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The Open Group announced that the source code of the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), an industry-standard, vendor-neutral set of distributed computing technologies, is being made available under an Open Source license. The Open Group’s initiative will broaden the use of DCE concepts and components as a vendor-neutral interoperability infrastructure.

The solution to this devastating problem, say Stephen Maurer, Arti Rai, and Andrej Sali in the premier open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine, is to adopt an "open source" approach to discovering new drugs for neglected diseases.

In March 2003 Ken McKnight came to me with an idea, a brilliant idea at that. I had been a web developer for many years and I was looking for something to be a part of that would rock the world. We developed the debut issue in just 2 months time using a few ideas I had been toying with, and alot of hard work. In May 2003, the first issue of AllAboutSurf.com was born. We have enjoyed a thrilling, positive response to date.

Hamlib allows authors of software such as logging programs, digital communications programs, or those wanting to develop the ultimate radio control software to concentrate on the user interface and the basic function of the program rather than radio control.

Business software giant Oracle Corp. said it would continue pushing Linux as a platform of choice for their business applications in 2005, according to Yashi Kant, managing director of Oracle Philippines in an e-mail interview.

It began trickling out with a press release indicating IBM, Intel and the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) had an announcement with "dramatic and global" implications. Then it got dramatic alright, with a report that the big January 25 announcement, code-named "Operation Open Gates," was a plan to rewrite Linux kernel components that might be infringing on some 283 patents, particularly those owned by Microsoft.

A few days ago I posted a blog called "Are Blogs the New Journalism?" which garnered some lengthy rebuttals both here and on my blog. I learned something from that conversation and some other reading and started thinking about it in terms of open source.

Patent powerhouse IBM last week unlocked access to 500 of its software patents for the open source community, generating mixed reactions from industry watchers.

Red Hat plans to launch a major upgrade to its flagship Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system that will mark the first time the software has fully supported the Linux 2.6 kernel. The launch currently is scheduled to occur at an event that will coincide with the Linuxworld Conference& Expo in Boston next month, a spokeswoman for the company has confirmed.

Open-source software development may not be easy, and no one likes to air their dirty laundry, but in the end, it's the smartest way to make software.

Linux desktop releases will be fast and furious in 2005. Here are some suggestions of what to do now so your office or agency can take advantage of them.

Massachusetts is expanding its landmark stance on open-source software purchases to cover digital documents in general, planning to require all state agencies to create and store information in noncommercial software programs such as HTM and PDF.

In his recent article Why I won't upgrade my Linux distribution Nathan Willis argues that there are many reasons not to upgrade your Linux-based system frequently. What he is really talking about is the proverbial RPM Hell and the not-so-good fragmentation of RPM-based distributions. Packages not part of your distribution might easily be broken by a system upgrade. Even parts of the distribution can stop working due to the upgrade. But RPM-based distributions are not the same as Linux.

A lengthy and interesting thread was started on the lkml by Chris Wright looking to define a centralized place to report security issues in the Linux Kernel...He explained that he wanted to centralize the information "to help track it, make sure things don't fall through the cracks, and make sure of timely fix and disclosure". The resulting discussion was joined by numerous members of the kernel hacking community, exposing a wide range of opinions.

The Linux Trace Toolkit, or LTT, "is a fully-featured tracing system for the Linux kernel. It includes both the kernel components required for tracing and the user-level tools required to view the traces. Information on the project's page notes that the tool is not intended to be used as a kernel debugger, but instead "is intended to provide users with information regarding the dynamic behavior of their system which was previously unavailable using conventionnal tools such as gdb, strace, top, ps and the likes."

Mitch Kapor, of the Open Source Applications Foundation, said that Firefox users should stop gloating and thinking that the product's future is assured. Having made his fortune during the heyday of proprietary software, Kapor is both president and chair of the OSAF and chairman of the Mozilla Foundation.

IBM, Intel, the Open Source Development Labs, and other industry lights are planning to announce that a consortium has been created that will rewrite the components in the Linux kernel that have been alleged tread on other people's IP - or at least the 27 Microsoft patents that Linux is supposed to infringe. The aim? To rob Microsoft of the ability to scare customers off of Linux by saying that the operating system is a patent infringer, informed sources say. "Operation Open Gates" as they are calling it is reportedly going to be unveiled on January 25.

IDE for Laszlo is a technology preview of an Eclipse-based development environment for creating, editing, debugging, and testing applications based on the LZX (an XML and JavaScript description language).

Sun Microsystems reported on Thursday a profit of $19 million, or 1 cent per share, for the last quarter of 2004, but the server and software company's revenues once again declined.

This is a response to Subhasish Ghosh's editorial entitled "Free Software in Reality Isn't Free". If I come across as kind of harsh here, I apologize. I know Solaris and and SunONE rather well, so this is familiar territory. Some of the concepts in Ghosh's editorial were quite baffling to me, so this editorial in fact raises more questions than it may answer. Such is discourse in the digital age :)
-- FeriCyde