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Adobe Systems is throwing open its Flash and AIR file formats to speed delivery of Rich Internet Applications to billions of mobile devices with its tools and players. The company is expected to announce that - as of today - all restrictions on SWF for multi-media and vector graphics and FLV/F4V, for video on Flash, have been removed. Adobe is also publishing the device porting layer APIs for its Flash Player, the Flash Cast protocol and AMF protocol for the exchange data between a Flash application and database.

The OpenBSD team traditionally makes available a new song with each new release of its software. The songs, though often of dubious lyrical quality, typically embody the current thinking of the development team, in particular that of team leader Theo de Raadt. In the past the songs have railed against proprietary software developers and corporates and the challenges they throw in the way of free software. This time, however, the target is the Free Software Foundation’s Richard Stallman.

With all the Linux distributions available, trying out more than one can be tempting. By installing a virtual environment, you can run several operating systems on your machine, keeping them completely isolated from each other in their own sandboxes. Here's a look at how get started with three popular virtualization environments: VMware, VirtualBox, and QEMU. In a virtual ecosystem, a host operating system runs one or more guest virtual machines in a simulated environment. Each guest believes it has all of the host's physical hardware at its disposal.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Kubuntu 8.04 is derived from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and uses the KDE desktop instead of the GNOME desktop.

Discover a tool that enables developers of Java EE applications to migrate from WebSphere Application Server, Community Edition, to the more advanced WebSphere Application Server family of products. Remove a lot of the manual intervention involved in migrating the specific deployment descriptors.

Tony Mobily at Freesoftware Magazine interviews the developers of Ekiga, the free sfotware for making free 'phone call across the internet. By the time you have finished reading this epic article you will know a hell of a lot about Ekiga and VOIP in general. Catch these great guys here

These days, effective document management means accessibility from anywhere on the planet, electronic storage, reliable backup, and instant document modification updates. KnowledgeTree offers all that and more. It's available in several editions, including an open source community version (which we reviewed last year) that businesses can tailor to their individual needs.

"We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.3," began OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt. "This is our 23nd release on CD-ROM (and 24rd via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote holes in the default install." He added, "as in our previous releases, 4.3 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system". Four platforms were listed as new or extended, including: sparc64 gained SMP support, "this should work on all supported systems, with the exception of the Sun Enterprise 10000"; hppa K-class servers are now supported; mvme88k gained SMP support on a couple of systems, and support for the 88110 processor was added.

Qumranet, a rather small software company, wants to make a very large play in the virtualization market with a new product. It's looking for Solid ICE to go up against the desktop virtulization wares from VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and a host of start-ups. Those of you in the open source kingdom will know Qumranet best as the corporate sponsor of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), which had made its way into major Linux operating systems as the default server virtualization package. Canonical, the, er, corporate sponsor of Ubuntu, is perhaps the most vocal backer of KVM.

Sun says the open source version of its Java development kit has been picked up by two popular Linux distros. Canonical's Ubuntu 8.04 LTS distribution and Red Hat's forthcoming Fedora 9 both include OpenJDK, with the latter also to offer NetBeans 6.0, Sun's open source IDE (integrated development environment). Additionally, Canonical has certified Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition on several of Sun's x86-based hardware systems, the companies announced.

It's very rare that I've every been in a session at any conference session where an attendee heckles the panel and storms out. In a session at Interop on Open Source Risk that's exactly what happened..and it was intense!

Does it matter who pays the salaries of Linux kernel developers? If so, how much, and in what ways? The threads fan out from Linux Kernel Development (April 2008) — a report by Greg Kroah-Hartman, Jonathan Corbet and Amanda McPherson.

"Btrfs v0.14 is now available for download," Chris Mason announced, adding, "please note the disk format has changed, and it is not compatible with older versions of Btrfs." The project has gained a new wiki home page on the kernel.org domain, where it is explained, "Btrfs is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration. Initially developed by Oracle, Btrfs is licensed under the GPL and open for contribution from anyone."

When Ubuntu 7.10--aka "Gutsy Gibbon"--came out, one of the major complaints from the masses was about video problems. Some video problems were so bad, that the machines were all but unusable. To their credit, the Ubuntu folk heard their cries, and quickly released a raft-load of bug-fixes. However, that didn't fix all of the problems.

This article provides a basic knowledge of Eclipse Mono Integration and Nant, which are the most active C# and .NET toolkits available for Eclipse. You will also learn how both Emonic and Nant can help build .NET applications in Eclipse and how to migrate and existing C# project into Eclipse.

After several years of development, SymphonyOS this month released SymphonyOne 2008.1, the first stable version of its distribution. When SymphonyOS first emerged three years ago, it offered a Linux desktop experience unlike any ever seen before by structuring the computer desktop to function more like a real-life desk instead of just another system folder. Featuring the Mezzo desktop environment, Symphony simplifies the desktop concept for users. This release brings a new level of stability to the design, making it a viable alternative to KDE, GNOME, or Fluxbox.

Ever since my exploration of the various PCLinuxOS spins, I've been impressed with the project. Now that I'm having so much relative success with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, it's unlikely that I will be running PCLinuxOS on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop, but a) you never know and b) I'm looking for a good system to install for others, and PCLinuxOS is a top contender in that department.

Sony Ericsson is planning to offer developers the opportunity to embed Flash Lite applications inside J2ME midlets, in the hope that two mobile phone application platforms will prove better than one. Flash Lite has proved popular for highly-graphical mobile phone applications, and is supported on quite a range of handsets. J2ME is more widely supported and flexible, but suffers from compatibility issues and isn't very graphic artist friendly.

Last month we had looked at the Gigabyte AirCruiser N300 GN-WI30N-RH 802.11n WiFi adapter. The wireless adapter uses the Ralink RT2860 chipset, which doesn't have a Linux driver in the kernel, but we were able to easily get this 802.11n wireless adapter working with Ubuntu when using ndiswrapper and the Windows driver. Today we have our hands on the Gigabyte AirCruiser N300 Dual GN-WI06N-RH, which is a PCI Express Mini-Card with dual-band 802.11a/b/gn support. How well does this Atheros-based WiFi card work on Linux? We'll tell you in this review.

The OpenBSD project is ready to announce the new release, OpenBSD 4.3, that will be officially available on May 1st (the only way to get it earlier is ordering the CD package). As usual there are a lot of improvements and new tools and features, and it sounds amazing that they keep delivering these results with a six month release cycle.