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Think you need to cough up large sums of money for an office suite, security tools, and other essential programs? These free and low-cost alternatives provide power without the high price.

[Ed: In other words, don't look a gift horse in the mouth]

Under the name OpenLogos GlobalWare AG is offering to private individuals, universities and other public institutions a free translation system for Linux. The software can be downloaded from the website of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

One of the hottest companies on the planet, it is a well-known fact that Google has relied on open source tools and technology to build itself. But how good of an open source citizen is Google? Based on its actions in 2005, the company's doing a pretty good job.

Don't call it Little Blue quite yet, but IBM yesterday announced that in mid-November it will roll out an open source J2EE application server based on the Apache Geronimo project.

Called the WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE), the roughly 60 MB free download builds on the May acquisition of Gluecode Software, which had made significant contributions to the Geronimo project, including a user interface and administration.

Current users of SuSE should not panic even if the 20% workforce cuts cited in recent news reports come to fruition, said Charles King, principal analyst for Pundit-IT Research, Hayward, Calif.

To date, the official response from Novell Inc. has been that it does not comment on rumor or speculation, but the company did state in a conference call this month that "some cost-cutting moves" were on the horizon.

Even in the unlikely event that Novell does fold, King said, the SuSE Linux brand is attractive enough to be picked up by another vendor.

"I don't see Novell going anywhere anytime soon, but if [they] bobble this, I see it reflecting more badly on Novell than on SuSE," King said. "Then, if Novell can't get it together, SuSE may be an interesting bit for another vendor to acquire."

When computers first became available to individuals, most of the cost was in the hardware, and the software that it came with was basically free. But today, with computers available in abundance for a few hundred dollars, most of the computing cost is in the software that users purchase. Fortunately, for the cost-conscious, free or open source alternatives now exist for many popular, or expensive, applications -- whether Yalies choose to use Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. Open source projects are programs that provide source code along with the application, allowing users to modify the software to their preference, or run it for free.

You can find lots of news about Sun's JDS Desktop becoming available for Linux distributions. Fernando Cassia's offering on "The Inquirer" offers valuable insight into the significance of the offering.

The Apache HTTP server - now 10 years old - is the product of an open source initiative dedicated to keeping the internet free from commercial control. It is a key part of the Lamp (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) platform.

The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.

Google's controversial Web Accelerator application that is designed to lessen the time it takes to load Web pages has returned after a four-month hiatus. But the second revision of the application, which is still in beta, does not address concerns with the first release, webmasters say.

Microsoft has joined a Yahoo-backed effort to digitise the world's books and other works to make them searchable and accessible to anyone online.

In the true spirit of Linux, there is a slightly different approach to support than the commercial norm. After all, Linux represents an unparalleled community of experts, it includes industry leading problem determination tools, and of course, the product itself includes the source code. These resources are in addition to the professional Linux support services that are available from companies, such as IBM, and the various Linux vendors, such as Redhat and SUSE. Making the most of these additional resources is called "self-service" and is the main topic covered by this book.

NTT DoCoMo has licensed Embedded Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) software from Ecrio Inc. for use as an option on its 3G FOMA handsets. The technology will initially be deployed on DoCoMo's 902i series handsets, introduced today. DoCoMo's earlier 3G FOMA mobile phone, the N900iL, runs Linux.

Although Krzysztof Klincewicz, a researcher at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, attempted to define "innovation," his argument that open-source projects should be promoted more extensively requires more examination, said IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky. "What is innovation?" he asked.

News Analysis: Google may not be releasing an open-source operating system or a desktop suite, but the company is promoting, supporting and using open-source software.

In responding to a reader's questions, Abe writes:"I think you made a good choice by starting with OpenSuse 10. Six years ago, I started using Red Hat Linux then I tried Suse. Today, Suse is still my main distro (distribution). It is complete good desktop/server that has everything and anything you can think of and available as part of FOSS (Free Open Source Software)."

Related to: An old hacker slaps up Slackware

"The open source database market is immature compared to the market for proprietary products from the likes of Oracle and IBM," Andrews said. "We haven't had that test of time where you can really measure which is more secure. But there's no question that we're seeing an appetite for open source."

[Ed: Perhaps Andrews should take a course in if it's been unbroken for ten years in a majority of web sites on the Internet, maybe it works.]

Both companies take big strides in showing that their companies are supportive of ODF.

When it comes to digitizing books, two stories appear to be unfolding: One is about open source, and the other, Google.

Or so it seemed at a party held by the Internet Archive on Tuesday evening, when the nonprofit foundation and a parade of partners, including the Smithsonian Institution, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, rallied around a collective open-source initiative to digitize all the world's books and make them universally available.

Centeris emerged from stealth mode to release the public beta version of its Likewise 1.0 software for managing Linux servers in a Microsoft Windows network Wednesday. The start-up also announced it had raised over $5 million in venture capital funding.