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The needle, or data, in the heterogeneous IT haystack will soon be easier to find for users of IBM's DB2 database. Thanks to the very recent acquisition of Ascential Software, IBM is giving its database advanced query powers, according to Jeff Jones, director of strategy, IBM Information Management Solutions. Joes says that two partnerships with Zend Technologies and The Apache Foundation will make it easier for developers to create and for SMBs to find IBM-flavored open source databases. In this interview, Jones discusses the capabilities that Ascential and Zend bring to the table, as well as the initiative aimed at developing IBM/Apache Derby database code

The hobbyist days where Linux was taught in back rooms populated with ‘geeks only’ is history, with Linux making a headway into the deepest, most critical areas of the enterprise. Today, we see a different classroom culture with people belonging to diverse backgrounds filling up seats for learning Linux.

The Brazilian government has plans to help millions of low-income people buy their first computers. Looking to save millions of dollars in royalties and licensing fees, Mr. da Silva has instructed government ministries and state-run companies to gradually switch from costly operating systems made by Microsoft and others to free operating systems, like Linux. (Free registration required)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- So what was the bottom line from the PyCON 2005 conference, held here last week? Python is an open-source technology whose use in enterprise IT operations will only grow for the foreseeable future. Mission-critical development organizations often regard only a handful of languages -- C#, Java, XML, SQL, and few others -- as safe enough for serious projects. From this perspective, Python has been traditionally lumped with "experimental" or "toy" languages. Over and over, however, speakers at this conference presented evidence to the contrary.

"As a new small publisher," says Gil Student, president of Yashar Books,"we see our mission as disseminators of ideas. In that spirit, we have decided to supplement--and circumvent--conventional marketing methods to give open access to Torah scholarship in new, exciting ways."

In June 2001, Progeny Linux Systems was in crisis. Looking around, co-founder and CEO Ian Murdock realized that the company needed fundamental changes to survive. Four years later, Progeny is back up to its former staffing levels and showing modest profits. It is also one of the few Free/Open Source Software (FOSS)-based companies from that era to survive. Murdock's assessment of where the company went wrong and his story of how it reinvented itself offer some practical suggestions for other start-ups, especially FOSS-based ones.

For the second time since 2001, the US Navy is looking to increase its use of open-source software through a research and development programme with the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) and a growing group of IT vendors.

Peter Harrison, author of the Linux Quick Fix Notebook, discusses the Web site hosting decision making process and shares his thoughts concerning the future of Linux, what is holding it back, and what can be done about it.

How can you quickly produce a professional-looking report? If you're using KDE, you can turn to KOffice's KSpread spreadsheet and KWord word processor.

LinuxForce, a provider of Debian GNU Linux outsourced systems administration services, announced last week that it had signed an agreement to acquire the assets of Web hosting provider Cyber Loft. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The HASE (Human Aspects of Software Engineering) group at the University of Maryland Baltimore County is conducting two online surveys for KDE users. They expect to obtain results that will lead to useful discussions about the overall usability of KDE. The results of this research will be shared with the KDE community. The surveys take about 15 minutes to complete.

The newest edition of this distribution offers Windows-like features but tosses a few sales pitches as well.

A growing number of companies along Colorado's Front Range is finding ways to make money from the "open source" movement, a sharing of software code between programmers all over the globe.

Delegates at Novell's Brainshare conference last week were given an insight into how Novell plans to make Linux attractive as an operating system on which applications could be developed and hosted.

Corporations, government agencies and even consumers are tinkering with open-source software, which can be downloaded free from the Internet. The best-known open-source software includes Linux, the operating system, and Mozilla Firefox, the Web browser downloaded by 25 million people since its launch in November at http://www.mozilla.org

Michael Krax credited with five bug bounty submissions

Compliance-management solution ProtexIP is now available as an on-demand subscription, rendering it an affordable choice for small ISVs.

Alan Cox names Linus' successor, should the great Finn ever pass his baton on. Talking to LugRadio, he also discusses how Trusted Computing type initiatives could affect Linux and describes his research on what people want from desktop Linux.

In June 2001, Progeny Linux Systems was in crisis. Looking around, co-founder and CEO Ian Murdock realized that the company needed fundamental changes to survive. Four years later, Progeny is back up to its former staffing levels and showing modest profits. It is also one of the few Free/Open Source Software (FOSS)-based companies from that era to survive. Murdock's assessment of where the company went wrong and his story of how it reinvented itself offer some practical suggestions for other start-ups, especially FOSS-based ones. Progeny Linux Systems was founded in early 2001 with modest funding from the Linux Capital Group, a short-lived venture in which Bruce Perens was co-founder and president. By May, Progeny was hiring rapidly and beginning develop Linux NOW (Network of Workstations), an updated version of Sprite, a research operating system developed at the University of California-Berkeley that provided a single system image to a cluster of work stations.

This week will see oral arguments in the US Supreme Court in the case of MGM versus Grokster, a case of titanic dimensions for the rip, mix and burn culture. At issue in the case is whether a product manufacturer can be held liable for copyright infringements by downstream users.