by either CVS or Subversion, look at changes, compare revisions at the file or line level, and perform other operations -- just about anything except allow users to check out or commit files.

In the beginning were C and C++, and hosts of other computer programming languages. These are all based on ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), which as the name implies is based on the English alphabet. Which wouldn't be an issue except there are lot of other humans in the world, and they don't use the English alphabet.

This week brings some interesting new reports on open source adoption in enterprises, providing more evidence that the economic downturn is boosting many open source product categories. BusinessWeek has a big story out on cost-conscious companies turning to open source, ranging from ETrade to the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, new survey results illustrate a trend we've written about before: open source moving up the software stack in enterprises.

Spam on the Web is one of the biggest threats to a modern Web developer. The "bad guys" become more and more sophisticated every year in how to vandalize and proliferate ads over any Web 2.0 page they can grasp. To make matters worse, spam is increasingly used to distribute malware. The arms race is on, and Web developers need to know what basic tools are available to battle spam on their Web sites. This two-part installment provides a thorough guide to anti-spam techniques. This first article explains how to assess whether a visitor is a spammer and how to organize site workflow to discourage spam..

The Open Solutions Alliance, a nonprofit industry group that pushes for the adoption and interoperability of open-source software, has named an executive of the giant systems integrator Unisys as its new president. Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager of open-source business at Unisys, is taking over the role previously held by Dominic Sartorio, senior director of product management at SpikeSource, which makes a platform for testing, packaging and maintaining applications. .

The Minimalist GNU for Windows (MinGW) project is a way to get GCC and tools like binutils working to build software for the Windows environment—something that might not sound very interesting to Linux users or developers. But there are a number of advantages to porting and regularly testing free software on Windows, as Red Hat's Richard Jones and Dan Berrange explain in the following interview. Richard and Dan also describe Red Hat's involvement, how developers can participate, as well as how it all helps the free software cause.

S3 Graphics today released Beta drivers for the latest version of the OpenGL 3.0 API to take advantage of the Khronos Group's open, cross-platform 3D standard on the newly released Chrome 500 Series programmable GPUs. This major milestone allows software developers to start OpenGL 3.0 development on S3 Graphics hardware using the latest beta driver and GLSL 1.3 shading language on Windows XP and Vista.

A new netbook from Gigabyte and GoodOS that is small, fast, and affordable. I've looked at GoodOS (gOS) before in two other posts: The Netbook Market Booms with Linux Onboard and Three Linux Distros to Watch and Use but now they've taken the lightweight operating system (OS) one step further with Taiwan-based manufacturer GigaByte.

The Bugzilla project has released its version 3.2. Next to Oracle support it has many new improvements to its services

All major Linux distros now support IPv6 according to the Linux Foundation. The non-profit organisation has announced that the companies now comply with the standards laid down by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and are now ready to be deployed in IPv6 networks. In 2005, the US government mandated all of its agencies to meet the next-generation Internet protocol requirements for any computing and networking equipment they acquire.