Showing all newswire headlines

While Oracle's moves to provide enterprise-level support around Red Hat Linux are stirring up controversy, the vendor's decision to join the Free Standards Group (FSG), also unveiled last week, is capturing less attention. Yet is it possible that Oracle's newly minted membership in the standards group might actually help to dispel industry fragmentation?

LXer Feature: 1-Nov-2006

There has been much debate about the GNU General Public License v3. Unfortunately, much of it has centered more on Stallman's personality and less on the technical issues. Furthermore, many seem to be ignoring history, especially the fact that Xerox' malfunctioning proprietary printer is what led to the explosion of Free Software as a movement. In order to understand the anti-DRM clause, you have to understand the Xerox incident. In this, the first of two articles examining the GPLv3 debate, we will briefly revisit history to see how the GPL came about, and how the debate about the the GPL is turning into a personality conflict, with even journalists making unwarranted attacks on Stallman's character.

Company Continues to Support Java Unification and Drive Extension of the Mobile Java Developer Ecosystem

Compiler optimization plays an important role in the performance of open-source applications. Default optimization settings are often used during compilation that, in effect, leave some application performance unrealized. Through the use of aggressive compiler optimization, many applications show appreciable increases in performance. In many cases, you can increase the performance of an application in situations where detailed performance analysis is impractical.

Enterprise software provider Sage has entered into a partnership with MySQL that will allow Sage to include the database in its commercial products. For the Swedish firm MySQL AB, the deal is part of its double licensing strategy.

Recently I read an article about the new Windows Vista EULA. It's really something else. This agreement brings 'restrictive' to a whole new level, and I think that's good news for Free Software. Windows Vista will only allow you to re-register the software once. Windows Vista will not allow you to run virtualisation unless you buy the expensive professional licenses. Windows Vista will not allow you to publish benchmark figures without following strict Microsoft guidelines. It's amazing.

Citing limited adoption of XHTML, Internet innovator and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) ringleader Tim Berners-Lee says HTML must be reinvented through a process of incremental change that will build on the existing standard.

In this Our View: Oracle's expanded support for Red Hat Linux raised concerns of fragmentation, but we think the arrangement works, as long as Oracle proves to be an upstanding open-source partner.

Review: The fast-moving Red Hat distribution polishes SELinux, adds new tools and improves performance.

Police and criminal prosecutors have been cooperating very closely with the GVU, sort of a German counterpart of the RIAA/MPAA/BSA, investigating illegal p2p-filesharing. A German appeals court has upheld a sentence, declaring parts of that cooperation illegal.

If you're choosing between "open source" and "closed source" to meet your company's needs, stop -- because there's no need to differentiate the two anymore, according to speakers at last week's Oracle OpenWorld conference.

[Well, I would suggest you keep going, but sometimes such moves need to be done in phases. With that in mind, enjoy... - dcparris]

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Zend, a key supplier of tools used to design open-source software that competes with Microsoft Windows programs, said on Tuesday the two companies have struck a long-term partnership.

Why replace Mac OS X with Linux on an Apple eMac? I did it to revive an aging hardware platform and provide a computer to a friend. Here's how I replaced "Tiger" (OS X 10.1) first with Debian, then Ubuntu.

Oracle has taken Red Hat's Linux, removed its trademarks, and provided its own support for the free and open source code. The move is not without risk. The company is likely to incur the open source community's wrath if it should display any unwillingness to fully participate and promote its prosperity.

Which Linux distribution is the easiest to install and use with as little tweaking as possible? On the KDE front, two of the key choices are Kubuntu and Simply Mepis. Yes, I realize that some users consider SuSE to be a player, and that's great, it has some great features. However, it’s simply not an “out of the box” friendly option as the previously mentioned distributions. After receiving enough SuSE 10.1 update errors, you will likely find yourself agreeing with me. Moving on...

Implementations of the Integrated Linux, Windows and Macintosh Cluster for achieving the Personal High Performance Computing. In Proceedings of IEE/IADAT International Conference on Telecommunications and Computer, University of Portsmouth. Chang, V., Eds.

Analysts and pundits alike haven’t stopped talking since Oracle made the big announcement (that it would offer inexpensive support services for Red Hat Linux) and Red Hat responded in “tough guy” fashion that it will continue to compete in the market — without dropping prices.

NTT DoCoMo and Intel on Wednesday will publish a set of specifications that will allow users to load a second operating system onto their cell phones, the companies said Tuesday.

[This is a change of pace - allowing people to install Windows on their Linux-based cell phones. - dcparris]

Jonathan Marsh, a 10-year veteran of Microsoft, leaves the software giant to work on mashup technology at open-source middleware startup WSO2.

Developers of MIPS-Based Designs Benefit from Faster Application Start-up Time