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Lack of coherent policy on open source hinders uptake in UK public sector. Local authorities in the UK are far less likely to use open-source software than those of some other European countries, according to findings from a Dutch study. The study has so far found that 32 percent of local authorities in Britain use open-source software, compared with 71 percent in France, 68 percent in Germany and 55 percent in the Netherlands.

Here, dear readers, is my advice for you if you're done with the spyware and the adware that keeps creeping in from new directions. Here's the plan if you want to leave your virus scanner behind and grab most (perhaps all) of the software you'll ever need off the Internet. This is the road to a new relationship with your computer, brought about by software that is built by a community, not a monopoly. It is a road less traveled, and it makes all the difference.

So how is Sun going to instantly attract hundreds or thousands of developers to Solaris when they have never had the opportunity to work with the source code before? Red Hat has experienced this before with some of the companies we have acquired

Novel has reinforced its senior management team with several internal promotions and external appointments, aiming to drive its Linux strategy while strengthening partner relationships. The team will focus on the government and telecoms sectors.

It seems that IBM might be toning down its bold resolution that it will have Linux running on all its desktops by, er, about now.

Now that the open source initiative has approved Sun Microsystems' Common Development and Distribution License officials are looking at using the license to open its Java Enterprise System as well.

IBM, HP, Intel, and Nortel Networks have joined together to promote open-sourced-based systems for grid computing.

Apart from large businesses and government agencies which are looking at Linux as an alternative to the various flavours of Unix, many SMEs (small and medium enterprises) are also keen on going the Linux way, says a new study by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners Inc.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski joined Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake to welcome entrepreneurs to the new Open Technology Business Center with hopes they can take advantage of Linux software that is taking over an increasing share of the multibillion-dollar market once dominated by rival Microsoft Corp. to the north in suburban Seattle.

Microsoft says it is clamping down on people running pirated versions of its Windows operating system by restricting their access to security features.

If you're an inveterate reader of blogs, then you're probably ready for the latest phenomenon roiling the Internet: social networking software (SNS). SNS enables the development of so-called "Friend of a Friend" networks (FOAF, for short) such as Ryze.com, Linkedin.com, and AlwaysOn.com that have come to the fore the past couple of years. MySpace.com, designed for the high school and college-age crowd, also has grown rapidly. These online personal or business networking sites are exploding in use, often adding tens of thousands of new users every month. Like the enormously popular dating site Friendster.com, all these sites are based on the "six degrees of separation" principle. That's the notion that any two random people on the planet are connected by an average of six acquaintances -- a claim that has been around for some time and supported most recently by a 2003 study reported in the journal Science.

Many IT managers are finding alternatives to proprietary software that doesn't mean having to leave behind their cherished Windows operating systems. Many free and easy-to-use open source applications, including the newly updated Mozilla Firefox Web browser and the steadily improving OpenOffice.org productivity suite, enable company executives to experiment with open source software while allowing users to stay with Microsoft Windows.

osCommerce is a powerful and open source e-commerce storefront system, that's not without a few shortcomings. We pointed out a few of them in our review here a little while back. We also pointed out that one of its great strengths was its extensibility, which is manifested in many user-contributed modules as well as spin-offs. Two such spin-offs of osCommerce are Zen Cart and CRE Loaded - both of which are based on osCommerce and both of which enhance it in a number of ways.

A cross-industry supply chain development initiative, based entirely on open source software, was launched yesterday. Three years in the making, the Lumus Project is essentially a network of buyers and suppliers aimed at developing a shared assessment and development standard across the market.

Like most enterprise shops, we have multiple versions of a Red Hat running on development and production systems. This includes versions of Red Hat 9.0 along with Enterprise 2.1 and 3.0. Each of our in-house applications goes through a Q&A process to verify stability with a particular release. Sometimes we have up to 3 different releases of a particular version in production.

A push mechanism is the delivery of unsolicited information to a mobile device. Learn how to set up a PPG on your own, configure the settings to your own taste, develop push content, and test it with a mobile handset simulator over a TCP/IP network on a LAN.

Aiming to be the "biggest friend of open source," the company says its open-sourcing of Solaris 10 code will help companies and governments across the globe. "But we don't want to move so fast and just dump everything out there," a Sun executive says.

The Southern California Linux Expo welcomes Al Brisard of PingTel to their panel discussion of on the future of VoIP and Open Source. Brisard will bring 17 years of experience in voice and data communications to the discussion. He will join panel members Louie Mamakos, (Chief Technology Officer - Vonage), Jeff Bonforte (President - SIPphone), and Darryl Strauss (President - Digital Ordnance).

Sun Microsystems on Tuesday launched its OpenSolaris program, which provides access to the Solaris operating system via an open source format, and also announced the release of 1,670 patents to the open source community.

According to the Radicati Group Inc., a messaging and collaboration research firm, 45 percent of corporations are already deploying enterprise instant messaging for faster intraoffice communications. If you're looking for an open source alternative to IM products from IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft, consider Jabber's Extensible Communications Platform (XCP). Setting up a Jabber IM server isn't as cumbersome as it used to be a few years ago. Here's how to do it.