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Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the world's largest consumer electronics maker, NEC Corp. And Texas Instruments Inc. will invest 12 billion yen ($104 million) in a venture to develop software for high-speed mobile phones. The venture, to be formed in August, will focus on software development for chips used in so-called third-generation, or 3G, cell phones.

VMware announced in February that it would be releasing VMware Server, an "entry-level virtualization product," for free. After several months of beta testing, VMware Server 1.0 has finally gone gold. After spending several days testing the 1.0 release, I'm pleased with its performance and ease of use, particularly given the price.

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The only thing that concerns me, and should concern any company investing in virtualization, is that VMware Server -- while "free" as in beer -- is still a proprietary product. VMware giveth, and VMware can take away.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The eighth annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) continued Thursday with updates on Perl 6 and Python, discussion of the Zen of Free, and the final day of exhibits.

We made Unix available for free with OpenSolaris 10, but customers want services for patches and help. We find that most customers want that service and pay us for it. By giving it away we have increased the use of Solaris in a large way and have [generated] larger revenue for support.
-- Simon Phipps

What happens if you open an operating system but no developers come? The answer is: the project eventually dies. That's exactly what has happened to the OpenDarwin project. Darwin is the foundation of Mac OS X.

When open source developers gather on a panel to discuss whether "all software will go open source," you can expect the sentiment to tip that way, only with lots of arguments.

Freescale Technology Forum (FTF Americas) -- GDA Technologies, Inc., a fast-growing IP and Electronic Design Services (EDS) company, today announced the market-leading availability of its Reference Platform kit for Freescale Semiconductor's Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) based on the MPC8548E PowerQUICC(TM) III processor built on Power Architecture(TM) technology.

Community members are mediating between the two competing virtualization vendors in pursuit of a joint solution for the Linux kernel.

AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) is acquiring ATI Technologies, one of the top two graphics processor makers, for around $5.4 billion. AMD's aim is to grow its market share in the mobility and commercial markets, according to AMD CEO Hector Ruiz. What does this mean for Linux users?

Today's star of People Behind KDE is a member of what was once described as "the younger generation of Kopete developers". This man talks Messenger and Jabber nativly but only communicated on IRC thanks to Babelfish. Learn about the trials of a Kopete developer in our interview with Olivier Goffart

PORTLAND, Ore. -- O'Reilly's eight annual Open Source Convention was in full swing yesterday. The exhibit floor opened, and there was a full schedule of talks and Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions.

When Bob Hecht joined Informa PLC as its vice president of content strategy, he dreamed of rebuilding the British technical publisher's infrastructure using Linux and open-source technologies. But with Microsoft Windows entrenched throughout the company, Hecht settled on a more pragmatic hybrid: an open-source content management server from Alfresco Software Inc., backed up by open-source applications MySQL, Apache Tomcat and JBoss -- all running on Windows Server-based hardware.

[All I can say is, ugh! -- grouch]

"We are on track to complete the process on schedule." With these words, Eben Moglen expressed his satisfaction with today's release of the second draft of the GNU Public License version 3 (GPL3). The release represents an effort to incorporate comments on the first draft made by thousands of people over the last six months via email, mail forums, and world-wide meetings, as well as the discussion of the four sub-committees involved in the writing of the draft.

The FormSpy trojan does not use any Firefox security flaws to infect computers. Instead, it is downloaded and installed automatically by a piece of Windows malware known as Downloader-AXM, which exists solely for the purpose of surreptitiously downloading and running trojan horses. Once downloaded by Downloader-AXM, FormSpy installs itself in Firefox by directly modifying Firefox user profile files, completely bypassing the standard Firefox extension installation mechanism (and warning messages).

[Emphasis added. The reports in the news, coming from McAfee, make it sound like Firefox is providing the means for this malware to attack users. As usual, the culprit is Microsoft Windows. -- grouch]

[...] Kraus estimates a Web 2.0 company can start up with an investment of around $100,000 (£50,000) - a reduction by a factor of 30! One reason? Open source software like the LAMP software stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) now provide Web 2.0 businesses with a robust, low-cost platform to start trading - while providing built-in scalability as the business grows.

SSV Embedded Systems is shipping a tiny processor module targeting complex industrial communications applications. The ARM9-based DNP/9200 single-board computer (SBC) comes pre-installed with Linux, and is available in a Starter Kit that includes an evaluation board with a socket for a GSM/GPRS modem and SIM card.

Your editor has, once again, had the opportunity to add to his collection of Ottawa Linux Symposium T-shirts. OLS2006 was a fun and interesting event, a testament to the increasing professionalism of its organizers, speakers, and attendees. And also, of course, to the energy and vitality which drives the Linux community.
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LinuxWorld may be the place to go to see what companies are doing, but OLS has clearly established itself as the event to attend to learn about what the development community - and the kernel development community in particular - is up to.

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This year's keynote speaker was Greg Kroah-Hartman. [...] The talk covered topics like hardware support (Linux is now second to none, says Greg), the illegal and unethical nature of closed source kernel modules, various aspects of the kernel development process, and more. The talk is very much worth a read.

On March 1st, Wikipedia, the online interactive encyclopedia, hit the million-articles mark, with an entry on Jordanhill, a railway station in suburban Glasgow. Its author, Ewan MacDonald, posted a single sentence about the station at 11 P.M., local time; over the next twenty-four hours, the entry was edited more than four hundred times, by dozens of people.
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It is also perfectly configured to be current: there are detailed entries for each of the twelve finalists on this season’s “American Idol,” and the article on the “2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict” has been edited more than four thousand times since it was created, on July 12th, six hours after Hezbollah militants ignited the hostilities by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers.

"Helping the Needy get Nerdy"

“The idea here is to bridge the digital divide,” says a zealous Cole Moeller, “to provide free access to all.” He’s been talking so much he’s completely ignored the veggie burger and fries sitting cold on his plate. “It will be a resource for and an integral part of the Missoula community.”

Back in the mid 70s, Saturday Night Live (SNL) arrived on late night TV with a radically different approach to live entertainment. The first few seasons represented a true experiment in network television, departing from the cookie-cutter prime time variety shows of the era and introducing a new brand of raw, energetic - and irreverent - comedy.
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In the past few years, a similar upstart has emerged to confront the mature, staid proprietary software market.
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New OS players are emerging, and software powers such as Microsoft, IBM and Oracle are making serious accommodations to the growing threat.