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"I think they're wasting their time," Harvard Research Group vice president of Linux strategy Bill Claybrook told LinuxInsider. "If they had released the source code for Solaris four to five years ago, like they first talked about, ... and directed it to Intel, they would have killed Linux, because right now Solaris is a better operating system than Linux."

Will they, won't they? Yesterday, Sun's own Java technology evangelist was being reported as having said they would; now Java co-creator James Gosling - and almost everyone else in Santa Clara who came in contact with the media - says Sun won't be open-sourcing Java. Not yet anyway - though it's under fierce and continuing debate within the company.

A "gift economy" is a social system in which status is given by how much one shares or gives to one's community, as opposed to an "exchange economy" where status is given to those who own or control the most stuff. In today's world we're used to the latter economic philosophy, as it has been closely affiliated with the capitalist system since at least the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the corporation. But the Industrial Age is over -- this is the Information Age now, and things are changing.

Linux seller Red Hat and chipmaker Intel released prototype Linux software this week to support a security technology designed to curtail the spread of viruses.

Microsoft's new policy for licensing its patents has supporters of open-source software worried that the company will use a broken government system for protecting intellectual property to beat back gains Linux and other competing software have made in the marketplace.

This was a letter I recently wrote to Sun's head of global communications, Russ Castronovo, after reading his interview with Chuck Talk on orangecrate.com, and then reading the ongoing pro-/anti-Mono arguments over at PlanetGnome. Now that Sun seems to be on the brink of making the decision to open-source Java (or not to), I thought it would be an appropriate time to take action.

The entire Mozilla community is waiting with breathless anticipation as we wait for news of when Firefox 0.9 will be released. Many wonder how much more the project will go behind schedule.

Since the SCO Group began threatening to sue organizations that run Linux, some commercial Linux vendors have stepped forward to assure customers that they would protect their interests should the court find in SCO's favor. While it's still an open question whether anyone will ever need such indemnification, major vendors Novell, Hewlett-Packard, and Red Hat have programs in place to protect their customers.

Contrary to published reports, Sun Microsystems Inc. has not made a decision as to whether or not to release its Java platform under an open source software license, company executives said on Friday.

Sun Microsystems has followed up an announcement that its Solaris server operating system will have an open-source flavor with a similar promise for its Java technology.

I founded and managed Linux Today in 1998, bringing it up from nothing into the most powerful and large Linux news website in the world, in less than a year. I am now calling on the Linux community to boycott my creation until its current owners stop accepting money from Microsoft to publish blatantly anti-Linux/pro-Microsoft ads.

Linux Journal welcomes government Open Source expert Tom Adelstein as our newest web columnist. In his first column, Tom covers some notable government IT success stories.

Microsoft Brasil's president, Emilio Umeoka, said that ideology led Brazil's government astray when it decided to adopt Linux's free software in public sector computers.

Analyst and consulting firm Gartner responded to the recent move by Linux creator Linus Torvalds and the Open Source Development Lab to formalize a process for tracking the source of Linux source code contributions.