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Six weeks after Oracle Corp. bought Finnish software developer Innobase Oy, MySQL AB is working to provide its customers with an alternative to the open-source InnoDB database engine often used at the heart of its product, a MySQL executive said Tuesday.

(Business Day (South Africa))Hundreds of thousands of rands in licence fees saved IT COMPANY MIP started researching the viability of implementing open-source software three years ago for its own business and for developing applications for customers. At the time the company had 170 employees split over two businesses, one specialising in customised software solutions for financial services, insurance and medical aid organisations and the other in auto-dealer applications, says CEO Richard Firth.

The Debian Developer's Packages Overview page at [1] has recently received some new features that I'd like to announce here.

"You're not going to lock me in by having a data format where you dictate which other people can or cannot potentially manipulate my data," he said. "So would this be of interest to other governments? Why wouldn't it be?"

Foreword: This high-level whitepaper compares the relative strengths of NOR and NAND flash memory, and discusses software strategies for mitigating each type's weaknesses. Topics include avoiding data loss, improving performance, and increasing media longevity. The article was written by DataLight, a vendor of embedded filesystems, flash memory drivers,

The next annual central meeting of the KDE community, aKademy 2006, is looking for a location. The main goal of the event will be to shape the upcoming new major step of the K Desktop Environment, KDE 4

Bivio used embedded Linux to build an 8-port programmable network appliance platform targeting emerging and complex network applications requiring Layer 4-7 packet processing at wire speeds. The Bivio 500 features a PowerPC control processor, along with an undisclosed data plane processor. It runs a 2.4-series kernel.

Cybarworks is an IT services firm that provides support and consultancy to businesses throughout the state of Arizona. Its Cybarcare program is billed as "healthcare for your PC" and promises to provide intensive monitoring and remote support. The majority of Cybarworks' clients use Windows, but the company's founder uses and supports open source software.

CHIP GIANT Intel appears to be pushing the Linux operating system for all it's worth - and not just in the server market. A web site earlier this month published what appeared to be an internal Intel memo which claimed that the chip firm hopes to sell hundreds of millions of cheapo Linux equipped client systems in rural China.

[Ed: It's us by the way. -tadelste]

Under an older theory of monopolistic practices Microsoft may be in restraint of trade. In its obsession with Linux, could this be the third strike? You should ask your attorney.

Diggable

OSM was mislead by a bunch of "suits" into changing their name to Open Source Media (despite their being very unopen) from their erstwhile choice of Pajama Media. It could have been worse, one possibility was Jellyfish Media. The Pajama Media at least had the value of reversing the direction of the established media taunt that blog writers wrote trivialities while in their jamies. That is, Pajama Media had a modicum of humor, unlike real professionals that screw it up while well dressed and pimping for corrupt pols. At least these latter professionals are ambidextrous. In conclusion little else can be said for so many professionals.

Yesterday, Microsoft dropped a bomb on ODF with its Ecma announcement. Today, it just plain bombed when it released its "covenant not to sue" implementers of its Office XML formats. Here's a line by line legal analysis - as well as a comparison with the Sun covenant that supports ODF. Suffice it to say that the Microsoft covenant misses by a mile.

Fresh from its successes rolling out open source software-based information hubs in farming communities, the South African department of agriculture is now looking at its own infrastructure and readying for a shift to open source software. Basheera Khan caught up with the department's Kugan Soobramani during a recent visit to EuroOSCON.

Yes, it's the third birthday of the MEPIS Project and SimplyMEPIS 3.4-1 rc1 is available in the testing subdirectory at the MEPIS Subscriber's Site and public mirrors.

I used Mandrake Linux for years before switching to Fedora Core and then to Ubuntu Linux last spring—around the same time Mandrake, which is based in France, bought a Brazilian Linux distributor called Conectiva and renamed itself Mandriva.

Because Asterisk is both Free Software and free of cost, you can dink around with it in all kinds of ingenious ways. Like building a phone system for your home with all the features of commercial PBXs that cost thousands of dollars. You can have very cheap long distance, internal extensions, transfer calls, and something that I like a whole lot- sophisticated voice mail under my control, and not costing me a monthly fee. Callers will never get a busy signal; they'll either get a human or the voicemail. You can even torture them with complex phone menus with too many options: "To record a compliment, press 1. To leave a complaint, press pi divided by the radius of the Earth's orbit around the sun."

Tuxchick writes:"Since reporters on the tech beats tend to be so unquestioning of the Microsoft party line, pitch it as a political story to higher-up editors".

Related to: other media contacts for 'Microsoft's Monopoly Power

There you are all bright-eyed and eager, ready to roll up your sleeves and go to work in the exciting new world of Free/Open Source software. You have rosy visions of getting paid to do enjoyable, challenging work. Maybe even fat stock options...

You can't count on fat stock options, because they are just as hard to come by as they are in any profession, but getting paid to do enjoyable, challenging work is exciting all by itself, and quite probable in the FOSS world. While the FOSS world is vast and diverse, there are three arenas that I think offer the most opportunities:

Novell has announced it will concentrate its business on key growth opportunities in the Linux and Open Source and Identity and Resource Management markets, resulting in a restructuring of the business that will reduce annual run rate expenses by more than $110 million. Novell anticipates that it will record a restructuring charge in the range of $30-35 million in the fourth fiscal quarter ended Oct. 31, 2005.

I was impressed with the pre-alpha release of Nexenta and suprised that the first official alpha would be so soon to follow. The pre-alpha was slick and clean following the look of the uber popular Ubuntu Linux. The only major complaint with the pre-alpha was the bizarro default screen resolution of 1920x1400.

Read more at DistroReviews.com.