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An upcoming report by the Yankee Group warns that Microsoft Exchange may lose around 23 percent of its customers to open source mail solutions in the next year and a half. To be released in April, the report claims that companies will move to an open source mail solution because decision makers believe that open source is both easier to manage and cost-effective.

Zimbra today announced the launch of Zimbra Desktop, a rich offline-capable client that allows users to have the same AJAX-based collaboration experience as offered by Zimbra's popular web-only client.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released the third draft of the revised third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). Some of the changes in the new draft, such as the increased clarification and legal language, or the housekeeping changes that reflect new aspects of the license are likely to be accepted. However, the license also includes a new approach to the controversial issue of lock-down technologies as well as more explicit language about patents, including language designed to prevent a re-occurrence of agreements such as the one that Novell entered into with Microsoft -- all of which is apt to kindle heated debate as the revision process enters its final stages after fifteen months of intensive work.

This article walks you through the initial steps involved in creating an Eclipse-based application using the Graphical Editing Framework (GEF). Also, discover the options you have these days to bootstrap the process of creating graphical editors in Eclipse.

The Linspire team have surprised everybody again, in late January, announcing that they would make CNR available for other distributions of Linux, in the second quarter of 2007. Although it might seem like a strange business decision, for Linspire to open up it's most identifiable product to the competition, it actually makes perfect sense.

Since the earliest days, free software and its representatives on earth have been the subject of attacks that serve to question the originality, authenticity, authorship, identity and parentage of the software - but the loose communities (if such they are) of hackers, users, developers and proponents of GNU, Linux and free software have always been quick to respond, as Stallman observes in his history of the GNU project.

Terra Soft Solutions today announced the release of Yellow Dog Linux 5.0.1, a specialty distribution for older, PowerPC-based Apple G3, G4, and G5 computers. The distribution is said to have added more than 500 package updates to go with its 2.6.17 kernel and Enlightenment E17 desktop

The UK government recently announced that servers running Linux are greener than servers running Windows because, according to the report published by the Department of Government Commerce on Open Source Software Trials in Government, open source software has lower hardware requirements and needs less frequent hardware upgrades.

The Italy-based project team for Sabayon Linux -- whose name refers to a light, airy, custard-like dessert -- released its v3.3 miniEdition distribution this week, featuring a 2.6.20 kernel and KDE desktop. Sabayon Linux miniEdition is a CD version of the latest Sabayon Linux x86/x86-64 DVD, a team member said.

The Ext2fs installable file system project is the brain child of Stephan Schreiber. Once this driver is installed on Windows (98/2000/XP), you can easily mount a Linux partition on your computer into Windows and assign a drive letter to it. Once that is done, the files in the Linux partition can be browsed, read and written to.

[Usefull if you're stuck with Windows on work or something — Sander]

A Step by step approach for how do you secure your Linux servers using IPtables. All you ever wanted to know about IPtables and then some...

Red Hat Enterprise support contracts need to be more flexible. When I learned that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, which is a big release for Red Hat I've been looking forward to for some time, was coming out on March 14, one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind was, "Great—when's CentOS 5 coming out?"

Xandros, Inc., the leading provider of intuitive end-to-end Linux solutions, and Scalix, the leading Linux email, calendaring and messaging company, today announced that the forthcoming Xandros Server 2 will ship with Scalix 11 pre-installed.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is changing the final process of writing the third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF, says that the reasons for the change are the extensive revisions in the next draft and the need "to get the community back involved in the process" as it reaches a climax. The revisions deal with issues raised by the recent Novell-Microsoft deal, and by the community about language in the license about patents and digital rights management (DRM).

IBM Trace and Request Analyzer for WebSphere Application Server allows you to find delays and possible hangs from WebSphere trace files and HTTP plug-in traces by parsing call trees of methods and traces and calculating delays in each method and trace.

The notion of doneness pervades everything we, as humans, set out to achieve. Want to send a manned rocket to Mars? It’ll be done when it’s done. Composing a new symphony? Can’t wait to hear the finished piece. Want to create a payroll system for an automotive company? Better deliver it on time, otherwise they might grow tired of waiting and pull the plug on the whole project.

Six weeks after it first promised a revamped add-ons site for its Firefox browser, Mozilla Corp. today officially launched a streamlined version that touts a beginner's list of extensions. Mozilla did not, however, cull the more than 2,200 extensions offered by the site to the "couple hundred" as it pledged to do early last month.

For reason/reasons unknown, ex-Windows users leaving Windows and seeking a free alternative somehow do not seem to be flocking to ReactOS. Instead, the Windows users are coming to Linux in general, but we hear a lot of complaints from the ex-Windows users that Linux is difficult for them to get used to. They want a free system that is Windows-like, and here they have a free system which is Unix-like.

On March 27, Oracle and the Open Invention Network (OIN) will announce that Oracle will become an OIN licensee. By doing this, Oracle opens the doors to making some of its patents available royalty-free to any company, institution, or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against Linux.

Former Debian Project Leader Martin Michlmayr is completing his doctoral thesis at the Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge. Entitled "Quality Improvement in Volunteer, Free, and Open Source Project: Exploring the Impact of Release Management," his thesis is based on case studies of major free and open source software (FOSS) project, including Debian, GNOME, the Linux kernel, OpenOffice.org, Plone, and X.org. A supporter of the open access movement, which tries to make academic work as widely available as possible, Michlmayr is blogging and discussing his work as often as possible. He also plans to make the final version of his thesis available on the Internet. As part of his efforts, Michlmayr talked to Linux.com about why he concludes that regularly scheduled releases are desirable in large FOSS projects.