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Richard Stallman, the man who coined the term "free software", and others in the community understand their biggest threat. The right a patent grants to its holder to exclude others from making, using or selling their invention is a direct contradiction to their aspiration to allow software to be freely copied, distributed and modified. Little wonder also that Microsoft has latched on to the ambiguity this issue has created. Steve Ballmer's open industry email highlighted indemnification along side costs and security as Windows' three key strengths over Linux.

Oracle and Novell announced Tuesday that Oracle's latest database, clustering, application server, collaboration solutions and enterprise applications are now available for and supported on Novell's latest enterprise Linux operating system, SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) 9.

Sybase announced it has tailored its Linux-based database to run on rival IBM's eServer OpenPower systems, providing customers more choice in the increasingly popular market for Linux systems.

Prudential Equity Group upgraded Red Hat to "overweight" from "neutral weight" and maintained a $17 target price, saying the software company remains the leader in the Linux market, which is among the fastest-growing segments in enterprise software.

While on its face the Wiki model sounds more likely to produce trustworthy information than a blog, the facelessness of Wikis give some observers pause. "With blogs, over time you can figure out who you can trust," said Dan Kennedy, media critic for the Boston Phoenix. "With the Wikipedia, you don't know who's contributing to it."

MySQL CEO Marten Mickos is unsurprised by the recent rise of commercially viable open-source companies such as his own. I wonder: Why didn't this happen sooner?" he said to silicon.com in a recent interview. Though Mickos has a long-held belief that open source is the superior software development model, it's taken the rest of the world time to catch up.

Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Debian flyers have been moved to Alioth for easier maintenance and contribution. Despite the upcoming release of sarge, another update to the current stable release is being prepared.

In this piece, GuyFawkes expounds on computer software, hardware, and the limits (and possibilities) of human interaction with the mechanical realities of design and fabrication with their accompanying and sometimes most annoying "laws".

Customers Can Confidently Deploy Oracle's Proven Grid Technology on Novell's SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9

The Linux Show -- an original Internet radio offering -- is shutting down. It's been part of the Linux and Internet scene for seven years, but it has run into financial difficulties and lack of sponsors make it impossible to continue.

In the market for a hybrid engine? Netscape's new Web browser might be just the ticket. As of 8 a.m. PST Tuesday, Netscape fans were test-driving a prototype Netscape browser that runs on two different browsing engines: the Mozilla Foundation's Gecko engine, which powers up the Mozilla, Firefox and older Netscape browsers, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine, which many consider the de facto Web standard.

Daffodil Software has announced the release of One$DB, a free version of its flagship product Daffodil DB. Daffodil DB is a leading Java database based on SQL 99 and JDBC standards, and is certified by Sun Microsystems for J2EE applications. Moreover, it is bundled with features that one normally associates with enterprise databases. With the launch of its free version, One$DB, Daffodil Software extends its commitment to the Java and to the database community.

Your home directory is the place where you keep your own files. Good organizational skills and some foresight will help keep your "home" in order. Here are some hints for organizing your home directory.

Linux is gaining in popularity as a server operating system, according to the latest market data from research company IDC.

For Modern Marketeers the Open Source Movement provides some great lessons in the power of online communities. It may all sound like a geeky cult but open source is actually a way of working that involves huge, web-based collaborations among far-flung individuals and a shared, or open, approach to intellectual property rights. Instead of maintaining a tight grip on any findings resulting from a project, open sourcers share new knowledge in a central bank of information (often programming code) that anyone else can access and use for free, albeit within a set of usage criteria.

Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein uses Linux on Intel servers to cut running costs by 45% One of the biggest investment banks in Europe is using Linux for up to 70% of its new IT projects after finding that running the open source operating system on Intel-based servers cut running costs by nearly half.

Sybase said Tuesday that it will partner with hardware vendor IBM to market its Linux database software, potentially dealing a blow to Sun Microsystems, another long-standing partner.

Computer-game maker Valve Software had high hopes for Half-Life 2, an eagerly anticipated sci-fi shoot-'em-up thriller that had been five years in the making. And when the game finally became available over the Internet last year, fans were ecstatic. There was just one problem: Valve hadn't actually released the game. Instead, the code had been snatched by hackers, who'd posted it online for anyone to download. "This could have been a real hit to our bottom line," says Valve marketing chief Doug Lombardi.

While big-name companies scramble to protect business models, this company is making open-ended devices that give customers the right to control their own telephone and media experiences.

There is growing disquiet about public sector IT contracts being awarded to Western vendors in China, a country long known for its fondness of open-source and homegrown companies.