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MySQL AB's imminent release of its MySQL 5.0 database will introduce new enterprise features making it more competitive with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft, but the company's CEO has maintained that it is more interested in mimicking the run-away success of Swedish retailer Ikea than any of the established database vendors.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is warning of the interoperability disadvantages and long-term higher costs of open standards and open source software again, this time calling the Massachusetts directive adopting the OpenDocument format as standard for the state "bad procurement policy."

DistroWatch reports - Featherweight Linux is a live CD based on Feather Linux, but expanded to include a minimal KDE desktop. Version 1.3 has been released.

OSDir has some great shots of Featherweight Linux 1.3.

The bundle is currently only available in Singapore. Other Chinese companies, though, are being more aggressive about supporting open source.

With 100 projects now on the SugarForge.org site, users of Sugar Open Source have a broad choice of extensions ranging from document and knowledge management systems to timesheets, database backups, data synchronization, mobile device connectors and 21 language packs.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 is now available for download. Also known as the 1.8 Beta 5 milestone, this is the last beta release of the next major Firefox update and is aimed at testers, extension/theme authors and Web developers.

Speaking at a private dinner with select captains of German industry on Wednesday, Steven Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, may have felt a small sense of triumph in his company's battle against open source software.

This tutorial shows how to develop sockets-based networking applications using Python. Python's high-level networking classes simplify the development of applications requiring application-layer networking protocols. The tutorial covers the basic sockets features of Python, using a sample chat application as a guide.

The Opera Software company has announced that the users’ interest in the add-free version of the Opera browser is still high. Since the free version of the browser was launched, over three million users have downloaded it. This free version has recorded four times more downloads than any of the previous ones, according to the company’s statistics.

This week, advisories were released for gtkdiskfree, util-linux, ClamAV, loop-aes, helix-player, backupninja, squid, mysql, ntlmaps, mysql-dfsg, gopher, prozilla, cfengine, mozilla-firefox, apachetop, drupal, mailutils, egroupware, arc, mod-auth-shadow, mason, slocate, vixie-cron, net-snmp, kernel, openssh, binutils, perl, and gdb. The distributors include Debian, Gentoo, and Red Hat.

DistroWatch reports - The release candidate of Ubuntu Linux 5.10 is ready: With just one more week to go before the final release of Ubuntu 5.10, the Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Ubuntu 5.10 Release Candidate. This is the final milestone before the official 5.10 release, and includes installation CDs, live CDs, and combination DVDs for three architectures. Highlights: GNOME 2.12.1; OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta 2; X.org 6.8.2...

OSDir has a selection of screenshots of Ubuntu Linux 5.10 RC.

Vector Linux is a small distro based on Slackware, it's goal is to be lightweight, quick and easy to use. This is particularly true on older equipment. I think it is fair to say that they have succeeded.

OSDir has some screen shots of SUSE Linux 10.0 Final.

A release candidate of Ark Linux 2005.2 has been released, featuring KDE 3.5 beta 1. Ark Linux is a very KDE centric desktop Linux distribution, aimed at making Linux easily usable to everyone while remaining technically sane.

MUNICH Microsoft unveiled on Thursday a suite of corporate products that will move it more fully into competition with the leading makers of security software for Windows computers.

Messaging and collaboration vendor Zimbra Inc. has released a beta version of its new open-source Zimbra Collaboration Suite, which integrates other applications such as antivirus, antispam and search software..

O'Reilly has covered this as well. Here

Cyrus IMAP is an efficient IMAP server capable of handling a large number of accounts. Its biggest drawback is getting it installed and configured. This tutorial is a step-by-step guide on how to use Cyrus with the Postfix mail transfer agent (MTA). I tested these instructions with FreeBSD 5.4.

Could it be true that 90 percent of all software used in the Republic of China is pirated? That's what a recent study by International Data Corp. (IDC) and the Business Software Alliance has determined. Not only that, but "software vendors claim they suffered $3.5 billion in losses last year due to Chinese piracy," writes Maria Trombly in an article at CIO Insight. If this is indeed true, the door is wide open for Linux and other open source software to step in and combat this epidemic of theft. So, under pressure from the world community and from local technology companies and other industry sectors, China has started thinking about cleaning up its act, Trombly writes.

SAN FRANCISCO - Last night I was derelict in my duty. Instead of going to a supper billed as a "Conversation with Microsoft" I left the Web 2.0 Conference for a few hours and went to the Web 1.0 Summit at a bar a few blocks away, where we all pretended it was 1998 and presented can't-miss dot-com business plans to each other. But I have some serious observations about Web 2.0, too.

In August, the Business Readiness Rating Standard (BRRS) was founded to sort out projects so that the everyday IT guy wouldn't have to. With more than 100,000 OSS projects currently available on SourceForge and similar repositories like Codehaus, Tigris, Java.net, OpenSymphony -- the list goes on -- members of the group believe their initiative could prove very valuable in 2006.