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With a host of deployments in various state government departments, Oracle has made substantial inroads in the Indian e-governance scene, says Venkatesh Ganesh

Despite its strong ties to proprietary software vendors, the Australian Taxation Office has finally dipped its toes into open source by establishing a Linux-based system for information analytics. Tax has had a Teradata warehouse for 10 years but the change program initiated by chief knowledge officer Philip Hind in November last year is a "series of activities to enhance the ATO's ability to collect and analyse data", assistant commissioner of information management John Body told Computerworld. As a result the ATO invested in Teradata's Warehouse Miner, SAS Enterprise Miner, and hired CSIRO's principal computer scientist for enterprise data mining Dr Graham Williams who pioneered open source analytics for organizations like the Health Insurance Commission and NRMA.

The Ubuntu Team is proud to announce the Preview Release of Ubuntu 5.10 - codenamed "Breezy Badger". The Preview Release includes both Install CDs and bootable Live CDs for three architectures.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server, with a fast and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default, every other package you can imagine available from the network, a commitment to security updates for 18 months after each release and professional technical support from many companies around the world.

FUDCon London 2005, the third gathering of Fedora Users and Developers, will be held at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo UK, on the 6th of October in Olympia exhibition center, London, UK. FUDCon will feature presentations from prominent members of the Fedora Project, both from Red Hat and from the Fedora community.

FUD: An acronym for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. A typical tactic used by the opponents of open source to prevent its widespread adoption.

Con: In opposition or disagreement with; against.

FUDCon is the conference/summit that focuses on the Fedora Project and all things that go along with it. This includes infrastructure issues, both technological and govermental/intermutual, development issues, community issues, marketing issues and the state of the project address. There is no set time frame with regard to the frequency of FUDCon.

In letters addressed to Manzano and NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco, the businessmen said law enforcers refused to include government agencies using unlicensed software in their operations. Manzano's nationwide crackdown complies with the demands of international anti-piracy groups, which have kept the Philippines in its world blacklist of countries violating intellectual property rights (IPR).

Bill Hilf runs Microsoft's open source lab at its Seattle Headquarters, overseeing research projects which involve testing Linux and interoperability functions. Formerly a Linux programmer for IBM, Mr Hilf says his role is to give an "objective" view of Linux. But he has no qualms about making sure Microsoft comes out on top. "My goal is to help Microsoft understand the phenomenon of open source software and improve our products because of that."

The RedZee toolbar comes with all the standard popup blockers, news feeds, weather and highlighting features found on other toolbars, saus RedZee. The company is currently seeking individuals to taset the Beta version of 2.0.

IT@School Project Director Biju Prabhakar has said that the objective of the government was to install free software in all the schools in the state within the next five years.

A computer professional then teaching at Middlesex Community College in Bedford and Lowell, Reposa journeyed to Honduras on a simple mission: to bring computers and computer know-how to schools that have little of both. Inspired by the results of that monthlong trip, in which he donated computers to two schools and volunteered as a computer teacher, Reposa has embarked on a long-term effort to continue that work in Honduras and possibly one day, in other poor nations...Reposa said he was able to make full use of even many of the antiquated computers by outfitting them with a Linux-based operating system

This is a very detailed tutorial about how to use the new SuSE 10.0 to set up a web, mail, and ftp server.

Amidst raging controversies over the selection of Operating Systems for computer education in schools, the IT@School authorities are on the move to introduce an abridged version of the Linux-based resource CDs for the promotion of free software through the project.

Siegenia-Aubi KG had to reboot its Compaq servers about every 14 days until it decided to chuck Windows for Linux. But that meant the German maker of sound-insulating ventilators, as well as windows, doors, and room-ventilation equipment, would run all its enterprise applications on a relatively new open-source platform. The open-source movement has increased dramatically in recent years. To keep up, enterprise-application vendors--Manhattan Associates, Oracle, SAP, Siebel Systems, SSA Global Technologies--are adapting their software to run in these environments.

More flexible licensing is one of the biggest draws open source software has for enterprise users, and the current shift toward dual-core and multi-core processors and use of virtualization technologies may give Linux and open source software even more of an advantage, say analysts and open source project leaders.

It is not certain that the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) will rule against Microsoft but experts predict that the possibility is high. The dominant status of the Windows operating system, a flagship product of Microsoft, is also under threat following the strong emergence in Korea of an open-source alternative called Linux. The country’s love affair with Linux is being pushed by the government, which aims to become a software powerhouse by diluting the monopolistic status of Windows.

What is an open source software? According to Michael Tiemann, pioneer of Open Source Movement and vice president, RedHat: ‘‘Open source software is one for which the underlying source code is available freely to users. They may read it, make changes to it and build new versions around it. The idea is to open the gates of innovation. It advances technology at a much faster pace and can bridge the digital divide.’’ Open source software is available across the spectrum. They can be easily downloaded from the Net. Some examples are Firefox, Netscape Navigator for browsers, Apache and Slash for web servers, TUTOS and Compiere for ERP, Sugar for CRM packages, Evolution, Mailmanm and Squirrelmail for email clients (like Outlook Express) and Linux as the king of open source operating systems.

We all know of the operating system wars (like Linux versus Windows) and some of us have heard of the skirmish between databases (such as Oracle versus SQL server) but these are merely cold wars. The real battle is being fought in the ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) arena — between Oracle and SAP. And with the recent announcement of Oracle making a $5.85-billion acquisition of Siebel, the balance is tilted in favour of the former.

"Significant reductions in costs and gains in performance can be made with Linux at the heart of the enterprise," said David Patrick, Novell vice president and general manager of Linux, Open Source Platforms and Services, as Novell at its annual BrainShare conference in Barcelona, Spain, announced the rapid growth of business-critical applications running on Linux in the data center, as data center software vendors Agresso, Carmen Systems, Jeeves Information Systems and Sage joined Oracle, SAP and Siebel in supporting Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

"There's a groundswell of interest from businesses and governments around what the new class of mainframes can do," said Erich Clementi, general manager, IBM System z9. "Companies are looking to the new mainframe more than ever to help manage some of the most complex corporate issues, such as protecting the security of customer information and complying with federal regulations. From a technical perspective, the mainframe's deep commitment to Java, Linux, virtualization and SOA are driving adoption."

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), the flagship scientific computing facility for the Energy Department's Office of Science, accepted a 722-processor Linux Networx cluster system called Jacquard. The fully operational system is named for Joseph-Marie Jacquard, who, in 1801, invented the first programmable machine using punched cards. More than 2,000 DOE scientists, academics and other institutional researchers nationwide will use the computer for scientific disciplines such as climate modeling, simulations of the early universe and protein structure investigation.

To make the study more authentic, Ramya also was in charge of creating a computer simulation of Mars using Linux -- something she had never used before. The simulation was used as an information-gathering computer game.