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Visit developerWorks and try the new WebSphere Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) that gives you all the tools you need to easily extend your legacy applications to business partners, customers, and employees.

Two months ago we covered the latest hardware features introduced in the OLPC laptops. Red Hat has recently shared with the world the first ISO images of the system that is supposed to be installed on the OLPC laptops. Thus, today we focus on the usability of the SugarUI in the A Brief Look at SugarUI by RedHat.

Just for giggles, I started by using the enclosed CD to see how it performed. I tried it on Ubuntu first but although the system mounted the CD, it couldn't read the information. Thus I resorted to using Windows XP. The disk has the entire book on it in pdf format in case you want to store it on your hard drive. I tried out the flash cards and test engine next. Unless I was using them wrong, they seemed to be demos rather than full-fledged software. They also included demos covering a wide variety of Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA, and other cert exams. They performed well enough, but from the description on the back cover, I was expecting flash cards and exams focused on the 70-620 test (and if someone can point out my error and direct me to the full-fledged mock tests on the disk, I'll be glad to amend my comments).

In an open letter to Sun Microsystems' CEO, the Apache Software Foundation accuses Sun of restricting its access to a critical test kit to protect Sun's commercial interests.

Vim's flexibility and countless features are a major asset for experienced users, but a challenge for newbies. If you've always wanted to try Vim but were put off by your first attempts, you can start off gradually by getting to know Vim's GUI and easy mode. This article is a primer for those who haven't used Vim much and want to wade in gradually.

Sure, Red Hat's most recent financial results, announced March 29, didn't blow away investors. But the future looks bright. The reason: Open source application developers continue to gain serious momentum. And many of those developers are firmly committed to Red Hat.

Open source luminary Bruce Perens has come out fighting in defence of the latest draft of GPLv3. The draft, which seeks to prevent patent protection deals like that struck late last year by Microsoft and Novell, has come under heavy fire from proprietary software advocates such as the ACT (Association for Competitive Technology).

Popularity shouldn't be the acid test to determine if you should install an extension. The important question is whether it enhances your browsing experience without any nasty side effects. The good news is that the extension community is actually pretty adept at self-policing. Most extensions that are truly "broken" (for instance, they crash your browser or suck up all your CPU power) either get fixed quickly or simply vanish.

Confusion and controversy about Open Source licensing did not start with current Free Software Foundation efforts to revise the GNU General Public License (GPL). Nor will emergence of an acceptable GPL V3 – or of a revised Lesser GPL or Affero GPL (thanks Dana Blankenhorn) – make OS licensing much less problematical for enterprise users. Concerns are both alleviated and complicated by a profusion of options that range from GPL's communitarianism to the Common Public License's collaborative focus to BSD's laissez-faire liberality.

Last May, commercial Debian Linux distributor Xandros jumped into the server fray with its Xandros Server. In the next few weeks, the company will be releasing a new version of its server stack, including support for server virtualization and two distributions, one keyed to SMB shops and the other for larger enterprises. Xandros will also break away its Xandros Management Console from its Linux distro and offer it as a separate product that runs on Windows workstations and can manage other Linuxes. The company will also partner to offer email messaging and groupware bundles.

Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, who will be in South Africa for the Digital Freedom Expo conference later this month, will present a pre-conference talk on free culture next week.

Comprising 200 Linux servers, the new service delivery system is touted to help the country's largest mobile operator save millions of dollars.

In 1993, The Tech proudly became the first newspaper published on the Web, taking the lead in providing news content to the online masses. However, despite being the public face of one of the leading technological universities in the world, in recent years The Tech would be the first to admit its Web service was lacking in style, timeliness, and usability. Well, not anymore.

The Dyne:Bolic distribution is a live CD designed for creating, broadcasting, and publishing all kinds of audio, video, and graphic content. It includes some of the best free and open source tools with which you can compose music, mix video streams, and create 3-D animations.

Two separate projects are attempting to build support for the Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) in Linux. Not to be confused with the "Jabber protocol" XMPP, XMP is an XML-based metadata standard for digital images. Despite its historical connections to photography, other kinds of applications and data stand to benefit, too, making XMP-aware projects something we all should watch.

Updated standards and toolkit improve development process for software groups.

['Linux makers'? Doesn't she mean 'developers'? Where's the factory? - dcparris]

One day - soon, possibly, maybe - you might find yourself using a form of Linux, even if you're a diehard Windows user. It's the next big thing.

Sun Microsystems has announced that it is handing some of its storage technologies over for free to the storage developers within the OpenSolaris community in the hopes that users and developers will combine the open source Solaris operating system with industry standard hardware to create commodity storage products.

In its ongoing efforts to leap beyond the monitor, Socialtext unveils its Virtual Edition. The solution lends users more flexibility in taking advantage of what Socialtex does best: wikis, knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Analyst Rob Enderle says Dell's foray into desktop Linux will either forever alter the desktop landscape or set desktop progress for the OS back five years.