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The Meraka Institute's Open Source Centre (OSC) will host Soweto's first ever open source workshop tomorrow and has announced plans to develop satellite centres in the area with local open source experts able to assist users.The move comes as Meraka attempts to bridge the digital divide it sees developing in the open source arena. "There seems to be a disturbing trend emerging which reveals that our message seems to be getting through to everyone else but women and underprivileged communities," says Dr Ntsika Msimang of the OSC. "The irony here is that open source seems to be engineering its own digital divide and the idea of creating satellite centres is to reverse that trend by targeting the communities that we deem are the ultimate beneficiaries of bridging the digital divide."

People like Firefox because it just works. We designed Firefox to be invisible; we want you using the web, not the software. We've spent years refining it and streamlining it down to the pixel so that it works intuitively right out of the box. We have a formidable competitor in Microsoft, but the emergence of the network has changed the rules. If you create a great product, it will spread through word-of-mouth and people will use it. If people aren't talking about your product, your product isn't worth talking about.

The basic open-source licence covering software such as the Linux OS will be revamped and ready by 2007, according to an industry official involved with the project. The planned changes to the GNU General Public License (GPL) include resolving patent conflicts, accommodating Web services, and resolving incompatibilities with other licences. Dealing with wikis in the GPL also has been pondered.

There's been a lot of Firefox vs. IE talk in the industry. Some people say that Firefox is better than IE, more secure than IE, and so on. While Firefox users sing their tunes on how much better it is over IE, most IE users don't understand what the fuss is all about. For starters, both browsers have security problems. No browser is 100% secure.

These guys have been talking to each other. Over the last two weeks, there has been a rash of announcements from a number of leading vendors pledging support for new open virtualisation standards. The plans pointedly do not involve Microsoft and could be seen as encircling the Redmond giant in the booming virtualisation market, which most observers see as becoming of growing importance over the next few years. Both Intel and AMD will build virtualisation hooks into their upcoming products, for example.

This week's tech conference in San Francisco still went by the name LinuxWorld. But the Linux operating system was only a part of what went on there. Attendees pitched databases, software to manage customer data, security add-on programs and scores of other products — some of it compatible with Linux's rival, Microsoft Windows. Rather than zero in on Linux, the conference has broadened its focus to include all open-source software — code that's developed and shared freely. Though Linux is still the poster child of open-source programming, it's far from alone.

Matt Hagedorn, an IT consultant with Matrix Computer Solutions, of Sausalito, Calif., came mainly to look at Linux systems and applications that would be well-suited for small business environments. Hagedorn said he was particularly impressed with Scalix Corp.'s Linux e-mail server. "I liked how everything just runs on the central server and you don't have to worry about Outlook clients or whatever you have running," Hagedorn said.

When IBM considers the future of its $15 billion-per-year software business, the proliferation of open-source software and Java-based applications is crucial to kick-starting the division's relatively flat sales and keeping it competitive with Microsoft. IBM climbed aboard the Linux movement early, but over the past few years the company's open-source efforts have extended well beyond the operating system. IBM has made a habit of contributing code to open-source projects, hoping others will create new software that IBM can sell and provide services for, or that at the very least will encourage the growth of Java-based development to block Microsoft's .Net ambitions.

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has unveiled a Patent Commons Project that will help developers to avoid infringing patents. The not-for-profit organisation, which aims to further the adoption of Linux, employs several open source developers including Linux creator Linus Torvalds.OSDL chief executive Stuart Cohen said at the LinuxWorld tradeshow in San Francisco that the project will build a library of patents that have been pledged to support open source.

AUGUST 10, 2005 (INFOWORLD) - The open source community can't provide a drop-in replacement for expensive, high-end CRM applications from the likes of Salesforce.com or Siebel just yet. Still, you might be surprised at the level of sophistication some of the available projects already offer, particularly for midsize organizations. SugarCRM, for example, offers a complete, enterprise-class CRM system built on open-source technologies, including PHP, MySQL, and the Apache Web server.

BM is shipping its Workplace Services suite of applications with the Red Hat Linux operating system. Companies are being offered both systems for 90-day trial periods. IBM wants large corporate and public-sector IT users to use its software when they switch to Linux. Red Hat is the largest Linux supplier. Small and medium-sized businesses or individual departments in larger organisations will be able to test IBM Workplace Services on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.

We at GameSHOUT have noticed more and more Firefox browser users during the past 30 days than previous. Firefox held steady at only 3.2% during 2004 up until the month of December where it finished out the year at 10.2%. So far it has jumped to 17.4% for the month of January 2005. That's a large jump and enough for us to notice it. Some may say that 17.4% isn't much to speak about when comparing to Microsoft's Internet Explorer which is ranked 74.8% overall. However, we think it is. We recently installed Firefox support for our GameSHOUT Internet Radio stream so that Firefox users don't have to use IE. If this trend continues, we could see Firefox support going from 17.4% to 25-30% by the month of February. Remember, these are only GameSHOUT statistics which only report on what browser our visitors are using. Each site can vary in these statistics.

In a bid to entice enterprises to transfer core workgroup services from Windows or NetWare over to Linux, Novell today unveiled an enhanced version of its Open Enterprise Server which features improved migration functionality. The Support Pack 1 platform is designed to help firms move key workgroup services, including file and print, to Linux all at once or gradually. In addition to simplified migration, Novell has upgraded the latest version of its Open Enterprise Server with the addition of its iFolder 3.0 file sharing, access and backup application.

For the last three years the IT world has been debating the status of the Linux operating system as a potential platform on which to build enterprise solutions. Such debate is now well and truly over, with Linux and the wider Open Source community now firmly entrenched in the minds of IT buyers as a serious, enterprise ready option. This week sees Linux World taking place in San Francisco and it is demonstrating, once again, how rapidly the Linux platform is maturing. At this weeks event many of the leaders of the Linux community are proclaiming new offerings. Some of the highest profile announcements are those of Red Hat, IBM and HP.

If you're looking for big name friends, VMware has them. AMD, BEA, BMC, Broadcom, Cisco, CA, Dell, Emulex, HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Novell, QLogic and Red Hat have all vowed to set virtualization standards in tandem with VMware. In particular, VMware will release its own Virtual Machine Hypervisor Interfaces (VMHI) - technology it bills as the foundation of partitioning - in the hopes that other companies will pick up these same interfaces, making VMware's software a type of industry standard.

MySQL has been picked up by Novell, its second huge reseller deal in so many days, the companies announced on Tuesday at LinuxWorld in San Francisco. The companies are calling this the only accord of its kind between a Linux vendor and MySQL AB, purveyor of the popular open-source database MySQL. In the reseller and joint-support agreement, Novell Inc. will offer subscriptions to the MySQL Network, a subscription offering that includes MySQL software; updates and upgrades; alerts and advisors; MySQL's online knowledgebase; and full, production-level technical support.

Oracle On Demand Customers Benefit From Oracle Technology and Applications Delivered on x86-64-bit Architecture

To head off controversy, open-source founders will present the community with a set of guiding principals to govern the GPL 3 process, and a timeline to judge its progress. With patent pressures growing in the computer industry, the licensing foundation for a majority open-source projects is under review. On Wednesday, industry heavyweights here will seek to reassure the community over the process slated for the GNU General Public License 3, offering a statement of principals to govern that process, and a timeline to judge its progress. The first discussion draft of the next version of the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 3 is currently on track to be released in the first week of January 2006. Then, after a year of public comment and the writing of the final text, the final version should arrive early 2007—more than 15 years after GPL 2 was released.

Major Linux Vendors Form Partnership and Promote Debian in Enterprise

Wyse Technology debuted a compact yet powerful Linux-based thin-client at LinuxWorld and announced a 1,900-unit deployment by a European health insurance provider. Wyse Technology debuted a compact yet powerful Linux-based thin client at LinuxWorld on Tuesday and announced a 1,900 unit deployment of the device by a major European health insurance provider. The compact Winterm V50 boasts a 1GHz x86 processor and measures just 7.9 x 7.1 x 1.8 inches (201 x 180 x 46 mm). The V50 is based on a 1GHz Transmeta Crusoe processor running Wyse's Linux V6 operating system (based on a 2.6 Linux kernel), and is equipped with 128MB flash and 256MB DDR RAM memory, resulting in a stable, powerful platform for accessing applications running on a server plus locally executing Linux and Java applications, according to the company.