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The coalition has ruled out mandating the use of open source software in the federal government, saying such a move would stretch the industry's resources to the point that the risk of a high-profile project failure would be "unacceptably high".

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week used an address before software industry leaders outside Boston to tout his company's vision, while casting doubt on alternatives to Windows.

Microsoft says 2005 could be a difficult year, as Linux continues to pinch customers from the software giant. In a report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company says it recognises the threat posed by its open source competitor.

I can see that to stay competitive in the IT field it would be in my best interest to learn Linux. My question is which flavor of Linux and what is the best way?

Four months after successfully implementing a new content management system (CMS), the Australian Government Information Management Offfice (AGIMO) is now considering whether or not to make the source code for it available to anyone in addition to other government departments and not-for-profit organizations.

a friend recently complained that Mozilla's new Firefox browser was slower on various sites than Internet Explorer. But Mozilla suppresses pop-ups and spyware, where Internet Explorer does not. For the same reason that stuff gets through a sieve faster than a filter, IE has a speed advantage.

Open-source developers keen to impress potential government buyers should take some pages from the practices of proprietary software vendors, a senior government procurement officer told attendees at the AUUG 2004 conference in Melbourne.

it's encouraging that the California Performance Review, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's blueprint for saving money in government, recommends that officials consider open source software alternatives to proprietary products.

Juergen Geck, chief technology officer (CTO), Suse Linux, a Novell company, who is responsible for aligning and communicating the company’s technology strategy, was also instrumental in designing SuSE’s flagship product SuSE Linux Enterprise server. The enterprise server was the first Linux offering in the market. In an interview with eFE, he spoke about the current trends in the Linux market.

A prominent U.S. law professor Lawrence Lessig has called on Taiwan and other Asian countries to join in the worldwide movement in the collaborative sharing of software programs as a means of encouraging technical innovation and fueling the growth of the IT revolution.

"Linux is not a boy. Linux is not a child. Linux is ready." With these words, Martin Fink, VP of Linux for Hewlett-Packard, rephrased a popular sentiment at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco this August (while simultaneously knocking competitor IBM's ad campaign). He, along with many others, took the message another step: Not only is open source enterprise ready, but the enterprise had better be ready for open source.

With the aim of promoting the free flow of ideas and supporting knowledge sharing in the public domain, Taiwan launched a "Creative Commons" network yesterday, to join 23 other countries already leading the drive in this international movement.

Last week in my Wired Windows column I took Novell to task over a promotion, the Novell Linux Technical Resource Kit. This was a package of goodies intended to showcase Novell?s new Linux offerings.

So, if Mandrakelinux is so user-friendly and powerful, why is it not a household word -- even compared to other Linux flavors? In a word: marketing. There is a widespread, if not universally shared, perception that Mandrakesoft's marketing efforts are far less sophisticated then its technical attributes.

The current Microsoft Royalty-Free Sender ID Patent License Agreement terms are a barrier to any Debian package which wants to implement Sender ID or include Sender ID support.

One of the big reasons enterprise IT users eye Linux hungrily is that it offers a chance to break the ties that bind them to Microsoft. It's bad business to rely on anything, whether it's a truck or an operating system, that can only be repaired by one supplier. Indeed, one of Microsoft's big sales advantages when PCs were just starting to become popular was that it freed companies from hardware vendor lock-in by offering an operating system that would work with PCs and peripherals made by many companies. Now we need to ask how we can keep from getting locked in by Linux vendors. There's simply no getting around the fact that, from the vendor's point of view, customer lock-in is wonderful no matter what product that vendor sells.