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While long considered a geeky endeavor of "purplemohawked hackers who write substandard code," open source operating systems are being adopted by more and more corporations since it saves them money. They don't have to create or buy a proprietary operating system.

Gluecode has released the 3.5 version of its open source business automation server aimed squarely at the enterprise portal market with tools for personalization, business process management and security, and new JCA adaptors for enterprise products like SAP, Siebel and PeopleSoft.

A second generation of open-source tools such as databases and app servers is winning business converts. But do they have the innovation and influence to prosper?

The GPL is, as far as I can see, the most innovative adjustment to copyright and IP contracts that has occurred for decades - maybe even centuries. The idea is, in essence, a simple one. Previously creators and collaborators in the creation of IP (or works covered by copyright - software happens to fall into both categories at times) chose either to defend their legal ownership via copyright and/or the lodging of patents or they chose to make it freely available. The GPL plows a middle course, allowing free usage of software source code on condition that whatever is added (source code and IP) is also provided to others on the same basis. It thus encourages collaboration by those who wish to share the fruits of their labour without direct commercial reward, but wish to retain a level of control on it usage.

It's been a little longer than it should have been since the last one. Sorry. This is a not-terribly-formal update to get some news out despite the members of the release team being somewhat snowed under with other things at the moment.

[Editor's note: winner of the funniest Red Hat announcement yet. :) ]

A remotely-exploitable overflow exists in oftpd, allowing an attacker to crash the oftpd daemon.

An "all-in-one" instant messaging client is an attractive idea. GAIM has come close to achieving that goal, but recently has had problems keeping up with changes in Yahoo's messenger service and some of the others, so I decided to take a look at Kopete. It's part of KDE, which means I already had it installed.

This week's TPBK [The People Behind KDE] travels to Laboe in Germany for a chat with one of KDE's more recent additions to the community. He has been an active developer since a year and has already managed to make his mark. He's known among friends for talking too much about too many things, is not very fond of green shorts and keeps his wife on a stable release. It's Till Adam!

Accel ICIM, provider of IT solutions and system integration, will very shortly set up Linux Competency Centers in Chennai and Delhi. These Linux competency centers, to be set up with an investment of Rs 2 crore, will enable ISVs to simulate client environments and critically analyze the solution offered, in terms of ease and performance prior to buying the product.

Magma-Branded PCI-to-PCI Expansion System to Support Red Hat Linux 9

Simplifies Deployment of Linux System Extensions...

FAT32 Support Added to Industry Long-Haul DR-DOS, Which Continues Market Growth in the Embedded Systems Market

Linux and DR-DOS Combined to Provide Embedded OEMs With Unprecedented Ease-of-Use, Interoperability, Stability and Systems-Level Footprint Size

Agility Network Services Platform and Applications for Linux Provide Carriers with Cost-Effective Options for Deploying Enhanced Voice and Data Services

Red Hat’s monopolistic hold on the Indian market, which has made the brand almost a synonym of sorts to the word ‘Linux’, is all set to change with the entrance of new flavors into the Open Source market. Altosys Software Technologies Limited, Chennai, is all set to release Red Flag in the Indian market by the second week of April.

Primoz Bratanic discovered a bug in libpam-psgl, a PAM module to authenticate using a PostgreSQL database. The library does not escape all user-supplied data that are sent to the database. An attacker could exploit this bug to insert SQL statements.

As noobies, you may not know all the rules about Linux. You may not even know that they exist. Here's the most important one: it's all about fun. At least, that's what Linus Torvalds, the man who invented Linux, credits as being his motivation for developing it. This week our focus is on fun: play, rec, and playing nice. So get out the wrenchs and remove those GUI-training wheels, gals and guys. We're going down to the CLI again.

Jeff Garzik offered a patch to libata that increases the maximum size of the requests sent to Serial ATA hardware. He explains, "With this simple patch, the max request size goes from 128K to 32MB... so you can imagine this will definitely help performance. Throughput goes up. Interrupts go down. Fun for the whole family." This lead into a lengthy and interesting discussion debating whether or not this was the best course of action.

A Yankee Group survey claims that Linux costs more than Windows to run. Companies are well aware that, though Linux is free or almost free to acquire, running costs are high, whether enterprises roll their own support or pay the "hefty premiums for must-have items like technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification", the study said. Analyst and author Laura DiDio, who questioned IT managers and executives globally, said, "Corporate customers report Linux does indeed provide businesses with excellent performance, reliability, ease of use and security.