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Sun Microsystems spent last week fending off new calls that it contribute Java as open-source code. Previous requests came from open-source programmers critical of Sun's grip on the language; now they're coming from two of Sun's largest Java business partners.

This past week a number of exciting developments toward the popularization of Open Source desktops occurred. Novell heralded the arrival of Mono 1.0. Mandrakesoft announced the acquisition of a French IT services firm, further indicating its return to financial health. Real Networks inked deals to bundle Helix and Real Players on major GNU/Linux desktops. Out of the noise and clammer, nevertheless, there are two announcements that I believe are the best tickets to moving the GNU/Linux desktop forward, and they both had a name other than Red Hat, Novell or Mandrakesoft attached to them. They both involved Apple.

The federal government has commissioned a sourcing guide designed to give departments and agencies an improved understanding of the procurement processes involved for open source software and solutions.

The world of open source software gets curiouser and curiouser. We now have a big vendor (Computer Associates) making a leading proprietary database (Ingres) available to the open source community. It is easy to doubt CA's motives, but they are essentially irrelevant. The company has not said so, but it is entirely possible that CA has determined it will make more money out of Ingres as an open product than as a proprietary product.

Recently I concluded my review of Fedora Core 2 (FC2) on Linux.com with the words, "It's an important step in the evolution of Linux ... but I won't be using it for production work anytime soon." What a difference a month makes -- I am now using FC2 for production work. Here's how I got around the distro's deficiencies.

Cybermation, a leading developer of enterprise job scheduling and software change management solutions, announces a complete enterprise-wide job scheduling solution for Linux by making its ESP Espresso distributed job scheduling solution available for the Linux platform. This further extends event-based automation of job processing across distributed environments to help enterprises increase productivity and achieve significant cost savings, and initially targets Red Hat and SuSe. The company also announced a new version of its ESP Agent for Linux for use with both ESP Espresso and ESP Workload Manager for zSeries environments. This announcement allows customers to take full advantage of the virtualization capabilities that zSeries platforms provide for Linux.

Desktop Linux is running hotter than expected and corporates are loosening their purse strings for IT projects after a three-year hiatus, according to top IT industry seers. Gartner Research senior vice-president Bob Hayward said 2004 had so far proven to be a good year for the tech industry, with solid growth across most sectors.

'Computer Market share.' This is one of the most misunderstood and misapropriated terms in the computer industry. All too often, journalists mis-use the term when they are speaking of a computer's install-base. As a result, the public is led to believe that certain computing platforms are significantly less popular than what is actually true. Unfortunately, many consumers take this as truth, and then base their purchasing decision on the miss-information. osRadio spoke with Jeffrey Hewitt of Gartner research to offer some clarity to this growing problem. The following is a broadcast excerpt of that interview.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates brushed off the threat posed by Linux software in Asia and pushed for the use of the Windows operating system in Malaysia. Gates, who is in Malaysia for a one-day visit to meet Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, expressed Microsoft’s willingness to help the country improve computer proficiency and boost its IT sector. “I was able to explain our commitment to work with the government and help in the best way we can,” he told reporters.

In this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter you'll find out about the Gentoo Foundation Web Redesign Contest, where we're asking users for submissions for a new look and feel for Gentoo community sites, as well as about the new availability of bootsplash under the PPC architecture. We also feature MIPS project team leader Joshua Kinard, and bring you plenty of security and community coverage as well. Enjoy!

Lindows, Inc. today introduced an Italian version of Linspire to Linux desktop and laptop computer users around the world. LinspireItaliano delivers the same features and cost-savings as Linspire and is fully localized for Italian customers wanting to experience Linux in their native language. To place an order, view screenshots or learn more about LinspireItaliano, please visit Questar, Lindows's exclusive Italian partner at http://www.questar.it/linspire.

Sendmail is adding support to its mail transfer agents. Sender ID is expected to be relatively simple to deploy, requiring little ongoing maintenance.

Linux poster boy Red Hat is embarking on an aggressive expansion drive in the Asia-Pacific. It recently sunk in S$20 million (US$11.7 million), together with Oracle, to set up their first joint Linux applications porting and development centre in the world.

Linux is not after Microsoft. Linux is chasing Unix out of the enterprise server scene. Why not Microsoft? Well, its because Microsoft apparently has not completely succeeded in the data center league.