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AUGUST 10, 2005 (INFOWORLD) - The open source community can't provide a drop-in replacement for expensive, high-end CRM applications from the likes of Salesforce.com or Siebel just yet. Still, you might be surprised at the level of sophistication some of the available projects already offer, particularly for midsize organizations. SugarCRM, for example, offers a complete, enterprise-class CRM system built on open-source technologies, including PHP, MySQL, and the Apache Web server.

O'Reilly Media, Inc. is rolling out a new syndication mechanism that provides greater control over the content we publish online. You'll notice some improvements immediately, such as better standards compliance, graphical tiles accompanying article descriptions, and enclosure support for podcatching applications. We've tested the new feeds using a variety of popular newsreaders and aggregators, but we realize that there may be a few bumps along the way.

BM is shipping its Workplace Services suite of applications with the Red Hat Linux operating system. Companies are being offered both systems for 90-day trial periods. IBM wants large corporate and public-sector IT users to use its software when they switch to Linux. Red Hat is the largest Linux supplier. Small and medium-sized businesses or individual departments in larger organisations will be able to test IBM Workplace Services on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.

We at GameSHOUT have noticed more and more Firefox browser users during the past 30 days than previous. Firefox held steady at only 3.2% during 2004 up until the month of December where it finished out the year at 10.2%. So far it has jumped to 17.4% for the month of January 2005. That's a large jump and enough for us to notice it. Some may say that 17.4% isn't much to speak about when comparing to Microsoft's Internet Explorer which is ranked 74.8% overall. However, we think it is. We recently installed Firefox support for our GameSHOUT Internet Radio stream so that Firefox users don't have to use IE. If this trend continues, we could see Firefox support going from 17.4% to 25-30% by the month of February. Remember, these are only GameSHOUT statistics which only report on what browser our visitors are using. Each site can vary in these statistics.

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux®, today announced a new initiative called the OSDL patent commons project designed to provide a central location where software patents and patent pledges will be housed for the benefit of the open source development community and industry.

In a bid to entice enterprises to transfer core workgroup services from Windows or NetWare over to Linux, Novell today unveiled an enhanced version of its Open Enterprise Server which features improved migration functionality. The Support Pack 1 platform is designed to help firms move key workgroup services, including file and print, to Linux all at once or gradually. In addition to simplified migration, Novell has upgraded the latest version of its Open Enterprise Server with the addition of its iFolder 3.0 file sharing, access and backup application.

Gentoo developers released a version of the Linux distribution that can be run directly from a CD on Tuesday, so that people can try the OS without installing it. The Live CD contains most of the standard Gentoo packages including the GNOME desktop environment, the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite and the Firefox browser.

To begin the KDE 3.5 release cycle, I uploaded KDE 3.5 Alpha 1 to the FTP servers. We're facing some trouble that is typical for an Alpha release, but it also brings some nice KDE 3.5 features to your desktop.

For the last three years the IT world has been debating the status of the Linux operating system as a potential platform on which to build enterprise solutions. Such debate is now well and truly over, with Linux and the wider Open Source community now firmly entrenched in the minds of IT buyers as a serious, enterprise ready option. This week sees Linux World taking place in San Francisco and it is demonstrating, once again, how rapidly the Linux platform is maturing. At this weeks event many of the leaders of the Linux community are proclaiming new offerings. Some of the highest profile announcements are those of Red Hat, IBM and HP.

If you're looking for big name friends, VMware has them. AMD, BEA, BMC, Broadcom, Cisco, CA, Dell, Emulex, HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Novell, QLogic and Red Hat have all vowed to set virtualization standards in tandem with VMware. In particular, VMware will release its own Virtual Machine Hypervisor Interfaces (VMHI) - technology it bills as the foundation of partitioning - in the hopes that other companies will pick up these same interfaces, making VMware's software a type of industry standard.

Company seeks to empower Fedora Foundation by funding patent filings and supporting copyright assignments to assure compliance with open source licenses.

MySQL has been picked up by Novell, its second huge reseller deal in so many days, the companies announced on Tuesday at LinuxWorld in San Francisco. The companies are calling this the only accord of its kind between a Linux vendor and MySQL AB, purveyor of the popular open-source database MySQL. In the reseller and joint-support agreement, Novell Inc. will offer subscriptions to the MySQL Network, a subscription offering that includes MySQL software; updates and upgrades; alerts and advisors; MySQL's online knowledgebase; and full, production-level technical support.

Oracle On Demand Customers Benefit From Oracle Technology and Applications Delivered on x86-64-bit Architecture

To head off controversy, open-source founders will present the community with a set of guiding principals to govern the GPL 3 process, and a timeline to judge its progress. With patent pressures growing in the computer industry, the licensing foundation for a majority open-source projects is under review. On Wednesday, industry heavyweights here will seek to reassure the community over the process slated for the GNU General Public License 3, offering a statement of principals to govern that process, and a timeline to judge its progress. The first discussion draft of the next version of the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 3 is currently on track to be released in the first week of January 2006. Then, after a year of public comment and the writing of the final text, the final version should arrive early 2007—more than 15 years after GPL 2 was released.

Major Linux Vendors Form Partnership and Promote Debian in Enterprise

Wyse Technology debuted a compact yet powerful Linux-based thin-client at LinuxWorld and announced a 1,900-unit deployment by a European health insurance provider. Wyse Technology debuted a compact yet powerful Linux-based thin client at LinuxWorld on Tuesday and announced a 1,900 unit deployment of the device by a major European health insurance provider. The compact Winterm V50 boasts a 1GHz x86 processor and measures just 7.9 x 7.1 x 1.8 inches (201 x 180 x 46 mm). The V50 is based on a 1GHz Transmeta Crusoe processor running Wyse's Linux V6 operating system (based on a 2.6 Linux kernel), and is equipped with 128MB flash and 256MB DDR RAM memory, resulting in a stable, powerful platform for accessing applications running on a server plus locally executing Linux and Java applications, according to the company.

LAS VEGAS—To buttress its anti-Linux product strategy, The SCO Group Inc. is working with third-party partners that include MySQL AB and EnterpriseDB Corp. on databases, Borland Software Corp. on tools, and NeTraverse Inc. in the virtual server arena, SCO executives said during an annual user conference here this week. Although Oracle Corp. has declined to support to SCO's software servers, SCO already has long-time commercial database partners that include Computer Associates International Inc., Progress Software Corp., and IBM's Informix group. (Editor's Note: Could this be someone's idea of a joke?)

Like many things in the Unix, GNU, and BSD worlds, the Postfix mail transport agent (MTA) is powerful but difficult to configure optimally. With basic instructions and a couple of hours (or more) to test the configuration, you can probably make Postfix work, but how do you make it work to its full potential? How do you make it more secure? How do you make it get rid of spam? How do you configure it for complex situations that involve multiple servers, email addresses, email groups, and domains? That's what "The Book of Postfix" is for.

IBM is making good on its pledge earlier this year to invest US$100 million in Workplace software for the Linux platform. Big Blue and one of its business partners will offer new products designed to give customers more choices for collaborative solutions while helping to manage costs and increase flexibility through cross-platform support. The new products are browser-based messaging software with support for Firefox 1.0.X, and software that integrates Lotus Notes access into IBM Workplace Managed Client. Ericom, an IBM Business Partner, has a new Linux plug-in for IBM Workplace Managed Client. These solutions run on many platforms, including Linux, and offer alternatives for customers looking for a client-side Linux solutions.

The server that handles theLinux Kernel Mailing List [archive] recently got an upgrade. Matti Aarnio explains, "folks at Dell have donated a new machine to be VGER, and folks at RedHat have installed it into [a] co-location facility with [a] 1000Mbps network connection into the machine." The upgrade offers much more performance for handling the extremely high-traffic mailing list.

The Linux Kernel Mailing List is usually referred to as the lkml. It evolved many years ago from the "Linux Activist" and otherearly Linux mailing lists run in Finland. Eventually the early mailing lists were replaced by theMajordomo powered lkml, managed by David Miller at Rutgers University on a server called "vger". When David went to work at RedHat, the server and mailing list went with him. To this day, it continues to be housed at RedHat. Even though it has a kernel.org domain name, it is not actually part of the Linux Kernel Archives [story] or their infrastructure. Instead, it's included in the kernel.org domain due to its function as the primary Linux development mailing list.