Showing headlines posted by dcparris

Microsoft last week unveiled new and updated tools for migrating from IBM Lotus Notes/Domino collaboration applications to Microsoft Exchange. With IBM's Lotusphere 2006 conference in Orlando, Fla., this week, the timing seems more than coincidental.

With the recent security issues facing Windows users, it's time to start seriously considering alternatives to Microsoft's software.

How do you react when database majors put profits on the back burner and start giving away their flagship RDBMS for free? Kumar Dawada goes behind the scenes and attempts to find method to the seeming madness.

[Ed: I disagree with the final analysis - "However, the open source industry does not have the finance or resources to sustain a prolonged and aggressive competition." The author has a limited and/or skewed understanding of the libre software development model. MySQL AB may go out of business, while the MySQL database continues to flourish. - dcparris]

Following this week's unveiling of the proposed GNU General Public License Version 3 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Free Software Foundation President and Founder Richard Stallman discussed his work on GPLv3 and other free software issues with CRN Senior Writer Paula Rooney.

[Ed: If you are new to the FOSS community, this is classic Richard M. Stallman. Once you get past the history lesson, you learn about Tivo's role in GPLv3. - dcparris]

Opinion: It's debatable whether the open-source program that allows Windows programs to run on Linux is faster than native Windows, but it has its place. (Linux-Watch)

Not often thought of as radio stars, Linux developers are now able to steal the limelight thanks to Dapto couple James and Karin Purser who produce the Linux Australia Update and the LUG Roundup podcasts from their lounge room. Linux Australia has this week donated $1500 to the Purser's to help them upgrade their equipment.

SourceForge.net has said that it will provide support for the Subversion Software Configuration Management (SCM) system in addition to the CVS (Concurrent Versions System) SCM (Source Control Management) services currently provided. Subversion is an Open Source version control system designed to serve as a compelling alternative for CVS by providing directories, renames and file meta-data, plus other improved key features.

MSN searchers looking for ISPs or other services that support phpBB are out of luck. MSN search forbids it. Same applied to Google until Monday. Developers claim to get different results, depending on browser and the phrasing of the search query. phpBB users and their vendors just want to know when the blockade will end.

[ED: Uncertain the author listed is correct, could not confirm on the article - HC]

A survey conducted by IT consulting firm Optaros and InformationWeek magazine shows that American companies and government organizations are saving millions of dollars with open source software. Conducted in September 2005, the survey is based on responses collected from over 500 companies, government agencies, and organizations. According to the collected data, approximately 87 percent of American organizations use open source software within their technology infrastructure.

The five-day course is a full-scale presentation of information that covers principal themes in succinct lectures immediately followed by hands-on exercises that put new concepts into practical use. While a background in database administration or PostgreSQL is not required, it is recommended that students have a command of basic Unix administration, the Unix command line, simple SQL statements, and basic programming concepts.

Industry experts have predicted that Novell’s recent decision to open up the source code of its AppArmor Linux security offering will only have a “meaningful result” if the firm succeeds in developing a true open-source community around the technology.

[Ed: I quite agree. Most (all?) of the successful projects have a solid community behind them. - dcparris]

Irrespective of their size, businesses are always looking for robust systems that do not crash, have reliable backup facilities, and utilise technology that is not complicated for the end-user. Net Integration Technologies (NITI) says it has a solution for this. The company’s product, Nitix, a Linux-based OS, offers users an operating system with self-healing and self-maintaining capabilities. Due to its automatic capabilities, it can eliminate the added cost of having a Linux expert oversee its operation. The company recently obtained the ‘Ready for IBM DB2 software for Linux’ designation for Nitix Application Edition (AE).

We've gone from official to announced, captain

[Ed: The interesting part is the comment about this being part of HP's Sun Attack Program. Let's see if I have this right. HP is going to attack Sun by putting Sun's software on their boxes? Perhaps the Bush Administration should try this approach with Al-Qa'ida? Or maybe our law enforcement agencies should fight crack dealers by selling crack! - dcparris]

IP management software firm Palamida is working on a number of fronts to make it easier -- and safer -- to bring Open Source into the IT enterprise. Palamida CEO Mark Tolliver told OET that improving visibility will be a key to improving adoption in 2006. “The real-world situation here is that Open Source is a done deal with Linux, Apache and even more and more with the Firefox browser. Enterprise IT has seen the benefits in huge cost-savings, and without a lot of problems with maintenance, security or other issues,” Palamida CEO Mark Tolliver told OET.

On September 27, Sun released StarOffice 8, their cross-platform office suite, which they believe to be the best alternative to the business standard, Microsoft Office. This new product release along with the release of OpenOffice.org 2.0, on October 20, was a watershed event for open source office suites. With a host of new features and increased functionality, both suites have never before offered such a robust and feasible alternative to the undisputed productivity suite leader, Microsoft Office. Sun Microsystems has been developing the product since their acquisition of Star Division, the previous maker of StarOffice, in August of 1999. For the first time in its history, StarOffice (and OpenOffice.org) has the best chance to convert millions of Microsoft Office users as a result of the latest crop of improvements.

This week, advisories were released for httpd, mod_auth_pgsql, auth_ldap, ethereal, struts, cups, gpdf, apache, and the kernel. The distributor for this week is Red Hat.

A gathering of open source pundits have confirmed that the phrase "open source" is what you make of it. We can all breath a little easier now. The pundits - Tim O'Reilly, Sun Microsystems' Simon Phipps and IBM's Rod Smith - came to this conclusion yesterday at an SD Forum event here. Despite a couple of pleas from the SD Forum crowd, the speakers refused to narrow their definition of open source software or companies. Any vendor that uses Apache, for example, is part of the fabled open source community as they help drive a market for such products, the experts said.

Are configuring custom Linux kernels still something most any Linux user needs to know how to do, or has it moved upwards to where only the power users and system admins need to know how?

Almost every US patent contains at least one mistake, according to new research. The vast majority are trivial errors, most of them the fault of the USPTO; but two per cent of the patents examined were found to contain serious mistakes that weakened the core claims.

A serious vulnerability has been found in the popular KDE open-source software bundle. The flaw, deemed "critical" by the research outfit the French Security Incident Response Team, could allow a remote attacker to gain control over vulnerable systems. KDE is a desktop software package for Linux and Unix systems and includes the Konqueror Web browser and other applications.